Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geography/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Archive 7

Welcome to the Geography WikiProject.

This is where Wikipedians interested in geography come together to coordinate their efforts to maintain and improve geographical subject matter on Wikipedia.

Geography is one of Wikipedia's dozen core subjects, and therefore it is prominently placed in the encyclopedia's navigation system. Geography's portal is listed at the top of the Main page, and also appears in the navigation bar displayed at the top of all portals:

Geography is one of the subheadings of all of Wikipedia's subject-based tables of contents which in turn are listed on Wikipedia's main navigation bar:

Geography is coming along nicely on Wikipedia, but has fallen behind other major subjects in certain respects. For instance, there is no Geography index, and the link to it is just a redirect. See the indices for Mathematics and Psychology as exampes.

Geography also lacks a glossary: Glossary of geography terms. For comparisons, see Architectural glossary and Glossary of philosophical isms.

The key pages and subsections for navigating the subject of geography on Wikipedia are:

Lists of basic topics#Geography and places

List of basic geography topics

Lists of topics#Geography and places

List of geography topics (this index page is currently redirected to the basic list)

List of academic disciplines#Geography

List of glossaries#Geography and places

Glossary of geography terms (as of 2007/10/17 hadn't been created yet)

List of overviews#Overview of geography and places

Geography and places

Portal:Geography

Wikipedia:Categorical index#Geography and places

Category:Geography

The above navigation system for geography needs to be maintained and developed as the subject itself progresses. Each time you create a new article, please check the above sections and pages to see if it should be placed on any of them. Watchdogs are also needed, to add the above pages to their watchlists, inorder to monitor them for vandalism and mistakes, and to asure that they remain consistent with the page sets they belong to. The above pages and sections are incomplete (or non-existent). Do you know geography well enough to complete them? Feel free to take a crack at them.

Good luck, and have fun.

The Transhumanist 04:34, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

A WikiProject Wine editor has taken their campaign to redefine North American geography and ecological science so as to support a British Columbia wine region's claim to be the northern extension of the Sonoran Desert, citing scads of travel and wine articles as "reliable sources". There needs to be a guideline on WP:Bad science and/or WP:Bad geography and the like to deal with situations like this. There will be cites out there, too for "the world is flat" and "the sun revolves around the earth" and "there are monsters under my bed", but it doesn't make them true either. I dno't mean to WP:Poll, I'm just wondering if there's a particular guideline out there about bad science/bad geography as "unreliable sources"....this ongoing catfight is getting to be a real waste of time, and it also calls into question the viaiblity or utility of current definitinos of reliable/verifiable sources. If a cite says something that is patently untrue, how can it be either reliable or verifiable?Skookum1 (talk) 00:49, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia:Fringe theories. Ben MacDui 09:17, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Also wine articles fail WP:RS#Scholarship for a geography article. Student7 (talk) 15:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• Neocleous, Mark (2003). "The violence of cartography". Imagining the state. McGraw-Hill International. ISBN 9780335203512. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |isbn10= ignored (help)
• Harley, John Brian (1988). "Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe". Imago Mundi. 40: 57–76. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Harley, John Brian (1988). "Maps, Knowledge, and Power". In Cosgrove, Denis; Daniels, Stephens (eds.). Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design, and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521389150. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |isbn10= ignored (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

It seems that we're missing a subject that Harley and others have discussed in some surprising depth. Uncle G (talk) 03:07, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Censorship of maps exists. But is in dire need of attention.--Cooper⁴² 18:29, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Could we please get some more eyes at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dead map? Mangoe (talk) 20:07, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Category:Anoxic basins has been proposed to be renamed. It currently covers salt water basins, but the rename may expand coverage to also cover small freshwater lakes. 65.93.15.80 (talk) 05:02, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Countries can be subdivided into smaller parts. That is what the article country subdivision tries to show. I expanded it, click here to see the expansion.

This article seems to be the core for all the articles in the Category:Country subdivisions, hundreds, thousands(?) of articles are contained in the sub categories. If this gets deleted as proposed it would likely affect all these articles. There are also the Category:Subdivisions by country.

Maybe instead of deletion it can be expanded further. Do you know of other kinds of subdivisions? Shall maps be added? Country subdivision (talk) 06:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

The usage of Inland Sea is under discussion, see Talk:Inland Sea. 65.95.14.96 (talk) 05:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Does a causeway turn an island into a peninsula? Both Sylt and Marken are connected to the mainland by causeways, but Sylt is called an island, and Marken a peninsula and former island. One of them must be wrong.--Ratzer (talk) 12:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no right or wrong here, although ideally for any given geographical area there would be a consistency of definitions. Haswell-Smith (2004) The Scottish Islands uses "an Island is a piece of land or group of pieces of land which is entirely surrounded by water at Lowest Astronomical Tide and to which there is no permanent means of dry access". This isn't entirely helpful as it excludes bridged islands such as Skye that most people would think of as still retaining their insular status. Scottish Island articles use "land that is surrounded by seawater on a daily basis, but not necessarily at all stages of the tide, excluding human devices such as bridges and causeways". This is much more inclusive, although the advantage of Haswell-Smith's system is that it avoids complex issues in relation to smaller tidal islands (see e.g. grid reference NF779185). The General Register Office for Scotland define an island as "a mass of land surrounded by water, separate from the Scottish mainland" but although they generally include tidal islands and islands linked by bridges etc. this is not clear from this definition and for some reason they exclude one tidal island and one island connected by a causeway from their figures. Ben MacDui 19:01, 6 March 2011 (UTC) (or rather shortly before this.)

If there were no right and wrong there, that would have some interesting consequences. Calling Sylt a peninsula and Marken and island or vice versa would not be right or wrong. As we should not only avoid putting wrong things into WP, but further constrain ourselves to put right things only, we could not call Sylt and Marken either islands or peninsulas. Do we need a new category Category:Island or Peninsula, call it whatever you feel like or Category:Island or Peninsula, nobody knows for sure?--Ratzer (talk) 18:39, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

There's tidal island, which although without references at least has a list of so-called "tidal islands". But in any case, there is no official authority over the meaning of the words island and peninsula. There might be in some parts of the world, maybe, but not for English in general. Things are called what people have come to call them, whether or not usages sometimes seem contradictory. Pfly (talk) 18:44, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

You are missing my point about "for any given geographical area there would be a consistency of definitions". This may depend on local sources. If WP:Denmark/Germany/Netherlands or any sub-divisions thereof want to have a specific protocol, that's fine, but as Pfly says, there is no formal en definition that could be used WP-wide. Ben MacDui 19:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I conclude calling a given geographic object an island or a peninsula is more part of its name than a description of its geographic nature. Are we to differentiate between what a geographic object is called by local authorities, and what it is in terms of an object category?--Ratzer (talk) 22:12, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

No, as there are innumerable islands and peninsulas with no such descriptor in their name and/or multiple names and there is no formal definition of the object category that we can use as a sole WP authority. We must therefore collaborate and arrive at a consensus for suitable aggregations of the objects concerned. I like the above WPSI usage (i.e. "land that is surrounded..." etc.) as it is inclusive and it is (I believe) easier to refer to islands, tidal islands, bridged islands, islands reached by causeways etc. and leave "former islands" for those that have irrevocably lost their insular status. "Peninsulas that used to be islands but are now bridged" and similar are perfectly logical, but not really common usage and rather cumbersome. The definition does require modification to apply to freshwater islands, but they are usually much more easily dealt with. Ben MacDui 09:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Another point here is that Wikipedia categories are for helping people find articles. That trumps any need felt for logical semantic consistency, I think. If something might count as both an island and a peninsula, why not include it in both categories? An example that comes to mind of something opposite to the "former island now peninsula" thing is Cape Ann. I see it is included in the category Category:Peninsulas of Massachusetts even though it is an island thanks to the Annisquam River (which, just to further complicate things, is not a river but rather a tidal strait/estuary). I'm tempted to add it to Category:Islands of Massachusetts, except that as far as I can tell the name of the island is "Cape Ann", which makes me hesitate. An oddball case—one of many. Point being though, Wikipedia categories are navigation aides and their contents need not be strictly correct in a semantic sense. Pfly (talk) 09:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm hoping that editors are going with consensus reliability. If there are more refs that say "island", then that is what it is despite a huge causeway. I think the editors are wondering what to do when there is no consensus (tied "search" or nearly so). I suppose categorizing both, if in the article text, and cited, is appropriate. Student7 (talk) 18:22, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Did a quick search for Wikipedia pages categorized as both islands and peninsulas, just to see. I was far from exhaustive. My quick scan turned up a bunch: Barnegat Peninsula, Sandy Hook, Bunker's Island, Nova Scotia, Cape Cod (first sentence says "is and island and a cape..."), and Isle of Portland (categorized as both "Islands of England" and "Peninsulas of England"). I don't have a point, except perhaps to agree with Student7 about categorizing as both island and peninsula, when appropriate. Pfly (talk) 15:34, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

There are also tombolos to consider - they create something that is arguably an island and peninsula by definition. Ben MacDui 11:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Recent changes were made to citations templates (such as {{citation}}, {{cite journal}}, {{cite web}}...). In addition to what was previously supported (bibcode, doi, jstor, isbn, ...), templates now support arXiv, ASIN, JFM, LCCN, MR, OL, OSTI, RFC, SSRN and Zbl. Before, you needed to place |id={{arxiv|0123.4567}} (or worse |url=http://arxiv.org/abs/0123.4567), now you can simply use |arxiv=0123.4567, likewise for |id={{JSTOR|0123456789}} and |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/0123456789 → |jstor=0123456789.

The full list of supported identifiers is given here (with dummy values):

• {{cite journal |author=John Smith |year=2000 |title=How to Put Things into Other Things |journal=Journal of Foobar |volume=1 |issue=2 |pages=3–4 |arxiv=0123456789 |asin=0123456789 |bibcode=0123456789 |doi=0123456789 |jfm=0123456789 |jstor=0123456789 |lccn=0123456789 |isbn=0123456789 |issn=0123456789 |mr=0123456789 |oclc=0123456789 |ol=0123456789 |osti=0123456789 |rfc=0123456789 |pmc=0123456789 |pmid=0123456789 |ssrn=0123456789 |zbl=0123456789 |id={{para|id|____}} }}

Obviously not all citations needs all parameters, but this streamlines the most popular ones and gives both better metadata and better appearances when printed. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Duncorn_Hill is up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Duncorn_Hill. I don't know if any guidelines exist anywhere for landmarks, and what is notable and what isn't, but there really should be. Dream Focus 01:13, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Northeast Asia is suffering from East Sea / Sea of Japan issues. 184.144.166.85 (talk) 12:21, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, everyone. The Sendai earthquake moved the north and south true poles (where the axis of rotation meets the surfaces of the Earth). Does that mean that the equator and lines of longitude and latitude also move? - Richard Cavell (talk) 06:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

There are eight pages called "List of municipal flags of some region", daughters of the page List of Japanese municipal flags. The daughter pages each contain an image of a Japanese municipal flag, accompanied by a description. However, none cite sources, and some of the descriptions are either dubious or potentially controversial. Please see Talk:List of Japanese municipal flags for more information, and help get these descriptions either properly sourced or, if that is not possible, removed. Thanks, Cnilep (talk) 23:45, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

See WT:Naming_conventions_(Korean)/Disputed_names#Change_to_the_naming_convention; someone has requested a new discussion on the use of East Sea versus Sea of Japan. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 07:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

This page could use MiszaBot for archiving. I am not 100% sure how to set it up but will have a go if there are no objections (or no more knowledgeable volunteers available). Ben MacDui 11:45, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Manually archiving things isn't too hard to do... This page isn't spectacularly active that it needs a bot. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 05:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

True, but then nobody is actually doing it. Please feel free. Ben MacDui 07:11, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Done. Archived all talk older than 2011, 2009 went to Archive 4, 2010 went to Archive 5. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 11:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

When I was archiving, I noticed the greeting's date (2007). If it was done by bot, the greeting would have been automatically archived with everything else, and if it were restored, it would be archived everytime the bot was run. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 11:07, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. I did notice that, but it could be put into a box at the top of the page or similar. Anyway - no need now. Ben MacDui 16:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline

Article previously nominated for deletion on two occasions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AList_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline

I appreciate the subtlties of coastline measurement but this page purports to rank countries by coastline length. However with no information on measurement basis or knowledge of what numbers actually include (e.g. are islands included/excluded for example) the resulting information has no credibility - at least as a ranking. A number of significant discrepencies become apparent if the CIA Fact Book data is checked against various national official sources e.g. Australia 59,736 (CIA: 25,760), United Kingdom 31,368 (CIA: 12,429), Italy 9,226 (CIA: 7,600) etc. I'm new to Wikipedia editing etc., so I leave it to those with more expertise to decide what, if anything should be done but at least as ranked data I don't see how this data has any credibility.

Ei4hq (talk) 14:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Coastline measurement is a nuisance. For example, Alaska may (or may not) have 1/2 of all coastline in the US. We got sick of arguing, so we put it on the shelf. The main thing is that each reference have a WP:RELY cite. After that, forget it. And if someone changes it with a reliable cite, let it stand. It is not worth arguing about. Coastlines can be measured minutely, inch by inch (not often done!  :), mile by mile (a bit gross, but easier), or whatever. There really is no ISO for measuring coastline as far as I know. Experience no help here I'm afraid other than to suggest to move on to other subtopics!  :) Student7 (talk) 14:24, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Should there be a geography project template on every mountain article?--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:46, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Good question. BTW this would include every river(let), lake, notable ponds, etc. I would think Project members would want to confine articles to gross features like Geography articles and maybe Alps, Himalayas, that sort of thing. Individual features seem beyond the reach of the project IMO. Maybe a subproject, if there was one. Student7 (talk) 13:43, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Everyone is invited to participate in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Geographic.org, a discussion about over 2,500 articles. Due to the unusual character and the potential impact of the discussion, I believe that more participation than usual would be beneficial to get a true sense of the community's opinion on this. Fram (talk) 08:28, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

I've recently been stub-sorting and found a batch of articles which an editor has lobbed into categories such as Category:Villages, Category:Cities, Category:Places, Category:Municipalities, to remove the {{uncategorised}} tag but without bothering to find categories subdivided by country etc.

It would be useful if these broad categories had large bold notices instructing editors NOT to place articles for individual settlements into these categories, but to use a geographical subdivision. I'm not sure on whose authority such notices could be added, but this project seems a good start as having "ownership" of those cats. Over to you. PamD (talk) 13:31, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Hello,

I am working with the Account Creation Improvement Project (my latest report is here). Now I need your help to find some easy things for newcomers to do.

To guide the new users into working on the articles, we have created a step-by-step process that starts right after the new user has provided a username and a password. Here is the first step. If you click on "geography", for instance, you go to a page where you are asked to state your skills. And based on your choice there, you go to a page that combines these two choices. Here is what it looks like if you choose copyediting.

Right now, that list of articles that needs copyediting in the field of geography, has been created manually by a rather small set of users. That is not a scalable solution. Especially considering that these articles could very well be edited by the time we have created all the lists.

That's why my question to you in WikiProject geography is if you could create four templates for each of the four skillsets: Copyediting, Research & Writing, Fact checking, and Organizing - and keep them updated? We could then transclude those templates in the account creation process.

This is probably one of the most efficient things you can do in this project. Yes, really! There are roughly 5-7000 new users - each day. Around 30% of them start to edit. So if only a sixth of them sees the geography templates, that's around 250 potential new editors in your field - each day. Possibly more. And they want and need something easy to do. Some of them will continue to edit if they think that the tasks are fun and they are welcomed into the project.

So, what do you say about those templates?

I will gladly answer any questions you may have about this question or the project. Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 16:38, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a very poor article with a well-deserved "worldwide" tag, on a subject surely of some importance to the project (Countryside etc redirect there). It gets around 1,000 views a day. Can't it be improved? Johnbod (talk) 15:08, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Discussions of interest to WikiProject North America is currently going on at Talk:Americas#City_proper POV and Talk:North America#Country Grouping/Mexico are currently going on. You are invited to participate. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 07:10, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, I don't know whether I'm posting this in the right place, as I'm a complete stranger to this project. Please don't hesitate to point me to a better suited page if you think this isn't the appropriate one for my concern :-). Short introduction: I'm from Switzerland and active mainly in the German-language Wikipedia where I sometimes try to improve geography-related articles, too. Now, when comparing articles about Swiss communities in the German Wikipedia and here, I notice an abundance of statistical data in the English Wikipedia, of demographics derived from statistical tables that often constitute nearly the whole article, which is in my view rather frustrating - if I want detailed demographical data, I don't need it in the form of nonpractical continuous text, but would rather consult the original tables. This approach, in my opinion, only masks stubs and isn't really meaningful. An especially absurd example is Kammersrohr, I think. This is a very small community of only 40 residents. It has a fairly interesting history, though. So, when I today expanded the article in the German Wikipedia, I focussed on Kammersrohr's history and the one notable building there, although not omitting basic statistical/demographical data. The article here in the English Wikipedia has nearly the exact same size in bytes, yet it's nothing but a tiring parade of near-nonsensical statistics... oh, it's certainly true, every bit of it, but... "There were 2 households that consist of only one person and 3 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 11 households that answered this question, 18.2% were households made up of just one person and there was one adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 3 married couples without children, 5 married couples with children"... and so on and so on, extremely interesting... no, it isn't, my good Wikipedians, it's a community of 40 persons and we don't need this detail here. That's not what I expect in a Wikipedia article. And the problem isn't limited to Switzerland - at least I know where to look when I wish to read something interesting about Swiss communities, but it's the same e.g. for the U.S.: articles like Limestone Township, Union County, Pennsylvania are just a frustrating read. In my opinion, such statistical-demographical amassments instead of writing an article should be discouraged, but instead, it seems they're still created en masse in the English Wikipedia. Well, that's my concern vented, for what it's worth, probably it will change nothing ;-) Gestumblindi (talk) 02:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Good points. IMHO we should be looking harder for geographic articles to translate from other languages. For example until yesterday we had nothing about Soviet and post-Soviet topographic maps even though those that have leaked into the public domain are the best online maps of many parts of the world, and there are several good articles about them in Russian Wikipedia to translate.

We still have far too many stub-quality geographic articles. Of course we hope someone will come along and correct this, but it can be a long wait! We depend on volunteers and I suppose it's part of the American national character to resist being organized into a cleanup squad as we pursue our individual interests. I worked substantially on articles for three towns in the county in Massachusetts where I came of age (I now live in California), but I never took on the task of writing about twenty or so other towns in the same county although some still haven't progressed beyond stubs. Given depopulating trends in many rural areas -- and we may have far more depopulated rural area on a per-capita basis than Switzerland -- many towns' articles probably will never amount to anything until we mount an organized effort.

I agree that a modest collection of statistics parlayed into a long-winded article is an annoyance. Perhaps this is a serious indictment of our education system! I think it's fair to mention that geography probably isn't taught as well or widely in the U.S. as in Europe. LADave (talk) 20:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Mass-method statistics do sound silly for a small place. Perhaps country subprojects can agree (more about this later) to eliminate census-type statistics for villages of a certain number. The caveat is that, for English Wikipedia, Projects, to say nothing of SubProjects are mostly dead and now being "rolled" up into a meaningful level. So no agreement reached here can be meaningful, unfortunately. Tiny villges can have a rich history in Europe. Or long, anyway! :) Usually only one or two people are editing U.S. small places and we can make up our own rules as we go. But they won't be consistent and they may contain excessive detail. Most of the ones I edit are indeed meaningless and uninteresting. But then, so are the places. So the article is not projecting an incorrect representation! Student7 (talk) 01:01, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

As far as specifics, it looks to me that the Swiss village is wrong in the English Wikipedia. It is both larger and perhaps therefore more interesting that the article states. For Limestone Township, the article cries out for information on where the inhabitants get their money. They are not farmers! So the article is clearly unfinished. Student7 (talk) 01:08, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Since I've done pretty much all the expansion on the articles about Swiss municipalities, here's my thoughts on the discussion. I would love to have articles that went into further detail on the history, buildings and about the town, but it's a question of time. Please, please feel free to expand with the sort of detail that Gestumblindi mentions.

The articles that I've expanded, even these small villages, are all municipalities. They are the smallest level of government in Switzerland. So even if they have a tiny population, they are different than villages or hamlets or even things like a census designated place (in the US).

I think the statistics reflect a better picture of who lives in municipality, where they work, where they come from, how they are educated and so on. Before I started expanding, some of the articles would say something like, "the majority of the population are farmers". This was given without any references and without telling me if this means 51% or 90% or whether it came from someone's opinion of the municipality. With the statistics, the specifics are there for anyone who is interested (like me).Tobyc75 (talk) 21:22, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Here the Statistical amassments discussion veered off into a new topic. I retroactively created a new section and moved the material into it.LADave (talk) 17:00, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I thought it would be helpful to go read examples of WP articles judged high-quality for places of low importance (presumably small). I couldn't find a workable way to find these articles, so I didn't get far with this. Can anyone give me some hints??? LADave (talk) 22:31, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The only method I can think of is to seek the assessment sections of projects, (e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Scottish Islands/Assessment), click on the number on the table such as that for GA/Mid Importance (in this case "11"), which takes you to a toolserver list here. There is possibly not much to interest you here but Barra Head and Papa Stour are possibilities. It is a cumbersome way to proceed but it's the best I can offer. See also Shapinsay. Ben MacDui 08:03, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Barra Head, Papa Stour and Shapinsay are fine articles about isolated places with small populations but large histories that the intrepid traveler might want to put on an itinerary. Small towns in the U.S. present a different set of issues and you could probably say this for the rest of the Americas, Australia and New Zealand too. Prehistories of (usually) low density settlement by aboriginals ended just within the past few centuries through displacement by settlers from Europe, Asia and even Africa. Aboriginals' prehistories probably were notable but they were ignored and lost. Usually only a paragraph or two can reasonably be written about prehistory without commiting the original research sin.

Small towns aren't necessarily remote or unfamiliar. They are usually served by highways, scheduled boats, small airports or other modern infrastructure. They were settled and usually continue to exist for explicit reasons: economic, political (state capital or county seat), cultural (ethnic or religious enclave) or they may be products of segregation by race, income, class or occupation. Whatever notability these places have usually lies in these reasons and I think WP articles often fail to explore this.

Perhaps what we need is a way to take articles in any WP category and sort them into the matrix of importance x quality scores. LADave (talk) 13:15, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi guys, I created the following articles some time ago, all of which are not properly referenced. I took my information from the Air Panama route map,[1] but obviously this is not sufficient. So, who can help me with this matter?

• Corazon de Jesus (island)
• El Real
• Isla San José (Panama)
• Piña, Darién
• Rio Sidra
• Sambú
• Tupile (town)

Many thanks! --AdAstra reloaded (talk) 13:10, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Populated place -- Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 11:40, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I created this cat a year or so ago, and it really hasn't gained much traction, and I've been stuck on other topics where I'm not filling it. Do folks see a utility for thise cat, and/or have ideas on what articles should fill it? MatthewVanitas (talk) 17:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

This [2] may be of interest.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:17, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

...on Talk:Island#Reverted edits Beyond My Ken (talk) 00:22, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm writing a blog post about what makes a good local article (or set of articles) on Wikipedia - in other words articles about a specific place, such as a town or village, and its features, people, etc.

What do you think we currently do well, or badly, in that regard. What do you, or would you, like to see, in such articles? What are the best examples?

Please feel free to prior discussion, if you know of any. Cheers, Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have an authoritative source as to if the estuary is included in the length of a river? If we count the pre-estury length then the Severn is longer than the Shannon, if you add in the estuary then the Shannon is longer. The Britannica avoids the problem by listing river and estuary length and says it is the longest river in Ireland, thus avoiding the issue of which is the longer in the British Isles. If it is an open question then should both lengths be given in the lede? I'm trying to get what the formal geography position is on the subject to avoid the inevitable political controversies --Snowded ^TALK 12:31, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

There is an RFC on the addition of identifier links to citations by bots. Please comment. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:57, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have any thoughts about the use of "geobox|river" on straits? For example, on East River it ends up with it having a "source" and a "mouth", which doesn't seem supported by sources. 84.203.32.59 (talk) 23:22, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a poll taking place here on whether or not to extend the ArbCombinding resolution, which says there may be no page move discussions for Ireland, Republic of Ireland or Ireland (disambiguation), for a further two years. Fmph (talk) 20:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I created the template {{Notice-nc-geo}} to place on talk pages of applicable articles. It has three use cases, of which two are live (see Talk:Argentina and Talk:People's Republic of China) - still haven't seen one needing the other case.

Thing is, I have done a small amount of parent articles which are auto-included into Category:Articles to whom geographic naming conventions apply, but I know there are child articles, and so on. So calling for help...--Cerejota (talk) 01:49, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Surfing through random articles inevitably lands one on countless geographical stubs for that amount to little more than "[Name] is a [thing] in [place]", and I've begun to get fairly frustrated at the number of useless, empty-content articles. Now coming from a small town, I can understand having an article for every populated area no matter how unimportant it may be to the world at large. But the criteria for other geographical articles seems to just be that it has to have a name. Does simply being a mountain in Austria, lake in Switzerland, or waterfall in the Philippines really warrant itself an article? Should a landform with potentially no real impact on human history have an article if it's just big enough? Hell, is size even important? There doesn't seem to be any standard of "mountains/waterfalls must be x feet tall to be notable" or anything. Where do you guys draw your limits?--Remurmur (talk) 01:37, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I can't speak for the project here, as I'm mainly active in the German-language Wikipedia and only knowledgeable regarding notability guidelines over there, but maybe it's of some interest nonetheless: In de.wikipedia.org, we have notability guidelines for geographic objects, but they are very broad. Basically, every named geographical object is notable (so you can't write an article about "Unnamed knoll at <location>"), but you must be able to source the name with literature or a map. Very small articles like your examples aren't forbidden but somehow frowned upon. It's generally expected that you have literature to write a little bit more about an object than the naked basic data. And sometimes you can find a surprising amount of history for a very small object... I once wrote the article de:Bellacherweiher about a really small and unimpressive pond, about which, however, I found quite a bit of local history literature (There's also an article in the English Wikipedia, Bellacher Weiher, much smaller). By the way, of your examples, the mountain in Bavaria (Germany, not Austria), Dreitannenriegel, has a somewhat larger article in the German Wikipedia, which however is a poor example (unsourced). Still, often Wikipedias in other languages may contain material for expanding geography stubs. Gestumblindi (talk) 03:26, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Well then, you can both read Wikipedia:Notability (geography), which is not "official", but reflects typical AFD outcomes. Johnbod (talk) 03:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

There's a proposal to adjust one of the main section titles used in "Wikipedia's contents", which will affect the order in which the section titles are presented. See Portal talk:Contents#Proposal for main section title adjustment. The Transhumanist 02:12, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

After a two-year ban imposed by Arbcom, a page move discussion for the Republic of Ireland can be entertained.

• (Discuss)–Republic of Ireland →Ireland (republic)Kauffner (talk) 08:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at WP:Disambiguation about creating disambiguation pages for demonyms such as Sri Lankan and Aragonese, replacing redirects to Sri Lanka, etc. Please add any comments there. Certes (talk) 13:11, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, folks, scratch my arse--the article is up for deletion, and I think that a. geographic places have automatic notability and b. this qualifies as one. Your advice is appreciated. Drmies (talk) 02:42, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Lists of things named after places is a new article – a list of lists. Work on it! Michael Hardy (talk) 18:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Recently, the article History of Pottery in the Southern Levant was moved to History of Pottery in Palestine. It had been under the title History of Pottery in the Southern Levant for around 5 years, and it had been my understanding that this was in order to keep the article NPOV. I am currently in a dispute with the editor who moved the page on the article talk page and was wondering if anyone would be able to assist regarding the proper naming of the article. Thanks Drsmoo (talk) 00:47, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello, is it fair to say that this term, Boulder clay, is obsolete? See articles such as clay, till (espec.), and soil. I was going to rewrite the current article until I noticed it was an orphan based solely of an early 20th c. open content encyclopaedia. Now, when I search boulder clay on the internet there are *some relevant* hits, so I will probably just leave it for an expert but will just ask in case we've any experts floating about here... ~ R.T.G 13:23, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The Sinai_Peninsula peninsula article currently only covers the political history and current tourism industry of the region. If would really benefit from having its geographical details expanded. Manning (talk) 03:55, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion taking place at WT:HWY regarding the potential use of coordinates in highway articles. Your input is welcomed. --Rschen7754 01:39, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

I have proposed that we delete {{geobox}}. That may effect articles curated by this project. You are invited to particiapte in the Geobox deletion dicussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:04, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

There's an RFC at Talk:South Asia#Merging "Indian subcontinent" here which needs comments on the geography related reasons being discussed there. Thanks. --lTopGunl (talk) 02:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

view , just clicks away — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.161.90.114 (talk) 18:23, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

The Tag & Assess Drive 2012 has been devised for pending backlog in WP India to achieve

• Quality assessments for unassessed WP India articles.
• Adding importance missed during previous assessment.
• Bringing more articles into the scope of the project and subject them to assessment.

So far 8706 assessments (including quality and importance) have been performed in a span of 10 days. The drive is still open and we encourage participants from WP Geography to enroll themselves. WP Geography is one of the daughter projects having huge assessement backlog. The participation would be very much appreciated - thanks in advance.
AshLin (talk) and ssriram_mt (talk).

Template:Satop has been nominated for deletion. Among other things, Template:Satop links an article to its relevant outline, index, and portals. You may wish to comment at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page.  Buaidh  01:54, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

There is a discussion for the category: Bodies of water of the Caribbean, that could do with your input. Thanks Brad7777 (talk) 23:33, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

Template:River Geography has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.131.160 (talk) 05:22, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Marine terrace , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. — Foldo Squirrel ^(nuts?) 19:45, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

A requested move survey has been started (by Marcus Qwertyus (talk)) at Talk:Burma, which proposes to move:

• Burma → Myanmar

Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. — P.T. Aufrette (talk) 23:21, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

FYI given the prior section: an article that you may have been involved in editing, Lake Michigan-Huron , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:49, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps it can be improved along the lines of Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc? Tijfo098 (talk) 03:34, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Portal:Geography is now up for portal peer review, the review page is at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Geography/archive1. I've put a bit of effort into this as part of a featured portal drive related to portals linked from the top-right corner of the Main Page, and feedback would be appreciated prior to featured portal candidacy. Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 21:00, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The article has been requested to be renamed, see talk:Korean Peninsula#Requested move. Oda Mari (talk) 08:56, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Hopefully some geographers could assist with a scholarly perspective?

• CFD discussion

Ta.--Mais oui! (talk) 04:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

More place name categories are being proposed for deletion here and here and here and here and here that could benefit from some expertise Ephebi (talk) 15:20, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Go to this review website!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.42.83.153 (talk) 18:49, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Place names of Kent origin in the United States is being considered for deletion as a trivial intersect of same name category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Further opinions would be welcome at Talk:Geography of Taiwan#Copy of Prehistory section of the History article. Kanguole 14:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

category:People of pre-statehood West Virginia is being considered for merger.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:29, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Peer review has been requested and reviews will be appreciated for the article Globalization. Meclee (talk) 14:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

I have suggested the the page for Prypiat (in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone) be moved to Pripyat.

Though normally I would prefer place-names use Ukrainian spellings and transliteration, for Pripyat I think that WP:COMMONNAME supercedes in this particular case. The discussion is here:

Talk:Prypiat#RFM to Pripyat (with better justification & references) --Cooper⁴²(Talk)(Contr) 19:55, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

An article relating to this project Blank map, has been nominated for deletion see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blank map. Regards ★☆ DUCKISPEANUTBUTTER☆★ 07:35, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

{{PA-geo-stub}} has been nominated for deletion. -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 01:01, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Geography of Niger, which is within this project's scope, has been selected to become a Today's Article for Improvement. The article is currently in the TAFI Holding Area, where comments are welcome about ideas to improve it. After the article is moved from the holding area to the TAFI schedule, it will appear on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Today's Article for Improvement" section for one week. Everyone is invited to participate in the discussion and encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thank you, TheOriginalSoni (talk) 07:45, 27 January 2013 (UTC) (From the TAFI team)

• Geography

I've nominated Portal:Geography for featured portal candidacy, discussion is at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Geography. Thank you for your time, — Cirt (talk) 21:25, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

The usage of Ring of Fire is under discussion, see talk:Ring of Fire (song) -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 01:09, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

This is a courtesy note to inform the participants of this WikiProject of a discussion currently taking place at Talk:List of cities and towns in Russia by population. A suggestion has been made to remove the entities with the population of fewer than 100,000 from the list and to rename the article. Additionally, it was proposed to replace the reference (currently the official Census results) with an English-language list hosted on the http://citypopulation.de website (a discussion thread regarding the merits of that source is open at WP:RS/N#City Population). Additional input would be welcome.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 11, 2013; 15:29 (UTC)

I've opened an AfD here on this page, as I'm looking for opinion on whether it is worth keeping geographical stubs with minimal (and probably erroneous) detail. There are a whole swathe of them I came across, created by a hit-and-run editor, and I'm wondering if it's even worth trying to salvage anything from them. Moonraker12 (talk) 15:13, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The article Tripura, which is a state of India, is a featured article candidate. The FAC is here. I am not sure if this talk page is an appropriate place to notify this, as the article is not solely on geography, but still... All comments are welcome. Thanks.--Dwaipayan (talk) 03:12, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Whys is it mentioned on this page that the US is the second largest country in the Americas. This page is about the largest countries. It is the only time it is mentioned that a country is second largest in a given particular land mass. It is an unnecessary statement.

≈≈≈≈confused — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.255.245.34 (talk) 03:12, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Which article are you referring to? PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 12:14, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_May_30#.22in.22_Vancouver_Island_categories.Skookum1 (talk) 04:58, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

The usage of "America" is up for discussion, see talk:America -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:05, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Archipelago, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by Theo's Little Bot at 07:18, 5 July 2013 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Mali, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 03:47, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

An issue concerning the categorization ofgulfs and bays has come up, see the renaming discussion for Category:Gulfs of Mexico at WP:CFDALL -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 00:58, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

As discussed at Talk:Central station, the multi-RM for 121 stations is at Talk:Kaiserslautern Central Station. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:21, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Gia Bình District#RfC: Should remaining Category:Districts of Vietnam titles have Vietnamese alphabet spellings? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:30, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_27 where several regional templates are up for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:37, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

also Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_26 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:41, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

also Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_29 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 10:23, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

also Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_30 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 15:03, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2013 August 31 -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 00:47, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sophie Louise Bay is about a newly-named bay in the Canadian arctic. It clearly cannot stand at present, as OR with no independent source, but interesting questions arise about what sort of sources might be acceptable for notability, and in particular what it takes to make a new name "official". Comments welcome. JohnCD (talk) 22:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Hundred (word) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been proposed to be merged into 100 (number) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), see talk:100 (number) for the discussion; This may be of interest to you, as being a word article, it could be expanded to cover the word hundred (county division) as part of its epistemological meaning, if it is not merged. -- 65.94.78.70 (talk) 05:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, i have added multiple references to the article for its Proof's for it's origin in Sundaramala in Tamil Nadu.

1: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/biodiversity/documents/rivers.htm 2: http://www.indiawaterportal.org/sites/indiawaterportal.org/files/Joseph%20M.L.pdf 3: http://www.irenees.net/fr/fiches/analyse/fiche-analyse-633.html

But the article may need more source for the same. Please assist me in finding them.Pearll's Sun^TALK 16:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

This introductory page to this Project is hardly the best place to give footnote style guidance (or policy) for infoboxes. In particular I am wondering about settlements, which often have higher level political entities listed in their footnote. E.g., the settlement infobox has a line for the flag (which is simply and purely a political symbol) of the settlement -- but where or what is geographical connection between the higher levels of government? Moreover, how does adding flagcons to the settlement infobox comport with the guidance that the WP:IBX#Purpose is to summarize key facts in the article in which it appears.? (Consider -- the settlement may have a flag, and then the county or parish will have a flag, and then the state or province will have a flag, and then the country.) With these thoughts in mind, I propose that this single Project page footnote be deleted and appropriate discussion be undertaken on the template talk pages. --S. Rich (talk) 00:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

• There are literally thousands of GEO articles that have flag icons in them. As has been discussed, there initially was a bug in the settlement template that made use of such icons problematic - documentation of the template was drawn to reflect that known problem. That's well behind us now. Debating the flag icon issue is best not put to each template, because that decentralizes the discussion and begs the creation of "settlement with flags" and "settlement without flags" templates - so everyone can have what they want. The more prolific GEO editors should comment here. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:52, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
  • I see three issues/concerns: 1. Is the Geo project page the appropriate place to provide (or discuss) WP:MOS guidance? IMHO, no, such guidance (and discussion) should take place in MOS forums. Moreover, it seems that of the 7 infoboxes listed (on the Project page), only Islands and Settlements have lines for political divisions. (Is is a geographic concern that a crater or lake have a flag icon associated with its' infobox?) 2. Along the same lines, settlements are not strictly a geographic topic. Such articles (and infoboxes) come within the purview or interest of other projects (for example Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities). Simply because thousands of GEO articles have flagicons in them does not mean the WP:GEO is the group that determines what template guidelines should be. (It's a sort of Argumentum ad populum justification.) With these two considerations in mind, my third point/issue/concern is this: 3. The discussion regarding the issue of flagcons in infoboxes as a matter of style. Do they add to clutter or do they assist the reader? As this is the concern, and as this concern goes beyond the GEO community, the discussion should take place on the settlement template talk and/or MOS:FLAG talk pages. --S. Rich (talk) 01:20, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The footnote was added in June 2011 by Carlossuarez, [3]. I removed this yesterday with an edit summary of "Removed note that has no talk page discussion to back it up and most of the infobox specifically say not to see flagicons". I was reverted and on my talk page was told that there was discussion here, but until this discussion was started here there had been no discussion of flagicons in infoboxes at WP:GEOGRAPHY. Since there was no discussion and hence no consensus, it simply looks like it was Carlossuarez's opinion. It is hard to say the note is true when only one of the infoboxes, islands, talks about using flagicons and two other ones, settlement and lake, specifically say not to use flagicons.Aspects (talk) 01:59, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

If you think that it's solely my opinion, why are there thousands of articles never touched by me sporting flags. What I do see is that you ripped the flag icons out of Detroit then used their absence to support your position that they ought not be there - all rather surreptitiously. This has been discussed off and on at the settlement template (the venue is now changed, but the topic's the same). See Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 19 and earlier Template talk:Infobox settlement/Archive 16, where the removal of the prohibition was not objected to - you should have commented there, rather than impose your will against the established precedent. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 03:48, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll say it again -- the question of putting flagcons in article space is a WP:MOS issue. Using a project page footnote to justify MOS edits is not a good practice. The guidance should be clarified on the template and/or MOS talk pages, not here. Archive 16 had no real discussion (back in 2009) and Archive 19 had no real decision, so I'm renewing the discussion with a request that we take it to the proper page: Template talk. (Also, thousands of WP pages with poor editing does not justify more.)--S. Rich (talk) 04:34, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

(In Reply to Carlossuarez46) I said "...it simply looks like it was Carlossuarez's opinion." because there was no discussion here at WP:GEOGRAPHY about flagicons in infoboxes to back up the note's addition and since there is no one else to back up the note, it makes it look like it is simply your opinion. As for Template:Infobox settlement, the documentation has said for three years not to use flagicons, clearly that is the established precedent, otherwise it would have changed after the two discussions you mentioned where there was objection to the removal and thus it was not done.

I also suggest taking it to the template talk page like I suggested to Carlossuarez numerous times, so we could see if there was a consensus for the removal of sentences about not using flagicons. Aspects (talk) 05:15, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I support Carlossuarez46's position. MOS is a guideline, not a policy and the endless discussions on its sub-pages are tedious enough there - I see no need to discuss them here as well. Ben MacDui 10:08, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I also support Carlossuarez46's position whole heartedly. There is no consensus over not using flags in infoboxes and its hardly as if there is flag clutter. Look around on wikipedia and you'll see them everywhere. Discussing this again would be a complete waste of time as you'll always have people opposed to them. I say the best thing would be to permit them and have a user preference to suppress the appearing of flag icons for those who don't want to see them. Just let him get on with his important work.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:17, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm with Carlos on this one. Shahid • ^Talk2me 10:37, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Is Carlos saying that the Geography Project intro page is the place where we publish MOS guidelines? I think not. MOS pages are the place for that. It makes no difference to me whether flagicons are on the templates or not -- but let us discuss those guidelines on the MOS talkpages, not here. Then, when we reach consensus over this important issue, we put the guideline on the MOS page. So I propose that we end this page's discussion – and take it up/continue it on the Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Icons talk page. I provide a link to that page because it has the most recent (e.g., current) discussion. (BTW: I did a series of "random article" clicks until I was able to look at 10 different settlement articles. Only one of the ten had flags.) --S. Rich (talk) 04:14, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Projects are free to establish guidelines different from or addiitonal to the general as befits articles within their scope. If we want to discuss whether the general guideline ought change, let's mosey on over to where this discussion's initiator has invited further discussion. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:01, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• (Archive re-opened to set the record straight.) Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope." (As noted in the section below, a discussion is underway to determine if the particular template (e.g., settlements) guidelines should be changed.)--S. Rich (talk) 20:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I only became aware of this discussion after an editor made a change on an unrelated page. The editor then closed this discussion AFTER I enquired as to why he closed it. I think that’s a little unfair, particularly as the editor is the one pushing for the change. I’d like to comment later tonight (in about 12 hours). You can't force consensus - particularly when it seems you are trying to use this to force a change to another page. --Merbabu (talk) 00:42, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Settlement template talk page for further discussion of the above

Please see Template_talk:Infobox_settlement#flagcons_in_settlement_infoboxes--S. Rich (talk) 01:33, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Footnote on Project landing page

I submit that the footnote (about templates) on the Project page is improper. WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is a Policy that says that Project participants cannot override WP:POLICY or GUIDANCE. This footnote has been cited as a basis to remove flagcons from infoboxes. As it stands, the settlement infobox template has an admonition to keep Flagcons out. Also, MOS:FLAG says don't put flagcons in info boxes. (There is a discussion underway regarding a possible change to the settlement infobox comments.) Could an actual Project volunteer please remove the footnote please? Thank you.--S. Rich (talk) 23:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

No one has; and as we discussed (yet again) on the talk page of {{infobox settlement}} and settled that national flags are permitted; no one should. And as has been asked over and over, no one anywhere could demonstrate that there was ever consensus on the prohibition in the first instance. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 03:39, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Adding a footnote to the Project page, which clearly violates WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, is improper. There's been lots of talk on the MOS and template talk pages, which are the proper locations. Putting in a unilateral note (which was done without any discussion, let alone discussion by Project members) that MOS does not apply can only lead to individual Projects adding their own footnotes. Suppose WP:CITIES added a footnote to their page saying they could ignore MOS guidelines or seek to impose more stringent guidelines? With the LOCALCONSENSUS guideline in mind, I deleted the footnote, only to have someone else come in and say we should discuss. Again, I say where should such discussions take place? Clearly on the MOS and/or template pages. But LOCALCONSENSUS mandates that Project members seek to convince the larger WP community to make changes, not to add supposed MOS exemptions on their own particular pages. --S. Rich (talk) 20:42, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

You are being disruptive. You started a discussion above - unilaterally; when it was clear that your view was not the consensus one, you moved the discussion elsewhere - unilaterally. You are just forum shopping. That is not of any value to the encyclopedia. It's clear that consensus permits flags in infobox settlement as you recognized and there is no consensus to permit or prohibit subnational flags either. Since infobox settlement is shared with WP:CITIES, their members had just as much say so as anyone else. Indeed, the template does not force flag usage - if an individual editor chooses not to (just as an individual chooses not to use wikimarkup language vs. html or non-Latin characters vs. their unicode equivalents), so what? you gonna sue them, block them? Why don't you focus on building an encyclopedia rather than disrupting the building of this one?? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 21:58, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Carlos. Mindless discussion over flags. Do something useful with your time instead. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:40, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

The two issues under discussion are:

As user Merbabu wants to make further comment, I suggest that two issues are presented:

• Issue One: "Should FLAGCONs be permitted in infoboxes?" -- I submit that an earlier editor's suggestion that "If we want to discuss whether the general guideline ought change, let's mosey on over to where this discussion's initiator has invited further discussion." was well stated. In fact, that suggestion was acted upon and a discussion was initiated on the Settlement Infobox template discussion page. To restate, this talk page is not the proper forum for the topic -- the suggestion was made to discuss the issue on another talk page and the discussion here was closed.
• Issue Two -- which stems from Issue One: "Are Project pages the proper forum to discuss MOS changes?" I submit that WP:LOCALCONSENSUS says no. Project members are encouraged to convince the larger community one way or the other regarding the merits of their suggestions, but they are not free to establish (or even describe) MOS or exceptions to MOS.

With these two issues so stated, I submit it is appropriate to close this discussion.--S. Rich (talk) 07:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

If this means that you are going to take the discussion somewhere else, I think most people here will be grateful. The few of us that are left here are mostly interested in writing geographical content, rather than debating this week's politically correct position. The current outbreak of MOS warriors attempting to impose their guidelines on all and sundry - most of whom have very little interest in this kind of bureaucracy and instruction creep - is in my view simply disruptive nonsense. See e.g. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation. When you and the three other people who have the time and interest in this kind of thing have reached "consensus" perhaps you could tell us so that we can all be aware of what we are choosing to ignore? Ben MacDui 09:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Completely agree with Ben. Its quite pathetic to continue to see this disruptive nonsense. It does not matter period. Flags are frickin trivial little things and not worthy of endless discussions or "policies". I proposed to delete flag icons from wikipedia previously and they got a resounding speedy keep. If they are not permitted or disliked they'd have been deleted. Merbabu you should know better than this, its disappointing to see you wasting your time. Again I suggest a wiki preference to suppress flag icons for those who dislike them rather than engaging in pretentious bureacracy, attempting to impose rules. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi all,

I asked a question over at the help desk regarding the use of a government produced .kmz file as a reference. I'll copy and paste my original question and some of my other thoughts here:
Hi there,

I'm trying to reference some legal suvey data - specifically a pipeline right of way for the Ibex Valley article. I can see where it is using the Canada Land Survey System overlay (.kmz) in Google Earth. I got the kmz file from the CLSS website. Is this a referencable source? I can't find anything decent that is on their website (I imagine because they have this overlay, but I don't really know).

Its a bit convoluted, (i.e. you have to have Google Earth which is free and then you have to download the kmz file, which is also free and public information as it is on the government website) but it all seems like public info from a reputable source to me. Any advice? Thanks --JonGDixon (talk) 00:13, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure if anyone else is interested, but I did find this: Wikipedia:Using maps and similar sources in wikipedia articles. I think that for this application, the NLSS maps are acceptable for showing the pipeline right of way as there is no interpetation of the data, even though it is a primary source. That being said, I will try to find some more references, as the article also notes that it is preferable to reference more than just a map. Note that I'm using the overlay .kmz file as a map - this may or may not be a correct assumption though. Playing devil's advocate in my head, I can argue it both ways. Nothing's ever easy I suppose. Colin, thanks for your help, this exercise has helped me to better understand wikipedia's policies about sources--JonGDixon (talk) 15:51, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Note on the above - so I just revisted the above link and discovered that it is indeed an essay and not a policy (although it is in the See Also section of Wikipedia:No original research, which is a policy). Sorry for the confusion and the edit spamming. I am going to try the geography project, to see if they have any thoughts about it. Again, thanks for the help. If it isn't already obvious, I'm pretty new here and still learning the ropes. Thanks for the help and patience. --JonGDixon (talk) 16:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't added discussion by others, because frankly I'm not sure what the rules are about that and I don't want to break any (all of it was helpful and useful though, there hasn't been any arguments or anything of the sort). Regardless, I'd like to hear if any of you have thought about/come to a decision about this topic.

I made a push, but the article about China's geography still need a lot of improvement ! anyone interested ? Yug (talk) 09:41, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Will someone take a look at the article on Subcontinent? Too funny to be real. The way it's going, everything landmass is going to end as a subcontinent. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 11:30, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

In the article List of countries by length of coastline, unit of coastal length data in the list using World Resource Institute's data is shown to be square kilometers, while it is mentioned as kilometers on the webpage mentioned in the reference. I tried to discuss this on article's talk page but it seemed to be not much active. Alok Bansal (talk) 18:14, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:HighBeam describes a limited opportunity for Wikipedia editors to have access to HighBeam Research.
—Wavelength (talk) 17:57, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

List of the most common U.S. place names is in need of an overhaul, but before I begin that, I would like some opinions on:

1. What should count as a US place name (for instance, should a census-designated place count?)
2. What resource(s) would be best to get this information

The list gets around 4,500 pageviews per month, so I think it's worth the effort, but I want to get it right. --JaGa^talk 17:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The present version appears to me to be satisfactory, and not in need of an overhaul. What deficiencies do you notice, and what needs to be overhauled?

—Wavelength (talk) 18:41, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Check out the talk page. The article seems to exclude many place names. --JaGa^talk 16:33, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

As of now Wikipedia:Notability (geography) is an essay. Unlike the previous failed proposal, Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations), it looks like a reasonable starting point. I would like to invite you to Wikipedia talk:Notability (geography) page to make it into a solid Guideline Proposal. Staszek Lem (talk) 16:56, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

(Originally asked at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Order of sections; advised to move here.)

Hi, in articles about geographical or political regions (e.g. islands, countries, states) are there any guidelines about the order in which standard sections (e.g. "History", "Geography", "Economy" etc.) should appear? 86.160.84.125 (talk) 02:47, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

I am not aware of any formal guidelines. For island articles I usually use the following section ordering:

• Lead
• Geology/Geography/Geomorphology
• Etymology
• Prehistory/Archaeology
• History
• Economy
  • including Transport, lighthouses and sometimes shipwrecks
• Religion and religious history
• Media/Arts
• Wildlife
• Prominent residents or natives.

This usually works although some GA reviewers have their own ideas - which makes consistency across the project hard to achieve. Ben MacDui 09:46, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. BTW, looks like impressive work that you guys are doing over at that project... 86.160.213.189 (talk) 13:57, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Hello. Over on Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded/Geography there are a few Geography articles that are lacking an assessment, per the icon. Please take a look if you have an interest. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:53, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the update. For your convenience, here's a list of the remaining unassessed articles:

Regards, RJH (talk) 01:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I've been involved in some editing around subregional classification of Afghanistan; according to the main sources I've found, Afghanistan is in South Asia, but many others claim it's in the middle east or western asia or central asia, and there are sources to be found that defend all of these points.

I don't want to rehash the Afghanistan discussion here but rather ask a broader question - is there any consensus POV on how subregions are used in geography articles? I think which continent a country is in is usually pretty clear, but subregions can differ widely depending on the system and the particular POV desired (are you talking geographical, political affiliation, economic integration, etc?). When I look at how countries are classified according to sub-region, there is huge variation, and the same country might be described in half a dozen different ways across many articles - this seems especially true of countries in the middle east/south asia/western asia/etc.

Thus, I'm wondering if a standard could be found, by which wikipedia always uses source 'X' to determine geographic sub-regions (especially as listed in info boxes and article leads); then each country article could have a separate section that details all of the *other* subregions that various people have placed it in over time. This might avoid a number of arguments, if there was just one source that we just decided on as a default. Personally, my vote would be for the UN statistical geographical regions. --KarlB (talk) 21:33, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

• Afghanistan is often categorized differently for different purposes and at different times in its history. Various cultural ties to the middle east (religion, recent events) are undeniable. Similarly in the 17th-19th centuries, Afghanistan was often considered (in British sources at least) part of the Indian sub-Continent as a place that was (from their perspective, part of their Empire, and) the site of proxy war between Britain and Russia. Earlier, kings of Afghan origin sat on the Indian throne (the Mughal Empire). And, certainly from a climatic and physical geographic perspective Afghanistan is Central Asian. Also, in the times of the Khan conquerors (from Central Asia, Afghanistan was routinely part of the drama). So the answer to your question is not easy and dependent on context and time. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:25, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Hi; yes of course I appreciate that what part of the world does Afghanistan belong to is complex; however my question was more whether Wikipedia could have a standard for how countries are listed, in their lead paragraph and in various categorization schemes (for example, the infobox for country). We can't hope to embed the complexity you described above, but we shouldn't just let each country article choose an arbitrary standard either; selecting, then sticking to a standard, would prevent tons of edit wars, while allowing people to describe the history as you note above in a different section of the article. --KarlB (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
  • see here for example:
    • Geography_of_Afghanistan: Afghanistan is a landlocked nation located in the heart of Asia between West Asia (Middle East) and Central Asia.
    • Afghanistan: A landlocked mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest, Afghanistan is described as being located within South Asia[8][45][46] or Central Asia.[9] It is part of the Greater Middle East Muslim world...
    • Afghanistan: Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming part of South Asia, Central Asia, and Greater Middle East[8][9], it is also considered to be part of a broader West Asia.
  • Middle_East Afghanistan is often considered Central Asian[22][23]

If you look at the edit histories of these articles, and others, there is a frequent back and forth as people try to prioritize one 'subregional' classification or another. This is why I'm wondering if we can just come up with some guidance, for example, something like the following:

In info boxes in Geography of X and other articles, the subregional classification devised by the UN will be listed. In other sections where geography is mentioned, the various, well-sourced sub-regions a country has been placed in will be listed, in alphabetic order.

• • With guidance such as this, there would be a clear line for editors to follow. Any thoughts? Again, this problem is not specific to Afghanistan, you can see similar things with Iran, Turkey, etc.--KarlB (talk) 14:40, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

If there's substantial difference of opinion between reliable sources, I think this fact should be noted in the body of the article.—Stepheng3 (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I completely agree. However, from looking at the sources, it's not really a question of disagreement, but rather of different categorization systems - the UN classifies things this way, the Canadian census classifies them another way, the World Bank classifies them a third way. I haven't found many sources that say "Iran is *not* in the middle east" or "Iran is in West asia, not south-west asia" - it's much more frequent that a source just has it's own way of categorizing. I think it is useful to have these different categorizations in the article, but should they show up in the lead, and should they show up in the info box (in the case of Geography of Afghanistan that would suggest the subregion should be listed as "South Asia, West Asia, Central Asia, Greater Middle East"--KarlB (talk) 17:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi WikiProject Geography Members, A few of us are trying to get a WikiProject Globalization up and running. Members of this project would work together to improve the quality of articles on Wikipedia on Globalization, global issues and related topics. If you're interested in globalization, please come by and check out our proposal. We'd appreciate any feedback about our ideas, and of course your support if you were interested in lending it. Thanks, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 11:22, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Related - The article Globalization has undergone major re-structuring. WikiProject Geography members are invited to review and comment on the article and add relevant missing information or sections in which your project may have an interest. Also, you may be interested in reviewing the updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Globalization proposal for a new WikiProject. Regards, Meclee (talk) 14:44, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Globalization is a new project to improve Wikipedia's coverage of aspects of Globalization and the organization of information and articles on this topic. This page and its subpages contain their suggestions and various resources; it is hoped that this project will help to focus the efforts of other Wikipedians interested in the topic. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. Meclee (talk) 18:42, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographical features): the discussion to make it into a guideline is rekindled. Please joinStaszek Lem (talk) 16:07, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

It seems that about a third of the pages listed as 'featured articles' are not - including Johannasberg, Bangalore, Bangladesh, Malwa, Marshall, Texas, Moorgate, Mount Pinatubo, and Mount Rushmore. Some of these were delisted as FAs seven years ago or more - is the project page just very, very out of date or am I missing something? Span (talk) 10:32, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Lake Michigan–Huron is little different from many obscure geographic entities which have their own articles, and yet has been repeatedly deleted over the past few days without RfD discussion. Several commenters have explicitly said they're upset with it because it's not what they learned in school, and opposing editors have presented such rationals as it doesn't exist, the sources don't exist, the sources don't say what they say, or that it's FRINGE since it's just hydrology (which is therefore a pseudoscience?). Comments from editors actually conversant in geography would be welcome. — kwami (talk) 02:42, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The article has not been deleted (one of Kwami many disembling statements lately), it's merely been moved to a section of Great Lakes, specifically, Great Lakes#Lake Michigan-Huron. And none of the commenters have made anything like the statement that they objected to a separate article because it "wasn't what they learned in school" (another bit of dissembling from Kwami), what they have said is that every source provided by Kwami has said that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron can be considered to be a single lake hydrologically. Not a single source has said that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are not separate lakes. Kwami seems determined to push an extremely WP:FRINGEy viewpoint that there is no Lake Michigan and there is no Lake Huron, there is only Lake Michigan-Huron. Unfortunately, he's not been able to provide a single source which supports this.

Editors should read this AN/I thread and this section of the "Great Lakes" article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:20, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, a lot has happened and been discussed at those 3 places and it is not as Kwami described. North8000 (talk) 09:03, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

A pair of neighboring lakes that are shown as two lakes on every map in the world are connected by a strait that flows one way sometimes and the other way other times. The elevation of the water is the same in both lakes. In hydrology, the two lakes may be treated as one lake. In geography however, the two lakes remain what they are: separate bodies of water. Binksternet (talk) 11:48, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I can add little to the specifics of the discussion and can only add the example of Loch of Stenness, which bears a similar relationship to the adjacent Loch of Harray, both of which are always treated separately in my experience. Ben MacDui 18:39, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

It would help if someone could add the geographical argument for separate lakes to Lake Michigan–Huron, with reliable sources. The discussion on that page is unbalanced. RockMagnetist (talk) 20:02, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Discussion is scattered into at least 7 different places

The discussion on this is scattered into about 7 different places. In (roughly) descending order of amount of material they are:

1. WP:ANI#User Kwamikagami reported - warring to remove citation-needed tags on assertions that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are not lakes
2. Talk:Lake Michigan–Huron
3. Talk:Great Lakes
4. User_talk:kwamikagami
5. User_talk:North8000
6. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology
7. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Geography

So each of these locations is MISSING least 3/4 of the important material and discussions

Yes, this was meant as a heads-up, not as yet another discussion. — kwami (talk) 22:57, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Are there any notability guidelines for places, buildings or landmarks, similar to WP:NMUSIC for musicians and WP:NMAGAZINE for magazines? It seems like there should be, but I can't find any. Also, your wiki-project may be interested in this deletion discussion for Stanley M. Rowe Arboretum. FurrySings (talk) 05:18, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I have started a discussion about making the guidance about lists of notable people on settlement articles developed as part of the UK geography project at Wikipedia:WikiProject UK geography/How to write about settlements#Notable people applicable more generally, including the possibility of merging with Wikipedia:Notability (people)#Lists of people. Your comments would be welcome at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Lists of people from settlements. Please also link to this discussion from other relevant projects. Thanks, Thryduulf (talk) 11:56, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello, a Wikipedian advised me to come here. My problem is, I don't understand the reason why many articles about islands always put Geography section after History section. Some examples are this and this. This even puts Geography after Tourism and Transport. I think Geography is very important, even more important than History. If those islands didn't exist, no history would be made. I'm improving a local article and really need your advice. Thank you. PID (talk) 00:22, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

It is very difficult to achieve consistency across articles as the general rule is that consensus should be achieved by article rather than across groups of articles. I can only suggest either boldy changing the order and seeing what the reaction is, or starting a discussion on the relevant talk page. You may find WP:GOODISLE helpful. Good luck. Ben MacDui 09:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

One argument that supports putting the geography prior to the other sections mentioned is that islands are defined geographical units, unlike administrative units such as counties or countries. With administrative units, which are human constructs, it is common to place the history first and geography subsequent to that, and maybe such a treatment gets carried over to islands by a kind of default, when as you say, it arguably makes more sense to put geography first (though of course I would say that, I studied geography...) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 10:19, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Of course, where an island is an administrative unit, then discussion of that unit will probably tend to place the history first. I guess that how such articles have been treated probably depends on how the island is perceived - as first and foremost a physical entity, or a political entity. Unfortunately humans always tend to be more interested in the latter than the former.... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 10:37, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

OK thanks for your advice guys. I have a strong liking for Geography so I'll try to put Geography section in that local article first too see if people revert it, :) but if someone wants to gives more advice, I'm grateful to that. Nice weekend! PID (talk) 17:08, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I did some significant work on this article a while ago, but I am unsure if there has been anyone going through to check a lot of what I wrote. I would like to request to get some help from someone to help me out by either checking on what I wrote or doing a reassessment of the article; I tend to distrust my self with writing and would distrust myself even more on critiquing my work. Would anyone mind helping? Al Climbs (talk) 06:31, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

There are some users hunting Swedish historic geography articles. They say parishes are generally not notable. But there are even disambiguation pages for parishes, e.g. Saint George Parish. See the deletion attacks at Sollentuna Parish, Bromma Parish. ChemTerm (talk) 00:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

It's amusing, how editors were able to discreet between these two links, if they were able. I have an insight that Wikipedia is currently full of such surprises. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:41, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

And problems can be reduced by naming rules that are more consistent and harmonized globally. Example at Talk:Bengkulu#Requested_move. AsianGeographer (talk) 03:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I put a request to harmonize a Philippine province article title with titles of similar articles from other countries: Talk:Bengkulu#Requested_move. AsianGeographer (talk) 03:13, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

A long discussion has taken place at Talk:Germans which has resulted in a proposal being made (by myself) to rename and redefine the article and also the Ethnic Germans article. Any comments from geographers welcome. The renaming proposal is here, though much of the discussion takes place in the preceeding sections. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:12, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Shouldn't the words col and combe be included?Alpinehermit (talk) 08:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Over at WikiProject Geology/Meteorites we're having a month long focus to eliminate red links either by starting new articles or by finding appropriate link targets within existing articles. We'd be very glad of WikiProject Geography's help with any of the following:

• Agpalilik peninsula
• Basset Down House
• Brachina, South Australia
• Burt Plain
• Eagle Station, Kentucky
• Luhy
• Millbillillie, Western Australia
• Nantan (City)
• Onello River
• Osseo, Ontario
• Oued Drâa valley
• Saint-Étienne de l'Olm
• Savequarfik
• Saveruluk
• Slanica
• South Gregory
• Udei Station
• Vaca Muerta

-Arb. (talk) 21:28, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I just created category:Earth Sciences databases. However it might be redundant because of the category entitled Geographical databases. I was wondering if project members also think that this category is redundant. I also posted this over at WikiProject Geology. ---- Steve Quinn (talk) 07:42, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I've stumbled across an interesting tool on the web provided by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey. It can be used to find benchmarks, other data, and wealth of general information (available using the menus). Of course it centers its focus on the United States. –droll [chat] 20:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, droll! I wonder if we can get linked from GeoHack.—Stepheng3 (talk) 16:50, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

 Q. characteristics of region? why region is one of the focal theme in geographical studies?
 Q. Application of concept of sustainable development in environment development?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Duleswar (talk • contribs) 11:56, 24 February 2013 (UTC) 

Is Mauritia (microcontinent) a top importance article to you? The user who rated it has been having problems determining importances outside of WPMauritius (various discussions at several wikiprojects about "top" importances being assigned to minor topics by that user), so I thought I'd bring this up. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 06:13, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Is the a tutorial/place on en.wp that gives guidance on how to make maps. I see some editors seem to be able to just magically produce them with areas coloured in. Is that learned off-site? Please answer here, I will check back. Thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Bump? In ictu oculi (talk) 11:36, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

I've done some basic map work and found the good people at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop very helpful. Certes (talk) 12:33, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The usage of East Sea is under discussion, see talk:East Sea -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 00:12, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

There is a discussion at Template talk:Infobox settlement#Indic scripts in settlement infobox. --Bejnar (talk) 07:49, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

How do you title a town that straddles the border between two countries, but is always discussed in sources as a single town? For example, the unincorporated town of Arenal straddles the Belize-Guatemala border.[4][5] What would I title an article on that town? Kaldari (talk) 05:17, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

It is not pretty, but after discussion at WikiProject Cities the Glenrio article was named: Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas. --Bejnar (talk) 07:55, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Many proposals are made over at Wikidata on how to store geographic information. Some of you maybe have time to comment on some of the proposals at: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Property_proposal/Place. --Tobias1984 (talk) 21:20, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

The article tells us what countries are NOT in the western hemisphere and what countries are in the eastern AND western hemispheres, but makes no mention at all of countries that ARE in the western hemisphere--the actual title of the article.71.232.43.180 (talk) 19:04, 25 May 2013 (UTC)Marilyn Hilliard

I don't know if this term is used in the United States, it's very common in British Columbia, not sure about other Canadian provinces. I remember it being a redlink, it might not be anymore; I'd redlinked on some articles. Common feature of the Fraser Canyon and Okanagan regions and other areas.Skookum1 (talk) 07:42, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Oh, OK, it does now, as a redirect to Bench (geology). I've got various pictures around of some, I'll try and get around to adding them to the article.Skookum1 (talk) 07:43, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Globalization, with assistance from Outlines WikiProject, has drafted an Outline of globalization. We welcome your input, additions, and comments. Meclee (talk) 16:52, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

In July 2011 I asked a question on Talk:List_of_Mediterranean_countries. Can I have some input from other wiki users please? Many thanks!--Sal73x (talk) 00:49, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Alykes means "salt lakes" in Greek, and it's what the salt lakes near Larnaca are usually referred by. I can't find anything supporting the claim that there's ever been a town called "Alykes" there. Should I PROD this up? — Lfdder (talk) 21:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Did you pursue the guide in the bibliography? —Stepheng3 (talk) 05:17, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is what it says (p. 32): "... terracotta bulls, typical examples of which were found at Kalavasos, Maroni, Dekeleia, Kalo Chorio, Dromolaxia and Alykes (Hala Sultan Tekke)". — Lfdder (talk) 08:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

An article that I've written on a geographical topic - a well-documented list of footpaths - has been nominated for deletion. A contributor to the deletion discussion has claimed that Wikipedia should not be used to host geographical list content on the grounds that Wikipedia is not a directory. If so, that would imply that we shouldn't have articles like List of roads in the Isle of Man, List of state highways in Alabama and so on. I'd be grateful if geographical contributors could take a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Footpaths of Gibraltar and advise. Prioryman (talk) 18:27, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography/Article alerts can be transcluded onto main page, or separately watchlisted. Articles when tagged will show RMs AfDs etc. Re Talk:Southwest (disambiguation) I notice that the redirects for all cardinal points seem confused. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:08, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Gap (landform) was created as a redirect to what is now Col, which is synonymous with Saddle (landform) as I understand things. I may be wrong, but I bet the elevation between the two is likely measured in hundreds if not thousands of feet! The first link is CLEARLY inappropriate for riverine cuttings through a mountain ridge such as Lehigh Gap. Someone with formal training in this field, please fix this embarrassment ASAP. // FrankB 03:27, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

I am seeing that the Pakistan occupied Indian areas are included in Pakistan map.Even in List of districts of Pakistan such places are mentioned.But these are not offical but forceably occupied areas.Then why to include them in these?RRD13 (talk) 09:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

English exonyms. Can someone check this please. An editor has suggested striking the following and similar as "original research"

Brugge/Bruges (English still uses French name, though in Dutch-speaking area)

I've defered the issue to Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard, but in the meantime WP Geography editors may like to check the article to distinguish between "Paris is the capital of France" type statements (which don't require footnotes per "attributable" common sense content), and those more controversial where a ^{[citation needed]} should be added. See also article Talk. Many thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

On both The Narrows and The Narrows (disambiguation) it's asserted that the Verazzano Narrows in New York City is the primary and most common usage of this term. I was a bit stunned by that claim. See Talk:The_Narrows_(disambiguation)#Most_common.2Fmost_notable.3F. The claim was made with not a small touch of peacock also on the page titled Narrows (where Used without qualification, it generally refers to comes off as "undisputable"). Maybe to New Yorkers, but......Skookum1 (talk) 05:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Would appreciate any input you can add to the discussion I've started at [6]. If you have any comments please post there. Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 09:08, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

How can I make a map like the one that are common on wikipedia that represent half the planet with the land in grey and the area of interest in dark green? (I mean maps like this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Global_European_Union.svg) — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrQuantum (talk • contribs) 19:47, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys,
can you tell me which countries have the more simplest political (administrative) division system?--XXN (talk) 12:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Simple can mean a lot of things in this context. Although I would be tempted to go for some of the tiny countries that only have one level of government. CRwikiCA talk 14:36, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Excluding very small, it exist countries with surface >40,000 km² and having no more than 2 levels of administrative divisions? XXN (talk) 16:01, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I suggest to create article "List of countries by number of levels of administrative divisions" (or something similar if this title is not correct). // XXN (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

A lot of information is linked from:

Especially the overview Table of administrative divisions by country is very informative and shows the complexity for each country. I do not think a separate list article would be warranted, because all the information is in the table already. CRwikiCA talk 17:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. This table satisfy me and the list is not more necessary. XXN (talk) 02:28, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

It's always nice to see a more comprehensive list than you had in mind. Cheers! CRwikiCA talk 03:31, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

"East Africa", "Eastern Africa", "Southeast Africa", "Central east Africa" are up for discussion, see the two interrelated discussions at talk:East Africa and talk:Central east Africa.

The meaning of "East Africa" is being discussed, as to the sociopolitical definition, geopolitical definition, geographic definition (ie. East African coast), geologic definition (ie. East African Plate)

-- 70.50.148.122 (talk) 04:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Is the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands "Capital Hill" or "Capitol Hill"? Please weigh in at Talk:Capital Hill, Saipan if you care. —  AjaxSmack  22:59, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

I've archived some inactive threads to subsections which were notifications about discussions that have since been closed. — Cirt (talk) 09:01, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Can somebody look over Gauss-Boaga projection. I just translated some parts of the Italian page because I needed the information for the Uni. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:39, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

FYI, {{Infobox hotspot custom}} and {{Infobox moon hot spot data}} are under discussion, see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2014_February_18 -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 00:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

This may not be the appropriate place to ask, but I asked at Wikipedia:Help Desk and was "sent" over here:

I've been trying to clean up the articles on cities, counties and other institutions in my local area and was wondering of there was a Wikipedia standard or recommended form for the whole of such articles. (I've looked and can't find one, but that may be user error.) Most pages on geographic locations seem to have the same parts (History, Geography, Population, Government, Attractions) but in no particular order. I would like to help beat things into some kind of regular shape, if it exists. Thanks!

--Digitalican (talk) 21:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

WP Cities has some for general usage and links to specific locales: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cities#Article_guidelines_and_conventions CRwikiCA talk 14:17, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Apologies for replying a bit late Digitalican, but the UK Geography WikiProject has a guideline for writing about settlements which covers just this issue. Obviously it's aimed at UK settlements, but I don't see why it's general principles can't be applied to settlements outside the UK. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 01:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for. I would certainly like to see general guidelines for talking about settlements across all of Wikipedia. --Digitalican (talk) 14:03, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

I think EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) article deserves a map. If any of the map masters have some time, it would be nice to have such a map. Thanks. —  Ark25  (talk) 03:13, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello, everyone. There is a WP:RfC on whether or not the leads of articles should generally be no longer than four paragraphs (refer to WP:Manual of Style/Lead section for the current guideline). As this will affect Wikipedia on a wide scale, including WikiProjects that often deal with article formatting, if the proposed change is implemented, I invite you to the discussion; see here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#RFC on four paragraph lead. Flyer22 (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

User:Tabnak has created a large number of pages about mountains. They are in need of clean-up, and some may not be worth keeping, but the topics may well be notable. I'm asking members of this WikiProject to help, since I lack the expertise to determine their value.

Tabnak created "List of mountains with Kush in the name", which was deleted per Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of mountains with Kush in the name. Tabnak created a number of articles that another user merged into Kush (word). That page is currently being discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kush (word). Hindu Kush (Kunar) is being discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hindu Kush (Kunar).

Tabnak also created all of the following.

Thanks for your attention. Cnilep (talk) 07:33, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Here are three new additions to the list.

• Silsilah ye Koh e Hindukush
• Band e Hindukush
• Kotal e Hindukush
• Koh e Hindu

Cnilep (talk) 02:12, 24 February 2014 (UTC) (last updated 02:27, 3 March 2014 (UTC))

FYI, the usage of some potentially ambiguous "(region)" names is up for discussion, see Talk:Northland Region -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 05:55, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Please participate in talk:Radium Hot Springs, British Columbia move discussion, we are having a rather heated conversation -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 05:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Please participate in talk:Logan Lake, British Columbia move discussion, we are having a rather heated conversation. -- 70.50.151.11 (talk) 05:44, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Dear geographers: This old Afc draft is about a "Census designated place". Does Wikipedia have articles about census designated places on a geopolitical basis? Or should this be deleted as stale under db-g13? —Anne Delong (talk) 20:41, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

There is a discussion going on right now at WP:Categories for discussion that involves changing the category names for all cultures, from, for example, "Afghan society" to "Society of Afghanistan". I can see that next will be changing "German culture" to "Culture of Germany" and the like. This would be for all ethnicities, nationalities and cultures.
If you would like to weigh in, the conversation is occurring at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 March 27#Society by country. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:12, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Exploration, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by Theo's Little Bot at 01:00, 21 April 2014 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

The usage of Wellington (region) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is under discussion, see talk: Bay of Plenty Region -- 70.24.250.192 (talk) 04:45, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Discussion started at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cities#Weather_box on the use of Template:Weather box in articles. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 16:23, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

FYI, I've re-proposed Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) for guideline status. Kaldari (talk) 03:17, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Template:Lunar coords and quad cat (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been nominated for merger. -- 65.94.171.206 (talk) 06:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Category:Places of the Portola expedition, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Please join the RFC discussion in Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features) about promoting this essay to guideline status. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:04, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

The usage of Catchment area (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is under discussion, see talk:Catchment area (human geography) -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 05:43, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:
Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 15:52, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

I started an RfC at Template:Geographic reference regarding Template:Geographic reference. In my opinion, the template does nothing more than provide a hard-coded instance of ten separate and very loosely connected sources. The RfC asks if we should split the references out into separate templates. Given that this is likely the biggest wikiproject where that template is used, I'd like people's views from here. I have no zero ideas of which of the sub-wikiprojects would be a better place to post this since this is such a widely template. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Category:Chinook Jargon place names has been nominated for deletion/upmerging, with a suggestion that List of Chinook Jargon place names be upmerged. Please add any comments to the CfD.Skookum1 (talk) 15:20, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

There is a move request at Talk:Donets Basin that could use the commentary of members of this project. RGloucester — ☎ 03:48, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Hallo
I would like to have your opinion about the insertion of the Maps issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the country infobox, below the locator map. You can find them under Commons:Category:Maps by United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. I am well aware that they are far from perfect, but nevertheless I find them good, since especially small and middle sized countries can hardly be distinguished on the normal locator map and, moreover, also the main cities, bordering countries and main islands (these with their native and english names) are present on these maps. Last but not least, being maps of UN, they are an independent source that could avoid many edit wars which plague Wikipedia in conflict areas. I am asking it since I see that these maps have already being inserted in many articles (I inserted some of them too today), but this wikiproject can give an authoritative opinion. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 18:23, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Well said. There has to be a regulation indeed. Help us out please.elmasmelih (used to be KazekageTR) 05:59, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Infoboxes are meant to be extremely short summaries of the article's critical points. Country infoboxes are already some of the longest (if not the longest) infoboxes on wikipedia. The UN maps give UN names of neighbouring countries, names of surrounding bodies of water and some islands, and the location of a seemingly arbitrary collection of cities and towns. None of these are irrelevant, but neither are they key critical points to obtaining the shortest of overviews of a country. Neighbouring countries and water bodies are, at any rate, usually covered in the first paragraph of the lead. The spread of various cities and towns is interesting, but is not information about the country as a whole, which is what country articles should focus on. It may also be misleading to imply cities and towns between maps have similar status, when the Unites States map shows 9 cities (not the 9 largest), and the Trinidad and Tobago maps has 7, presumably of a very different scale. Saying this, alterations of this map would actually be very useful in our current Cities and towns boxes located in the demographics sections of appropriate country articles, instead of the 4 random citiscapes we currently use. CMD (talk) 08:33, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

If you see here, you understand that there is clearly no consensus about the optimal length of an info box. Why another map? Information can be conveyed not only in written form, but also graphically, and in geography maps play a central role. What is missing in the articles devoted to the world`s countries until now is a real map, since for the reason explained above the locator map is in many cases useless. Of course a map can be put also somewhere else in the article, but I find that the top of the article should be its place. Alex2006 (talk) 16:52, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I personally like the CIA World Factbook maps much better if we're going for the simplistic style. Thricecube 20:39, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Like i said in Azerbaijan mate, how can a single map complicate things for readers, as Alex said Information can be conveyed not only in written form, but also graphically, and in geography maps play a central role. . Indstead of complicating, it could be very useful... elmasmelih (used to be KazekageTR) 18:52, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

It's not about it being a complicated subject, it's about reducing the impact of everything else in the infobox. That there is no agreement on establishing a maximum limit for an infobox does not change the fact that it is optimal to have them as short and concise as possible. What is a "real map"? The maps under discussion are white shapes with a smattering of arbitrarily selected cities and towns. What makes that a "real map"? If one is going for geographical knowledge, a topographical map would be much better. If the display of random cities and towns is intended to show population density, a population density heat map would be immensely better. One could also use a road/rail map (with large cities/towns to boot if brave) to show how the country is interconnected. The list goes on.

Even if it was agreed we should have more than one map in the infobox as a global standard, the UN maps are not nearly the top choice. No map is going to be perfect of course, but what the locator maps do is give a global positioning for a country, useful for a global encyclopaedia (with the caveat of a European position for most European countries, due to a very old decision, although Europe does tend to have small countries). Regional position can be just as important as directly neighbouring countries. Locator maps even often have inserts enlarging small countries to show shape.

This is not to say however that if a useful purpose for a second map is found it should definitely not be inserted. France and Denmark have two to help try and display their confusing internal setup separating the 'main' bits of those countries from the rest of them. These, unlike the UN maps, introduce new information that can't actually be directly taken by a comparison of the first paragraph with the existing locator map (I do note as an addendum that within the arbitrary cities and towns found in the UN maps the location of the capital is shown, which is new information that can't be obtained from the text and existing map, but I really don't think capital location is enough to justify a whole new map, and it's also something that could be easily incorporated into existing locator maps with consensus). CMD (talk) 12:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I understand your point, but do you agree that the locator maps are largely insufficient, and that we need better maps in all these country articles, or are you happy with the present situation? Alex2006 (talk) 17:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't call them largely insufficient, I think the location on a globe is a good way to give readers an instant idea of where the country is, especially if there's a good insert. If there's a series of better maps, then that's of course very worth discussing. CMD (talk) 19:45, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

And what if we substitute the locator maps with the UN map? Each of the UN maps has a small locator map on the edge. In this way, the infobox length would remain the same, and the new map would convey more info (location, cities, capital and borders) than the old one. Alex2006 (talk) 07:23, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

The UN globes are small black blobs without any borders or scale. There's absolutely no indication of size. In this, the UN maps deal with location in a far poorer way that the existing maps. With regards to cities, as I've pointed out and there's been no response to, the cities chosen seem extremely arbitrary, so no information is given other than that some cities exist, which is actually misleading for the reader. A reader would be led to think, for example, that Honolulu is one of the 9 most important cities in the US, when it's the 54th in population and holds little other distinction I know of. This is bad. Capitals I already said are a positive, but that does not remotely outweigh the negatives. Borders as I mentioned above are only slightly better in that there are country names, but these are easily found in the text and in locator maps all borders are shown, along with the relative sizes of the surrounding countries. Another couple of points I haven't mentioned yet is that the UN maps are an incomplete set with regards to countries, and we have no control over the creation of other ones, say Kosovo. They also suffer problems in that they follow official UN POV, which would lead to a great deal of justifiable disputes around articles like Serbia and China. As a last addendum, a benefit of the UN maps you haven't mentioned is quantifiable scale (as opposed to relative scale which location maps do better), in that they have a scale bar. It'd be very interesting if we could include these in locator maps. CMD (talk) 09:46, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, I got your points. I think that until now there is no consensus about using these maps: Let's wait some more day to see if some fellow geographer gives his/her opinion, then we can close the discussion. Alex2006 (talk) 06:06, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I like the maps, but I believe we already have a lot of such maps already present. For example, instead of introducing an entirely new category of maps, we can simply reuse the Location Maps such as and add place names to them. I find these maps are actually better because they include water bodies and rivers, and they follow the standard Wikipedia colour patterns. Also, if we ever do end up using the UN maps, I believe we should remove the logo and country's name text as they don't blend into Wikipedia's design and the logo might suggest some form of affiliation with the organization. I won't say I dislike the idea of having location maps also included in the info box (I have nothing against big info boxes either), because someone looking for a quick glance at the country's geography would have search deeper into the article. The purpose of the info box is to allow people to get the most info possible at a quick glance. However, when I made the orthographic projection for Armenia, I included Location Map inside the Globe, which is another solution we can use for smaller countries (I know it's loosely against the design guideline of the Orthographic Projection maps, but Armenia was too small on the globe). I do find it would be a little awkward and repetitive to have a location map and a globe side by side for large countries like Russia, Canada, China or the US as they would essentially be identical (except one has some text). Kentronhayastan (talk) 19:18, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Alex2006, what do you think of this?

Kentronhayastan, I think that it is a good idea. The problem for me is that for medium and small sized countries there is no map, and for geographical articles I find this really bad. But if we can use locator maps at a larger scale, that`s fine. Alex2006 (talk) 09:53, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I like Kentronhayastan's idea. I must admit that I am not a fan of the UN maps and would rather not have them on the country pages. I am even less enthusastic with them if some countries have them (like developing or third world countries) whilst others (like most wealthy industrialised countries) do not have them. That really bothers me. --Discott (talk) 11:24, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Those one with the city names on it may create complication according to Chipmunkdavis, as he said above. We really need others to state their thought about this issue or we are in dead end. elmasmelih (used to be KazekageTR) 07:47, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

The only time I've ever mentioned complication was above when I explicitly noted this was not about "it being a complicated subject". Every other time was you. Please actually read and address what I said rather than arguing with yourself. CMD (talk) 10:22, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Every other time it was me? I've only wrote two or three sentences be smart mate... elmasmelih (used to be KazekageTR) 10:40, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

At WT:AST there is a query about this newly created article, Highland continent (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 06:41, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology#Low islands, coral islands, and atolls. Evensteven (talk) 08:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

At WT:AST there is a query about this newly created article, Highland continent (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) -- 65.94.171.126 (talk) 06:41, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Please see discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology#Low islands, coral islands, and atolls. Evensteven (talk) 08:09, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Reassessment for the Appalachian Mountains article is requested here. - SweetNightmares 20:24, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Hey can anyone tell me, why full part of Kashmir is not shown in the Indian maps, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_West_Bengal_locator_map.svg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India_Sikkim_locator_map.svg ? RRD13 (talk) 08:42, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Please comment. Gryllida (talk) 23:33, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Is this place notable? How? --George Ho (talk) 06:38, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Why not? Like any other Italian town or commune. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 09:38, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

How does this town meet WP:NGEO and/or WP:N (especially NTEMP)? --George Ho (talk) 18:39, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Because it is a legally recognized populated place. CRwikiCA talk 21:07, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Yep, that's it; I agree. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 21:10, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Central America, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by Theo's Little Bot at 01:00, 13 October 2014 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

Contributors to this WikiProject are invited to comment at Talk:English settlement in Nicaragua about the nature and purpose of that article. I cannot determine what the article's purpose is, and whether it might be merged or redirected to Mosquito Coast. Cnilep (talk) 00:25, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

See Talk:Qabala etc. In ictu oculi (talk) 00:03, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello - Could someone take a look at the article Strathord Islands, which I came across recently? There is something wrong with the table. I am not sure what it is supposed to look like, but I am guessing that there are users in this WikiProject who are more knowledgeable on map coordinates than I am. Thanks KConWiki (talk) 06:13, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, this is to let you know that we've launched WikiProject Wikidata for research in order to stimulate a closer interaction between Wikidata and research, both on a technical and a community level. As a first activity, we are drafting a research proposal on the matter (cf. blog post). Your thoughts on and contributions to that would be most welcome! Thanks, -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 02:16, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Several different astrogeographic and geographic templates are up for discussion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2014_December_21 -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 05:16, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I noticed that 4 articles are in both Category:Hills of Israel as well as in Category:Mountains of Jerusalem, which is a subcategory of Category:Mountains of Israel. Isn't that a contradiction? I mean, a hill and a mountain are not the same, are they?

The four articles are: Mount Herzl, Mount Scopus, Mount Zion‎, and Har HaMenuchot, as well as until recently Temple Mount. Debresser (talk) 01:12, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Whether an eminence is called a hill or a mountain depends on several variables, including absolute height, relative height, vegetation, cultural history, shape and gradient, latitude, rockiness etc., so for many places the distinction isn't a clear one. My Collins dictionary defines a hill as "a conspicuous and often rounded natural elevation of the earth's surface, less high or craggy than a mountain", and a mountain as "a natural upward projection of the earth's surface, higher and steeper than a hill and often having a rocky summit" - which is really a relative definition. And although those definitions aren't from a geographical source, even in the latter I should expect a degree of vagueness and overlap. I'm afraid one person's mountain is another person's hill. As an illustration, Parys Mountain in Wales is only 147 metres high, whereas the Malvern Hills—an example in roughly the same region of the world—reach 425 metres. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear geographers: This old AfC submission may be deleted shortly as a stale draft. Is this a notable topic? If so, can this draft be rewritten to remove essay-like components? Or should it be let go?—Anne Delong (talk) 17:59, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm seeing the term affluent being used to describe cities such as Mutiara Damansara, Gangnam (Seoul), and Agoura Hills, California. Is there a real definition for the term, or is it just being tossed around like weasel language? It seems like there usually isn't a real citation for the term being used anywhere in the text.--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 20:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Here is the link about merging iw for Anatolia and Asia minor. Talk:Anatolia#Anatolia vs. Asia minor --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 06:05, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed move/renaming of article on a major Malian city.- see Talk:Ségou.--A12n (talk) 19:31, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

There's a notice about Central meridian (planet) at talk:Meridian (astronomy) -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 05:39, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Request for comment on whether or not this is a neologism or misspelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Precipitationshed ηoian ‡orever ηew ‡rontiers 12:27, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Last month there was a thread at NPOVN concerning Matthias Kuhle and related articles. (See thread here). Several SPAs seem to be interested in promoting Kuhle's work, and from what I can tell it looks like they're editing articles to state his ideas more matter-of-factly than perhaps they should. One of the SPAs added a number of sources, I tagged the article, and frankly haven't looked back since. Now another SPA is edit warring over removing the tags without improvements in the meantime. I can deal with edit warring well enough, but this article could really use some more knowledgeable editors taking a closer look. I'm not feeling well equipped to assess WP:WEIGHT on this subject, for example. For that reason I'm cross-posting this as WikiProjects Geography, Geology, and Glaciers (to members of more than one of the three: sorry for the spam). --— Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 16:11, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Category:Indochina has been nominated for deletion. It appears to be about Peninsular Southeast Asia -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 07:24, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Donets Basin has been porposed to be renamed, see talk:Donets Basin -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 06:10, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Note, there's a question about crater articles at WTSOLAR -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 03:25, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Geographic infoboxes include a demonym parameter to indicate what to call a person from the place the article is about. But that really isn't adequate, and is also imprecise. Illustrative examples:

		Noun
Place	Adjective	Masc. sing.	Fem. sing.	Plural (nongendered)	Collective	Current infobox value
Spain	Spanish	Spaniard	Spaniard	Spaniards	the Spanish	Spanish • Spaniard
France	French	Frenchman	Frenchwoman	French people	the French	French
Wales	Welsh	Welshman	Welshwoman	Welsh people	the Welsh	Welsh (cymry)
New South Wales	New South Welsh	New South Welshman	New South Welshwoman	New South Welsh people	the New South Welsh	New South Welshman*
Luxembourg	Luxembourgish	Luxembourger	Luxembourger	Luxembourgers	the Luxembourgers	Luxembourger
Turkey	Turkish	Turk	Turk	Turks	the Turks	Turkish

* Read "New South Welshmen" till I changed it to the singular.

There can be a plethora of adjectives and nouns describing or referring to people from a given place. The single demonym field seems inadequate to encapsulate these and, moreover, it isn't being used consistently: sometimes adjective, sometimes noun.

One thought I had was at least to add an attribute, adjectival, for the adjective, while reserving demonym for noun forms. Beyond that, though, I'm interested in feedback on (a) consistent use of demonym and (b) going beyond a single demonym field to cover all the various applicable forms. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:38, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I would encourage editors to vote at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 January 17#Category:Buildings and structures in Western Australia by road & all subcategories on whether it is a good idea to categorise buildings by street. – Fayenatic London 15:06, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

May I draw the attention of geographers to Talk:Spit (landform), where I have started a discussion about the problems with the section "Spits around the World"? (Though the whole article looks like it could do with an audit by someone who understands the subject better than me.) ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 22:41, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

I love the grammar of the section header. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:50, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Is there really no geographer out there who will take this on? Shame on all of you. If you have a geography degree, dig out some of your old textbooks and spend half an hour setting this straight. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 10:31, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I am puzzling over the absence of a category for physical geographers. We have a whole array of categories for geographers in various branches of geography, yet somehow there is no Category:Physical geographers. Is there a reason for this? Or is it just an oversight? Thought I'd inquire and (hopefully) nail it down before I proceed (to create the category). Cgingold (talk) 15:54, 22 May 2015 (UTC)

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Rakhshani to be moved to Rakhshani (village). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:20, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

How do I do start a discussion about radically changing the contents of one of the articles?

Under the Geography Portal, there is Western Hemisphere, which describes it only in terms of geography. This is so different to the common meaning, that I feel it is truly misleading. I would like to start a discussion of changing this to a disambiguation page or changing it to include my suggested edits, which can be found in the "History", and which I discuss on the "Talk" page there.

Although I am a long-time editor, with ten years editing, and well over 4,000 edits, I have no idea how to start a discussion, about fundamentally changing the meaning of an article. So any help would be appreciated.

Nick Beeson (talk) 15:42, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

So it seems like nearly a third of the encyclopedia is composed of a bunch of geographic place stubs, and pretty much none them are ever going to have any sort of notability. Shouldn't these kinds of articles just be merged into larger articles based on a higher jurisdiction, such as "List of places in X district"?--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 01:31, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

It is our intention to eventually fill out all of these geographic stubs. Small communities and geographic features usually don't have resident advocates, so it is up to geography, geology, and history editors to fill the void. Yours aye,  Buaidh  15:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

In the mean time, can't they just get merged together until there's enough content to split them off? I mean it'll just be a lot easier to navigate that way. Besides, it's not explicitly stated at WP:NOT, but it doesn't seem like Wikipedia is supposed to be some platform for the advocacy of farflung communities across the world. (Edit: Actually it seems like there's WP:NOTADVOCATE)--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 22:29, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

A place doesn't have to be big to be considered notable. In England, any place that is a civil parish is considered notable - and some civil parishes have less than 100 residents. I'm not sure that consolidating such small entries is more helpful than having them as stand-alone articles.PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:11, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

The current guideline for Australia as I understand it is that any legally-defined town/suburb/locality is by definition "notable" and could have its own article. Places that only used to be separate are noted that way in the government gazetteers, and are generally covered by the article for the current address. It would be theoretically possible to aggregate these into the next larger legal entity (local government area), but this would tend to lead to undue emphasis in the wrong places. Perhaps we need to be more precise on when to remove "stub-status" from a small article. If a place article has cited sources for being on a road, a railway, and having a former politician born there, with an infobox and a photo, is it still a stub? What if it only has 2 out of three? or only one of those? --Scott Davis ^Talk 12:01, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

There was an RfC opened that might affect tens of articles. Your opinions would be welcome. “WarKosign” 05:33, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

There is an ongoing debate in Category talk:Rivers of Spain, on which is the best solution:

• either listing all the rivers of a country in the category "Rivers of [Country]," as for example in France and Portugal,
• or including them only in sub-categories and listing the rivers in list pages, as for example in the United Kingdom, the USA, Ireland and Germany.

I think a global solution should be adopted, so that all the countries have a consistent categorization. --Xabier Armendaritz^(talk) 16:15, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The usage and primary topic of Cape of Good Hope is currently under discussion at multiple locations, see the multiple conflicting discussions at Talk:Cape of Good Hope (landmark) and Talk:Cape Colony -- 70.51.203.69 (talk) 04:27, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Hello there, I have just proposed a new WikiProject be started; National Parks of the United Kingdom and I was wondering whether you would be able to come and have a look at the proposal and join the discussion. Thanks for looking.  Seagull123  Φ  15:02, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Does WP:USPLACE article naming guideline apply to the U.S. territory of Guam ? See Talk:Dededo, Guam for the discussion -- 70.51.203.69 (talk) 02:47, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Apparently it does, seeing as Hagåtña, Guam is named as such instead of Hagåtña--Prisencolinensinainciusol (talk) 01:13, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

We are having a discussion at WT:AST about the newfound geography of Pluto and Charon. -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 05:15, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Comments requested at Talk:Balochistan,_Pakistan#RFC_do-over.

Article is a general overview of the Balochistan region. The dispute seems to be about whether any content about insurgencies, human rights violations, etc. belong in this article.

Arguments against inclusion seem to center on POV, UNDUE and COATRACK. Some have argued that since articles exists at Balochistan conflict and Human rights violations in Balochistan, no summary of these subjects should exist at Balochistan, Pakistan. Instead, links to the relevant articles should be added to the See also section.

Arguments for inclusion center on insurgency and human rights violations being intrinsically tied to the history, government and culture of the region, so including a brief summary of the subjects and links to the main articles is proposed to be reasonable.

Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:29, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi, comments still requested at Talk:Balochistan,_Pakistan#RFC_do-over. Thank you, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:32, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Does this list of surface features fall under WPGEOGRAPHY? -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 05:17, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

There is a request move discussion here for Palena/General Vintter Lake → Vintter Lake. --Bejnar (talk) 19:04, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm proposing a new Wikiproject focussed on information visualisation. Since it has a some relation to this project, I'm adding a notification here. If you're interested, come and help brainstorm over here --> Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals/Information_Visualisation --naught101 (talk) 02:29, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

The usage and primary topic of Palestine is under discussion, see talk:Palestine (disambiguation) -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 04:17, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

I have just finished creating the article Coastal erosion in Southeast Louisiana. It is my hope that this project will give the article its highest priority. I usually contribute to articles on arts and culture, however, this one I could not ignore. I was shocked to find that there was no article on this specific topic. another article, Coastal erosion, pertains to situations in other regions which bear no relation to that of Louisiana. I live in a region that looses 30 football fields of land a day (wetlands) and needs our wetlands for protection from hurricanes. Our wetlands tie into the ecosystem of the whole continent, being a prime layover for numerous migratory species. It is my hope that we will concentrate on the improvement and expansion of this article in order to provide vital information about an important topic. So, I am asking for everybody's help. Garagepunk66 (talk) 23:32, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

For the life of me, I cannot understand why low importance is being placed on the Coastal erosion in Southeast Louisiana article, as indicated in the template, when so much is at stake for the survival of my region. Sorry folks, but that that is unacceptable. How would you feel if your state lost 30 football fields a day? I'm sure that if it happened to any other state, it would get a higher level of importance. The Louisiana wetlands serve as a critical barrier against storm surges during hurricanes and tie into the ecosystem of the whole nation. Keep in mind that New Orleans sits at a crucial strategic point the mouth of the largest river of commerce in the world and has a tri-axial port: 1) sea port 2) North-South river port, and 3) an east-west port, the Intercostal waterway, which runs East and West. What do you think Jefferson had in mind when he bought Louisiana? In his writings he said that the primary reason was to gain access to the port of New Orleans. But, our region is threated and needs more than this kind of lackluster response. Upgrade the article's importance please! Garagepunk66 (talk) 01:31, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Would it be good to have {{convert}} support coordinate angle-unit conversions between decimal degrees and degrees-minutes-seconds? template talk:convert has a discussion going on -- 70.51.202.113 (talk) 04:03, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Hi all - someone has flagged Erosion for a split. A quick scan tells me this looks like a solid idea, but more opinions needed. DanHobley (talk) 05:51, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

The article on Keroa Union, a 4th level administrative division in Bangladesh, has been nominated for deletion, discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Keroa Union. --Bejnar (talk) 05:54, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Is the Subcontinental divide just a Wisconsin topic? -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 03:55, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I have nominated Banff National Park for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.--Jarodalien (talk) 00:47, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

See Draft:Discrete Global Grid. Thank you, FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 19:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Can someone tell me what are considered the major geographic divisions on Mars? On Earth, they would be the (12) continents (7) and oceans (5), so if someone could list the various major regions of Mars, that would be nice. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 12:59, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Just wondering if this project has an wp:Alerts section? Ottawahitech (talk) 16:06, 1 November 2015 (UTC)please ping me

Please see discussion of "Does the current text of WP:BIDIRECTIONAL have broad consensus?" at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#WP:BIDIRECTIONAL navbox requirements. Montanabw^(talk) 01:40, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

• Talk:Marin Čilić → Marin Cilic
• Talk:Agnieszka Radwańska → Agnieszka Radwanska
• Talk:Ana Ivanovic → Ana Ivanović

some relation to Geography. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:02, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

This is a merge discussion on the notability of this Romanian village, but has implications for Romanian villages in general. Any interested parties, ease have a look and consider commenting. Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 18:05, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

There is a proposal to move from Syro-Palestinian archaeology to Levantine archaeology here and to create separate pages for Archaeology of Syria and Archaeology of Palestine. Your opinions would be welcome, thanks! Drsmoo (talk) 07:35, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

At least one editor is currently creating a new and very large set of geographical categories typically called "Landforms of Foo" grouping together lower categories for mountains, rivers, lakes, valleys, wetlands, drainage basins, rock formations, beaches, caves, glaciers, reefs, islands, etc. plus individual articles which were all hitherto under the parent category "Geography of Foo". Does anyone know if this has this been discussed here or anywhere else? I just have 2 concerns about this: first, is it really necessary to create this swathe of categories? Second, "landform" is not a widely used layman's term, so is potentially confusing. Should it not be restricted to Category:Landforms which would just contain generic articles like col and heath? Bermicourt (talk) 08:47, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

• Category:Rivers of the Boundary Ranges
• Category:Rivers of the Canadian Rockies
• Category:Rivers of the Omineca Mountains
• Category:Rivers of the Pacific Ranges
• Category:Rivers of the Kitimat Ranges
• and various others by-region

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_April_17#Category:Rivers_of_the_Boundary_Ranges on the Categories for discussion page.

I just noticed that the WikiData bot Dexbot is importing municipal elevations from Wikipedia to WikiData. I checked the seven WikiData US municipalities that were changed on my WikiData watchlist, and none of them had any citation for where the elevation came from. I am concerned about this propagation of unreliable information. Does anyone know where this data probably came from, and where it can be verified?

Talk:Bismarck#Requested move 29 December 2015 BMK (talk) 04:53, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

In List of states with limited recognition there is the list named Non-UN member states recognised by at least one UN member. Most states in this list are descripted as a partially recognized state. However, the incipit of Kosovo's page reports a disputed territory and partially recognised state. Nevertheless, Kosovo is recognised by far more UN members (114 member States in 2015) than others States in this list (Republic of South Ossetia 5 members, Republic of Abkhazia 6 members etc.). Republic of China: 21 members, is descripted as a sovereign State. In Kosovo talk page, after a long debate, no consensus has been properly reached. Shall we have to add disputed territory to every sesf-declared State with the recognition of a few UN-members (less than 6-8 States)? How many UN-members States are necessary in order to recognise a territory (which considers itself independent) as partially recognised State or disputed territory? --Skyfall (talk) 15:07, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

The usage and topic of Lorraine is under discussion, see Talk:Lorraine (duchy) -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 05:09, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I read that a part of the Al Jawf Region has a cold desert climate. Is this true? --Ysangkok (talk) 18:59, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

At Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)#Streets, there is a proposal for an addition/clarification of the guideline. --Bejnar (talk) 19:50, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

See proposal Talk:James Bay (singer) to move the Hudson Bay water body out of the way and move in the English pop singer. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:15, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Alexander Street Press (ASP) is an electronic academic database publisher. Its "Academic Video Online: Premium collection" includes videos in a range of subject areas, including news programs (like 60 minutes) and newsreels, music and theatre, speeches and lectures and demonstrations, and documentaries. This collection would be useful for researching topics related to science, engineering, history, music and dance, anthropology, business, counseling and therapy, news, nursing, drama, and more. For more topics see their website.

There are up to 30 one-year ASP accounts available to experienced Wikipedians through this partnership. To apply for free access, please go to WP:ASP. Cheers! {{u|Checkingfax}} {Talk} 21:21, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

The usage and topic of surface is under discussion, see Talk:Surface -- 70.51.45.100 (talk) 05:50, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Category:Scottish lochs with reported cryptids, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:25, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

See mw:Maps/Conversation about interactive map use--Alexmar983 (talk) 07:28, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Whirlpool, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:07, 23 May 2016 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

I'm hoping to solicit engagement from editors knowledgeable in the field regarding whether there is actually anything misleading or wrong about this edit, specifically the usage of the sourced quote, along with the involvement and engagement of any editors willing to help with the Southern Levant article as a whole. Thank you. Drsmoo (talk) 04:45, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I've just finished some work on International Date Line. Would someone mind updating a quality assessment? Thank you. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:52, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I've upgraded it to B. It could definitely still use more sources, but the unsourced information is I feel unlikely to be challenged, which is the B-class necessity. CMD (talk) 22:33, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

TY. That's all I was aiming for now. We'll see what happens down the road. StevenJ81 (talk) 23:50, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: Separately, should the importance be promoted to mid (or higher)? I don't honestly know. I love geography, but I'm certainly not a regular at the WP. However, when I look at the basic definitions of "low" and "mid" at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria#Priority of topic—especially given that this topic is now on the Level 4 vital articles list for geography, it seems to me it should probably be on the board at least as "mid". StevenJ81 (talk) 21:58, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Importance is wikiproject-specific, and I'm unsure if this project has one. You can always be bold if you feel it is appropriate. CMD (talk) 11:10, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to mark it up to "mid" for now. We'll see where (if anywhere) this goes. Thanks. StevenJ81 (talk) 12:48, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC: Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf . Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 08:42, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Article alerts have been added to WikiProject Geography. Please see: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geography#Article_alerts. To see what article alerts are see: Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Alerts in The Signpost. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:18, 17 June 2016 (UTC)please ping me

Participants here may like to chip in to the discussion at Talk:Ludlow#Sited / situated. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:43, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

A discussion is underway about moving New York to New York (state) and placing either the city, the dab page or a broad-concept article at the "New York" base name. Please contribute at Talk:New York/July 2016 move request. Note that the move was first approved on June 18 then overturned on July 7 and relisted as a structured debate to gather wider input. Interested editors might want to read those prior discussions to get a feel for the arguments. (Be sure to have your cup of tea handy!) — JFG ^talk 23:13, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

Please join a discussion of geographic coordinate formats. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:52, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Geography-related deletion discussions are now being listed at the new Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Geography page. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 08:35, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

List of countries and dependencies by population is an article that is relevant to this project. After having it drop off my watchlist some time ago I returned on 9 August 2016 to find that the population table is constantly being edited without any indication of sourcing, or edit summaries, usually by IPs or newly registered editors. The complete lack of sourcing for new edits means that the data in this article is dubious at best. One particular problem that I found is that data templates, which are used to automatically calculate today's population based on official sources, have been removed and replaced with unsourced manual calculations. Several times now I have had to restore these templates after yet another unsourced, unexplained change.[7][8][9][10][11] I have now tagged the article to identify issues, and requested semi-protection, but the input by responsible editors who can update the article with accurate, sourced data is needed. --AussieLegend (✉) 04:41, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Might be worth asking for semi-protection so it cannot be edited by anons, after sourcing it and using source-defensible numbers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:34, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

The RfC at Talk:Eritrea#Location has turned circular and unresolveable, with about half a dozen parties sticking to their positions immovably no matter what is offered. I would suggest that an influx of fresh eyes on the matter would be of great benefit before it gets any more WP:LAME.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:36, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

This months on commons we have organized this challenge. You can upload some pictures or help with the categories and the description of pictures uploaded so far. You can also vote starting from the 1st of October, and use them immediately if you think they're useful. Bye!--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:03, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

There's $200 offered for most geography destubs for this contest. At present there's not many people working on geo stubs so somebody help flesh out some geography stubs!♦ Dr. Blofeld 07:46, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Could someone help me identify these aerial photos, please? Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Rehman 12:17, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Hello,

I am working on List of peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park and found the List of mountain peaks of Colorado article, which has a "map this section" box using {{GeoGroup}}.

I am totally unfamiliar with how to do that. I see from the info on the template, there's {{GeoGroup|article=List of peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park}}. So I inserted that at the top of the page. The article title is long so it's kind of busy.

If someone has a chance, do you mind taking a look at it and letting me know if this is right?

Very cool feature! Thanks so much!--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:15, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

It works on OpenStreet Maps. It doesn't for google or bing. By the way, I posted the question here because I figured there might be a pool of people that have used this.--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:26, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

JMK, I pinged you here because I just noticed that there was a recent response to a question on the Template talk:GeoGroup. Do you mind weighing in on this topic? Thanks so much!--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:30, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Your implementation is correct, but clearly the feature is still not working as it should, or as it did. The coding side of it is above my capability. Will mention this problem on other wikis, in case a programmer somewhere is able to get it to work. JMK (talk) 18:29, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks JMK.--CaroleHenson (talk) 19:23, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

User:Horsegeek/Mount Yuntai is an article I'm working on, could someone please assist me as I've never worked with mountain articles before? Thanks! Horsegeek^(talk) 19:41, 5 November 2016 (UTC)Horsegeek

Greetings. There is an article under discussion at AfD which might be of interest to you: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dreamland Villa, Arizona. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:55, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:39, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Hey folks! Any chance someone could take a look at México Indígena? It's a giant wall of text which appears to be concerned with a project of the American Geographical Society (and others). If it's all useful information, it would be great if someone could help organize it, add section headings, and fix the references. Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 21:13, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I organized it into sections as best I could. The criticisms section is intense, and I didn't take the time to go through the claims on it. More eyes appreciated. Ajpolino (talk) 04:20, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Please see here. Thank you. --Jayron32 21:34, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

The GA nominator and article-creator of Eddy Creek (Lackawanna River) has not edited Wikipedia since this past September. I am attempting a Review of this article but I cannot edit it or fix its issues because that would, of course, be a WP:COI. Am hoping that a WikiProject Geography participant would be willing to step in and fix this article up so we can work on it together and I can then complete my Review. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 19:28, 29 December 2016 (UTC))

The GA nominator and article-creator of Leggetts Creek has not edited Wikipedia since this past September. I am attempting a Review of this article but I cannot edit it or fix its issues because that would, of course, be a WP:COI. Am hoping that a WikiProject Geography participant would be willing to step in and fix this article up so we can work together and I can then complete my Review. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 19:36, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Small fragment of Orenburg Oblast which is between Ural river and Kazakhstan is Siberia or North Asia? It belongs to Asia, but it is seperated from other Russian Asia.--Ticgame (talk) 14:56, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Our article places Siberia as a subset of North Asia, suggesting the two are not mutually exclusive. CMD (talk) 18:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

My list of missing topics about places is updated; I divided it into subpages based of areas of the world (Europe, Asia, etc). And there is also the list about exploration - Skysmith (talk) 20:03, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

I've nominated the redirects List of borders and List of borders by length at RfD for a discussion about retargetting or disambiguating them. Your comments are invited at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2016 January 8#List of borders. Thryduulf (talk) 23:13, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

For the first time in Wikipedia, I stumbled across an article (Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon) that includes a map where you can choose to show the city, the state, or the country in fullscale. I found that awesome, and after digging a bit discovered that it is part of {{Location map}}, where the first argument can be given as multiple values separated by "#" characters (scroll to "Lockerbie in Scotland" to see the thing).

For instance, right now, at the article Bordeaux the infobox contains a map of France and a collapse box with a map of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, but that solution seems strictly inferior to the one I put on the right. (Well, minus the selection button that floated to the top of my post, but that should be fixable.) So, before I go on a template-replacing rampage, is there any stylistic or technical reason not to use and abuse this? (I easily have looked at >1000 maps on Wikipedia, and that's the first time I see it, so I assume there are reasons not to use it.) Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 20:55, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

I opened a thread at Talk:List of countries and dependencies by population so those with the most knowledge on the subject could weigh in. The thing is the title says "List of countries" which Taiwan is, and an editor has tried to move it to "List of Sovereign States" which Taiwan is not. I guess it and other countries could be removed. Either way it should be looked at and discussed before another move attempt is made. All I care about is correctness for our readers and that those with more knowledge on the subject than I have taken a look-see before it's moved. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:53, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello, Please note that Växjö, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of Today's articles for improvement. The article was scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Today's articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:08, 20 February 2017 (UTC) on behalf of the TAFI team

To me, this article sounds like much of it was written by the country's P.R. team.

The country has serious problems re: democratic values as discussed in the new section I added today about the European Union. (See my citations)

Perhaps I am wrong, but others might want to take a look at it. The Talk page seems to indicate a resistance to change.

Let's see if someone reverts my edits: the less than favorable content I added:

This is it in case it has already been reverted:

Application to the European Union

Although Albania had received candidate status for EU membership in 2014 (based on their 2009 application) the EU has twice rejected full membership. "Albania country profile". BBC News. BBC. December 15, 2016. Retrieved February 8, 2017. The [2013] election was closely monitored by the EU, which has twice rejected Albania's membership application and warned that the poll would be "a crucial test" for its further progress towards integration in the bloc. The European Parliament warned government leaders in early 2017 that the parliamentary elections in June must be "free and fair" before negotiations could begin to admit the country into the Union. The MEPs also expressed concern about the country's "selective justice, corruption, the overall length of judicial proceedings and political interference in investigations and court cases" but the EU Press Release expressed some optimism: "It is important for Albania to maintain today's reform momentum and we must be ready to support it as much as possible in this process". "Foreign affairs MEPs assess reform efforts in Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina". European Parliament. European Parliament. January 31, 2017. Retrieved February 8, 2017. Albania needs to implement EU-related reforms credibly, and ensure that its June parliamentary elections are free and fair, if it is to start EU accession negotiations Culbertson, Alix (February 1, 2017). [Albania and Bosnia fail to impress at EU membership meeting over democratic value concerns "Albania and Bosnia fail to impress at EU membership meeting over democratic value concerns"]. Express. Express Newspapers Ltd., UK. Retrieved February 8, 2017. Albania and Bosnia have stumbled at the first hurdle of becoming fully-fledged European Union (EU) members after MEPs questioned the credibility of their democratic values. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

Peter K Burian (talk) 20:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I've fixed some of your wikicode here, but you'll have to fix the last glitch yourself: you accidentally used the title "Albania and Bosnia fail to impress..." for the url as well. --Thnidu (talk) 17:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Thnidu: Not sure I understand. Is the problem above or in the actual article? If in the article, can you explain what I need to fix? Thanks Peter K Burian (talk) 19:12, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Peter K Burian: My mistake; sorry to have bothered you. The problem is in the material above, where the URL is replaced by a copy of the title, and it says "Check |url= value" in red:

• [Albania and Bosnia fail to impress at EU membership meeting over democratic value concerns "Albania and Bosnia fail to impress at EU membership meeting over democratic value concerns"]

The ref is correct on the article page: "url=http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/761758/Albania-Bosnia-Herzegovina-European-Union-membership-democratic-values". --Thnidu (talk) 05:40, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Buffalo–Niagara_Falls_metropolitan_area#RfC_about_the_3_separate_regional_articles. This could use a few more responses. Thank you. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 13:24, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Should the WP:ANDOR guideline be softened to begin with "Avoid unless" wording or similar?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:51, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Citation overkill#Citations. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:42, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, Community Tech bot will post at Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography/Archive 6/Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of WikiProject Geography.

We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:

• The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
• The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
• The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to Mr.Z-man for his original Mr.Z-bot, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of WikiProject Geography, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Citation overkill#Should this essay be changed to encourage more citations?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:34, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

An IP editor is making disruptive edits to Geographic coordinate system, making many ungrammatical edits. I urge editors to monitor this article. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:49, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#Request for comment on parenthetical information in first sentence. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:07, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi all

This is a heads up to let you know that there is a requested move, proposing to move the New York (disambiguation) page to New York, and the current New York page to New York (state). Please go to Talk:New York (disambiguation), read through the request and give your thoughts and feedback in the discussion. Thanks!  — Amakuru (talk) 11:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC: Red links in infoboxes. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:27, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Crosspost from Alexmar983 over at WikiProject Geology, also of interest over here:

The Commons Photo challenge of August 2017 is "caves, mines and sinkholes". Please take a look here if there is some picture you'd like to reuse. Or if you have something more scientifically interesting to upload. DanHobley (talk) 09:42, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Sure, thank you.--Alexmar983 (talk) 11:39, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Talk page guidelines#RfC: Should the guideline discourage interleaving? #2. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:14, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello everyone,

The Kiwix people are working on an offline version of several Wikipedia subsets (based on this Foundation report). It basically would be like the Wikimed App (see here for the Android light version; iOS is in beta, DM me if interested), and the readership would likely be in the Global South (if Wikimed is any indication): people with little to no access to a decent internet connexion but who still would greatly benefit from our content.

What we do is take a snapshot at day D of all articles tagged by the project (minus Biographies) and package it into a compressed zim file that people can access anytime locally (ie once downloaded, no refresh needed). We also do a specific landing page that is more mobile-friendly, and that's when I need your quick input:

1. Would it be okay for you to have it as a subpage of the Wikiproject (e.g. WikiProject Geography/Offline)? Not that anyone should notice or care, but I'd rather notify & ask
2. Any breakdown of very top-level topics that you'd recommend? (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Open_Textbook_of_Medicine2 for what we're looking at in terms of simplicity) Usually people use the search function anyway, but a totally empty landing page isn't too useful either. Alternatively, if you guys use the Book: sorting, that can be helpful.

Thanks for your feedback! Stephane (Kiwix) (talk) 12:22, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi all,

I've just noticed that at present bankfull discharge is a redirect to flood. This doesn't seem right to me, especially when you consider the Flood page does use the word bankfull once. This also seems like to important a topic to be left without a WP page at all. This could do with attention by someone with more time on hand than I do... DanHobley (talk) 16:57, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

Seems to me, the concept can better be handled in the Discharge article. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:52, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi all, are there specific guidelines for the sort of content that should appear in articles about small towns? I keep seeing articles like Umbergaon and Pardi, which have some useful info, but invariably wind up as tourist brochures, (The gorgeous beaches are unparalleled! The fish is tasty!) along with indiscriminate lists of small businesses like hotels and restaurants. Is that what you guys want, or do you not want that? Interestingly, despite my years of experience, I know very little about geography article goals... Are there any examples of tolerable articles about tiny towns? Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:52, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I haven't seen any specific to small towns. I think we simply have to use the over-riding guidelines/policies regarding using citations and WP:PROMO. When opinions are un-cited, they should simply be removed, however if something read, "In 2016, Conde Naste rated the beach one of the best on the Indian Ocean", and was accompanied by a citation to the article, than it could stay. Similarly, if there are lists of "local attractions", they should only include things which are notable enough for their own article. Mayer, Arizona is a small article, but is relatively well-cited. I'm not a fan of galleries, but there is no policy against them if they contain notable items, and in the case of the Mayer article they are all NRHP locations, and thereby notable. Prescott Valley, Arizona is another small town which is relatively well cited. I point it out for its culture and attractions sections. The attractions section, while uncited, only includes items which are notable enough to have their own articles (although the first paragraph is subject to the objections of promotion which you raise above and should be cleaned up). The culture section is uncited and also needs work but again, mentions something notable (if a citation can prove it, else it should be removed). I use AZ articles, since that's my focus in geography articles. I'm sure there are others. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 18:55, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Did you mean to write "When opinions are uncited, they should simply be removed", Onel5969? Cordless Larry (talk) 19:18, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi Cordless Larry - lol, yup, exactly. Will fix. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 19:21, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

There is a dispute at talk:antipodes about whether antipodes is correct as both singular and plural, or whether the back-formed singular antipode should be used for singular instances. Anyone who knows the literature in this area is invited to weigh in. --Trovatore (talk) 07:13, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Consulting the usual references would seem to be an obvious path forward. WolfmanSF (talk) 01:17, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Geography

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod ^talk 15:47, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Ainundil (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has been making some rather dubious edits (in my opinion) to Pelagic zone, Bathyal zone, Abyssal zone and Hadal zone. I've started a discussion with him here [moved to here] and I would very much appreciate some input from the wider community. I posted this at WikiProject Oceans, since this is about oceanography and vulcanism, but it looks like that project is no longer very active. nagualdesign 23:59, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Is there a sub-project for toponymy/placenames? The coverage is very patchy. Many WP pages have a sentence or two about what the name of the place means and where it came from, but sometimes these are folk-tales or the contributor's own theory. Often the folk-tales are worth recording, but need to be demoted behind the scientifically established origin, if there is one. Dadge (talk) 15:29, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Your attention is called to Talk:Thomas_Guide. Should the Thomas Guides for cities be used to delineate neighborhood boundaries? Sincerely, BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 05:28, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

I have proposed a merger of Key West, Florida and Key West at Talk:Key West if you care to participate. —  AjaxSmack  17:21, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

I am proposing a change to Template:Infobox Italian comune, which would make the province parameter, which currently displays the label "Province/Metropolitan city", a binary option. Instead, there would be the mutually exclusive parameters province and metropolitan_city, which would display their respective labels. You can comment on the proposal at Template talk:Infobox Italian comune#Proposed aesthetic change. Ergo Sum 23:09, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Infobox frazione has been nominated for merging with Template:Infobox Italian comune. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Ergo Sum 19:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I have proposed a rather substantial edit at Template talk:Infobox frazione#Proposed edit. Any comments on it would be appreciated. Ergo Sum 06:03, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm reviewing the article Sengkang's GA nomination. Among the potential problems it has is that the article has lists of schools, places of worship, amenities that exist in the town. Is there any guideline about this? My (probably subjective) opinion is that these listings don't add much encyclopedic value. Probably they fall into WP:NOTDIRECTORY's "Simple listings without context information". What do people here think? Is there a way to salvage this, or should they be deleted? HaEr48 (talk) 01:57, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

hi geo name have very articles about giografi please making bot for adding articles from geonames.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.75.54.10 (talk) 14:46, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Cote d'Ivoire border lengths.

Discrepancy between two Wikipedia articles:

(1) "List of countries and territories by land borders"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_land_borders

Burkina Faso: 584 km (363 mi) Ghana: 668 km (415 mi) Guinea: 610 km (380 mi) Liberia: 716 km (445 mi) Mali: 532 km (331 mi)

Reference 1 =

"CIA World Factbook". April 15, 2007. Archived from the original on April 8, 2016.

http://www.ciaworldfactbook.us/africa/cote-d-ivoire.html

"Geography"

Border countries: Burkina Faso 584 km, Ghana 668 km, Guinea 610 km, Liberia 716 km, Mali 532 km

(2) "Geography of Ivory Coast"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ivory_Coast

Liberia: 778 km (483 mi) Ghana: 720 km (450 mi) Guinea: 816 km (507 mi) Burkina Faso: 545 km (339 mi) Mali: 599 km (372 mi)

Concur with

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/iv.html#

"border countries (5): Burkina Faso 545 km, Ghana 720 km, Guinea 816 km, Liberia 778 km, Mali 599 km" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fortydollars (talk • contribs) 10:31, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Reference #3 http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/iv.html ... is a broken link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fortydollars (talk • contribs) 10:12, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

I have proposed the creation of a parameter called istat for {{Infobox Italian comune}}. Many municipalities in e.g. the United States have some form of identifier code in their infoboxes. Likewise, on the Italian wikipedia, the infoboxes for comuni contain ISTAT codes, since this is an important number to have. Creating this parameter would basically be a shortcut for editors instead of using a cumbersome workaround based on {{Infobox settlement}} (for which Infobox Italian comune is a wrapper). The proposal is found at Template talk:Infobox Italian comune#Proposed addition of parameter. Comments are appreciated. Ergo Sum 03:15, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Related to the above, I found ReliefWeb, which is a service of the United Nations. They say,

OCHA/ReliefWeb maps and infographics are free material and you can use them in your work. We request however that you delete the OCHA/ReliefWeb logo upon any modification to the map. Content of your map will be your responsibility. All maps must be credited as follows: “Based on OCHA/ReliefWeb”.

Is that a sufficiently permissive licensing statement to allow use on wikipedia? -- RoySmith (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Are there any nice tools for drawing maps? My immediate need is I want to create an image showing the route Tremont Avenue takes through The Bronx. The problem with something like RideWithGPS that I used to make that example is that I really want to make most of the detail/clutter go away. Also, it's not clear what license would apply to such an image. Certainly, if I used the Google Maps base layer, that wouldn't be usable. The Open Street Map base layers have the right licensing (I believe), but it's not clear what license encumbrance got added by using that app, and even if it was free, it's still not a great image for this purpose because of the clutter. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:28, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Welcome, RoySmith. I don't know much about map-drawing tools, but I have seen good things written about Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop, if that is of any help. Cordless Larry (talk) 16:57, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check that out. -- RoySmith (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Apologies for the rather patronising "Welcome, RoySmith", Roy. When typing my reply, I mistakenly thought I was answering a question at the Teahouse, due to misreading my watchlist. I did wonder why such an experienced editor would be asking a question there, which is why I didn't give you the full welcome to the Teahouse I'd give a new editor! Cordless Larry (talk) 08:36, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

An article was created entitled Rennock Lodge, stating that it is a neighbourhood in Kingston, Jamaica, but I have not been able to find information that specifically states that this is a neighbourhood. Instead, results lead back to a school named Rennock Lodge All Ages School.

I tried to find coordinates on google maps, geolocator, and Bing maps, but could not find that neighbourhood. I also queried the Kingston, Jamaica government site and got "No results" at all for "Rennock Lodge". This is discussed at FloridaArmy's talk page here.

How can we verify if this is truly a neighbourhood?

Thanks so much!–CaroleHenson (talk) 20:35, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Never mind. I found coordinates at OpenStreetMap and one source that mentioned the community. Thanks anyway.–CaroleHenson (talk) 21:50, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I asked one time before for comment from members of this project on the question of whether antipode is a correct singular of antipodes, and was not able to elicit any response, except from one person already involved in the dispute. There has now been a proposal to actually move the antipodes article to antipode (geography). I hope those who are familiar with the literature will feel moved to comment this time. --Trovatore (talk) 21:21, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

According to the OED, the backformed singular "antipode" (the historical singular would be antipus, as in octopus~octopodes) is only used in the metaphorical sense of one who is the exact opposite: "I soberly believe, that selfishness is the very antipode of self-love." But even then, the grammatical plural is also used in the singular: "Iago is the direct antipodes to Michael Cassio." They felt the need to spell out that (In this sense the sing. antipode is still used), implying that the singular is no longer used in the geographic sense. There the grammatical plural is used even with a singular meaning: "New Zealand, almost the antipodes of Britain." — kwami (talk) 06:13, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Wondering if people would be interested in expanding coverage of New Guinea, or have resources they could share or direct me to. There are major rivers, bays and ranges, such as the Yuat River and Kamrau Bay, that don't even have a stub. I'm coming to this from linguistics: there are a number of language families in New Guinea named after geographic features (partial list at User:Kwamikagami/sandbox2), meaning that in some ways we have better coverage of NG geography in our language article than we do in out geography articles. The whole point of naming a language family after geographic features (e.g. Niger–Congo or Nilo-Saharan) is to give people an easy way to picture and remember the family – but that doesn't help when they can't ID the features. — kwami (talk) 06:26, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   07:39, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at Talk:Lesser Caucasus#Merge with Anticaucasus about merging these two articles. I gather that this is somewhat of a politically sensitive topic, so I'm looking for uninvolved geography experts to join the discussion and provide insight. -- RoySmith (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Please see this discussion and follow-up RfC concerning the relative merits of {{infobox constituency}} and {{infobox settlement}}. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:16, 4 July 2018 (UTC)

Hi, I was doing some work on rivers and streams, and I couldn't figure out what wikiproject was best to collaborate on the topic of watersheds? I noticed some of the bodies of water are tagged with political boundary information, but that watershed information was much scarcer. -Furicorn (talk) 10:59, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

@Furicorn: Perhaps try WikiProject Rivers? —hike395 (talk) 01:29, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

@Hike395: Thanks, that was helpful -Furicorn (talk) 11:17, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Just trying to figure out if this project ever went anywhere. -Furicorn (talk) 11:18, 24 July 2018 (UTC)