Wikipedia talk:WikiProject German districts/Archive 1

Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

I changed the factsheet's color to something greenish so that districts doesn't look like bundesländer. -- JeLuF

I tried it out on my favourite district already - see Maerkischer Kreis. It look OK, only the green in the map does not fit anymore with the light green above it. But I think the maps are too much dark anyway, and need improvement. andy 08:25 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)
I am going to create the map templates now. Any suggestion for the bgcolor, that I should use? -- Cordyph 08:40 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

How to name districts that are named the same way a town is, e.g. Munich. Munich (district) ? -- JeLuF

That's probably the best way (Munich and Munich (district)), assuming the city is more well-known than the district (like Munich). Tuf-Kat
I would assume that any city is more well-known than its district. -- JeLuF
Yes, you are right. There are stubs already for some of the districts, see Lueneburg and Lueneburg (district). I think, it would be best to keep to this type of naming. We should not make disambiguation pages, since the town is more well-known in any case. Check out the naming in List of German districts. Of course this are just proposals, which may be changed. -- Cordyph 08:40 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

I've just uploaded the map templates. In the stubs, which already exist, we can delete the old jpegs and replace them with these png maps. I hope, you agree with the bgcolor. Any suggestions about the highlighting colour? We should also shrink the maps before uploading them. I didn't so far, because the district borders become fragmentary, when I change the image size. I would suggest about 70 % of the current size, but we should make a binding decision before we begin uploading true maps.

For naming I would suggest: (state)_(car-abbreviation).png
Example for Altenburger Land: thuringia_abg.png

Please tell me your thoughts. -- Cordyph 14:48 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)

The maps are good, good work. I tried around with the Northrhine westphalia one, there 70% fit the previous size which looks fine for the table - the other maps are about the same size, so maybe this factor can fit them all. For the highlight color - I played around with several colors by modifying the hue of the background color of the maps, and IMHO the cyanish #29C5D7 would fit best. But I'm not fully happy with it myself. andy 20:47 Feb 25, 2003 (UTC)
What about a reddish brown, like that one on the California county pages (e.g. Lake County, California). Something like #8E1B06. I actually didn't try it, since my graphics tool is on another computer. Maybe you could try it and tell me, what it looks like. -- Cordyph 16:28 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
That one look also very good - and IMHO it's good to have the same colour layout in this site, not every country using their own color scheme. The color itself is #A86C00 andy 19:42 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
Okay, then let's use it. -- Cordyph 20:11 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
How to do for example the map for the district "Kassel" in Hesse. The map shows the district-free city Kassel and the surrounding district. The car abbreviation for both is KS. Using KS as name of the map I'd assume both city and district highlighted -- JeLuF
The city of Kassel is not part of the district. (Here things become tricky.) So in an article Kassel (district) the city should not be highlighted (IMO). I think, we should not apply the template to district-free cities. The better way is to set up another WikiProject German towns and to define a template for district-free cities as well as for towns within the districts. What do you think? -- Cordyph 07:23 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I just added a Status page to the project. We should add all districts to this list, which were either completed or begun; otherwise it is likely, that we lose track of things, since there are 431 articles to be created. I am eager to start now; the maps may be included later, but let's come to a decision soon. -- Cordyph 18:19 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)

I already started to use the template on a few new districts I added lately, I only left out the map so far, or kept the old one. I don't think we'd really need to use the temporary page when modifying old district articles - with so many districts left and only few active people it's not likely to disturb each other; and those districts which need more work on some part can be put into the In Progress list. andy 19:42 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
Agreed; let's use the temporary page in exceptional cases only. I just completed my first article in accordance with the template: Ahrweiler - of course the map has yet to be added. -- Cordyph 20:11 Feb 26, 2003 (UTC)
I just read the Ahrweiler article and I had to scroll up&down while reading the section "Coat of Arms" - the image is at the top of the screen, the text nearly at the bottom. Do you mind having the Coat of Arms being pictured twice? -- JeLuF
No, I don't mind. This is a good idea. But we should do it in every article. I will adjust the template. -- Cordyph 09:11 Feb 28, 2003 (UTC)
I have some doubt about repeating the coat of arms. It look quite awkward when the text above is short (not every district has enough information on their website), and then the coat of arms repetition and the map will be about the same height. Of course I understand the rationale behind repeating it, however wouldn't it be better to place the coat only once next to the text about it? This also avoids the fact sheet to become very long when both map and coat of arms are in it. andy 20:14 Mar 1, 2003 (UTC)
The solution is apparently to put so much text into the first sections, that the problem does not occur ;-) Seriously, I understand what you mean. I agree with your proposal and will change the template again. -- Cordyph 09:04 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

There is a section "Obsolete Maps (to be deleted)" on the status page. These maps should of course be deleted, but I would prefer to add them directly to the Votes for deletion page. There is no reason to wait with this task, and we can delete (or let delete) these pages from time to time. -- Cordyph 20:27 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

I started that section to avoid putting them one-by-one into the deletion page, and to avoid to make them orphans so they won't be forgotten finally. I just thought it might be easier for those guys who can delete them if they have a longer list of images which are to be deleted for the same reason. andy 08:50 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)
Okay, then let's go ahead with this, and after all we may just place a link to the status page on Votes for deletion. -- Cordyph 08:55 Mar 11, 2003 (UTC)

From Fulda (district):

Neighboring districts are Hersfeld-Rotenburg, Wartburgkreis, Schmalkalden-Meiningen, Rhön-Grabfeld, Bad Kissingen, Main-Kinzig, Vogelsbergkreis.

From Bad Kissingen (district):

It is bounded by (from the northwest and clockwise) the state of Hesse and the districts of Rhön-Grabfeld, Schweinfurt and Main-Spessart.

I know of course that for a Bavarian everything beyond the border is wild jungle. But for reasons of uniformity shouldn't we list the neighbouring districts of Hesse, too? -- JeLuF 16:50 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)

Reason for this is that in those districts I edit I list the districts (and for neighboring countries the provinces, departements or whatever, if I can find them), while Cordyph in his does ones only list the states beyond the boundary. Of course I think my approach is better :-), it only lacks the information that these districts are in a different state. andy 17:28 Apr 27, 2003 (UTC)
Hi JeLuF, I was just too lazy to find out the districts in Hesse, but of course I don't mind, if you or someone else add them. BTW, I am not a Bavarian. In fact I was born on the Baltic Sea coast and do not really know what I am writing about, when adding articles on districts in Bavaria ;-) -- Cordyph 07:27 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)
I usually use the maps at http://www.kreisnavigator.de for that, there it's easy to see to the districts beyond the boundary of the state. Only when it goes beyond the german boundaries it gets tricky to give the bordering entities in more details then just naming the country. andy 08:16 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

I came across several districts which have partnerships/friendships with other districts (or counties, or municipalities) both national (e.g. all districts in Brandenburg have a partner district in Northrhine Westphalia) as well as international. I did add those in the history part of the template, but I am not really happy with that position. Shall we add another part "partnerships", only to be present if applicable? andy 17:38 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

This might go under "Miscellaneous". I do not think, that it is important enough to deserve an own section, but that is just my opinion. If you want to add such a section, then go ahead. -- Cordyph 18:53 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I realised, that in the time of my absence many, many articles have been moved to new titles with umlauts (e.g. Moelln is now Mölln). Is that official policy now? And if we create article titles containing ÄÖU, what about ß? Do we take "ss" instead, or may an "ß" go into a title as well?

I still create the links without the umlauts, but as you noticed a few articles got moved. I haven't noticed any official policy change for this, maybe it was just another german who preferred the "real" name in the caption. andy 19:03 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I just made my first links WITH the umlauts. I'm going to ask on the mailing list, how to do this in future. Some months ago the argument against umlauts was, that they can't be find when typing a word into the search box. This argument isn't valid anymore, because the search mode is more "intelligent" now. BTW, you are doing so much work on Wikipedia, that I think, you should become an admin. Did you ever think about asking for sysop privileges? -- Cordyph 19:23 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Another question: I realised that you replaced some of the low quality coats of arms with much better versions. Is there a source for coats of arms, which I don't know? If so, then let me know. -- Cordyph 18:53 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is - my graphics editor :-) I manually cleaned up the jpeg artefacts, made the borders more straight and so on. It's a bit of work, but the result is worth it. andy 19:03 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)
That's amazing. It looks like a completely different image. Very good work! -- Cordyph 19:23 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There are several articles about cities (Düsseldorf, Berlin), where the word "district" stands for a part of a town. Shouldn't we replace these occurrences of the word "district" with "quarter", "borough" or something else? It might be confusing to read "The city belongs to the district..." and in the next sentence "The city consists of the following districts..." What do you think? (I know, that this question doesn't belong to the WikiProject, but it seemed to be the best place to post this question.) -- Cordyph 08:57 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

On Talk:Provinces of Thailand it was noticed by Bill that having text in the numbered lists between the list header and the first item is illegal by HTML standard - even though both Mozilla and IE show it exactly as it was intended to show. This also applies to the district template, the sub-caption for municipalities in the list of town was made that way. I did put it that way to have it intended with the offset as the first item. To convert the list to a table would make the list much more difficult to edit however. Any ideas? Shall we ignore the HTML flaw and hope for the browsers to continue to support it the way they do? Or any other way to keep the list easy but still look good? andy 16:12 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Display in Opera is okay as well. We might of course place the caption above the list (that is above the first OL tag) instead of inside the list. I remember, that I tried it some months ago. It did not look very good, so I returned to our way to do it. I would probably continue to place the heading within the list, as long as noone tells me "Stop doing this, here is a place for correct HTML only." -- Cordyph 16:59 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

There is still no definite answer for the question about umlauts (see above). I decided to continue creating my articles with AE, OE, UE instead of Ä, Ö, Ü, but I don't mind, if someone else does not. More important is, that we think about creating a redirect as soon as the article is created. I just realised, that there was an article Rügen and another article Ruegen. The Rügen article consisted of one sentence only, so it was easy to turn it into a redirect, but in other cases it may happen, that two long articles emerge and that it will be time-consuming work to merge them. The guideline of creating redirects is probably not so important for the district articles (as there are not so many editors hitting on the idea of creating them), but we should keep it in mind whenever we create articles about rivers, mountains, towns etc. It is not that important, where the actual article is placed, but it is more important to have a redirect pointing to it from the beginning. What do you think? -- Cordyph 17:10 24 Jul 2003 (UTC)

User:62.80.19.178 starts to add tables with links to all districts and district-free cities of the Bundesland at the bottom end of the article. I think these lists are not necessary and only clutter the article, and on the de:-Mailinglist I have read some much stronger opponents of these list (which so far were only present at de:). What is the opinion about these list. I'd vote to avoid them, but if a mojority wants them I could live with that as well. andy 22:08, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

At least if we do them they should be done with the new {{msg:xxx}} feature. That saves the copying of the table to many articles, manually unlinking and bolding the article itself, and also makes later changes much easier. I applied it to those in Baden-Württemberg (there the table was added before) using Template:Germany districts baden-württemberg. andy 14:48, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I didn't see one, but feel that the time frame needs to be clearly specifies, which I assume is present day Germany. There are many other systems of articles for historical incarnations of the German state, so we should be clear. Bwood 04:31, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I don't think we have to start the articles for the current districts like "as of 2004 whatever is a district...". IMHO it is quite clear that the present-day subdivision have a "is" in the first sentence, while districts which no longer exists (I am not sure if we have any of that yet on en:) would start with a clear sentence stating it was a former district, and are in past tense. The same goes for other historic entities - the first sentence or paragraph should make sure it does not exist anymore. andy 08:13, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I was referring to the project definition, not the articles themselves. While it can be inferred that the scope is present day, where does it officially say so? Again, this is important because of the the other, historical projects. A reference to those projects wouldn't hurt, in case somone comes here, when they really are interested in the historical version. Bwood 15:50, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)