Talk:Eastern Cambodia

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Sub-regionalisation

Earlier discussion took place on my talk page - (WT-en) Huttite 10:07, 3 January 2010 (EST)

OK, before I start an edit war, I want to wikilink all the regions in Eastern Cambodia, even if they do not exist yet. My policy basis for doing this is my interpretation of Project:Manual of style, in particular, Project:Geographical hierarchy, Project:Region article template and Project:Internal links. In essence, the geographical hierarchy calls for regions within regions; the regional article template calls for those regions to be linked, if the section is included, or omit the section entirely; and the internal linking policy calls for it to be done where practical.

However, (WT-en) Burmesedays " would fundamentally disagree there. (WT-en) Burmesedays really does not see how creating a whole bunch of red-linked articles (especially regions) is to anybody's benefit. For Cambodia for example this would mean creating 26 red-linked 2nd level regional articles that some day might be created (very unlikely). The existing four regional articles are already unloved and have no content other than what [was] put into them when the country was regionalised. And how does anyone decide which "cities we want to exist"?"

• So under what circumstances and criteria should these regions be linked, (or not)?
• And should this be limited to Cambodia or be a general policy?

I would like to have a consensus before proceeding. -- (WT-en) Huttite 10:07, 3 January 2010 (EST)

I would dispute that Wikivoyage hierachy says we should do this. The wording clearly says that regions may contain more regions and in any case levels of the hierachy can be skipped if they do not make sense.

Onto this this particular case, I repeat from huttite's talk page: There may be a time when we have too many cities for the four Cambodia region articles, but we are far from that at the moment. If further regionalised, Eastern Cambodia for example, would have four provincial articles with only four cities between them! That means we would have created 5 regional articles to house 4 cities. Sen Monorom's correct home in the structure is as part of Eastern Cambodia. The other reason not to do this based simply on provinces is that the provinces themselves are split in some cases. For example, you will see if you look closely that Kratie Province to the east of the Mekong River is in Eastern Cambodia, and to the west of the river it is in Mekong Lowlands and Central Plains. Sometimes geography is much much appropriate than political lines when regionalising.

I think a bit of common sense is required and some basic knowledge of the country and region being dealt with. Where would we stop? The four provinces that make up the existing Eastern Cambodia region contain further administrative districts (about 20 in total), which contain further adminsitrative communes (countless), until finally we get to what the traveller is actually interested in - a destination. All of that structure is completely unnecessary when the existing Country -> Region -> City works perfectly well and is, by no stretch of the imagination, over-burdened with detail. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 10:43, 3 January 2010 (EST)

I think the provinces section should be dropped, and replaced by some prose in the intro or understand section explaining what provinces are covered. And all provinces should be created as redirects to the relevant regions. As long as the cities list are this short, I just don't see a reason to create them --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 10:41, 3 January 2010 (EST)

Very sensible Stefan. When I created these regional articles, the provinces list went in for reference purposes only. If they are in prose format, same effect. Some already have re-directs and it is an easy job to complete and makes perfect sense for the traveller. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 10:45, 3 January 2010 (EST)

I concur with Stefan. The most relevant policy discussion on this topic is at Project:Geographical hierarchy#Should every city be listed in *some* region?, and the general consensus that emerged from that discussion and the practices following was that as a general rule, the fewer empty region pages the better, and that new regional subdivisions should not be created unless there is a content reason to do so. That generally means that we have well over nine cities in the region and we expect much more to be created. Here we only have four, so I think our choice is clear per policy & practice.

On a slightly different note, yes, Project:Plunge forward is site policy, but the one "exception" we have generally followed to that rule is for dealing with structural changes. Based on widespread practice & the wording at Project:Geographical hierarchy#Dividing geographical units, "Dividing geographical units is something of a dark art. Use caution, consensus, and collaboration when possible", it has become convention to always discuss changes to the hierarchy before implementing them. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 23:09, 3 January 2010 (EST)

I am happy with provinces being redirects to the regions that contain them. I am also happy with prose explaining the regions in terms of provinces covered.

The only reason I did originally plunge forward and create province articles was because the region section contained a list of province names that were unlinked and there was no explanation for them not being linked. In that situation, I had presumed that the future intention was to create regional articles about the provinces, so wikilinked them. Unfortunately, I missed the discussion Project:Geographical hierarchy#Should every city be listed in *some* region? because the consensus was not clearly summarised on the geographical hierarchy policy page. Sorry about that. - (WT-en) Huttite 23:02, 4 January 2010 (EST)

Many thanks huttite. I will make sure that each province redirects to its region and also construct the required prose. I also think that folks should bookmark this page, as there is useful discussion and clarifcation here should similar cases emerge in the future. I know for example that North Korea is structured in the same way and probably requires the same treatment. --(WT-en) Burmesedays 23:17, 4 January 2010 (EST)

Actually in the case of Thailand, I am trying to get rid of the provinces as they are way too small to be appropriate travel regions (most of these provinces only have 1 city listed). I think in many cases provinces are not the way to go (also see Nepal, which has ridiculous provinces from a travel perspective). --(WT-en) globe-trotter 11:14, 5 January 2010 (EST)