Talk:Malta

Archived discussions Talk:Malta/Archive 2005-2010

Formatting and language conventions For articles about Malta, please use the 24-hour clock to show times, e.g. 09:00-12:00 and 18:00-00:00. Please show prices in this format: €100, and not not EUR 100, 100 euro or 100€. Please use British spelling.

Seaplane service to Gozo

The seaplane service to Gozo is not operating at present. It was suspended in 2012, and there is currently no indication as to when or if it will be reinstated.

http://www.maltastar.com/dart/20120912-sea-plane-between-malta-and-gozo-stops-flying

Other destinations

First of all imho the listings should be converted from marker to listing. Second of all I don't think all of them belong there. Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:42, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, too long a list, and "a locality" is probably a "city" under Wikivoyage definitions. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:34, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Districtification of the island of Malta + reigning in location guides

Our coverage of Malta is, unfortunately, quite a lot below par and I am about to try to improve it every way that I can, but I noticed that our current article structure is not very helpful to travellers.

Most importantly, we seem to have an unnecessary level in the hierarchy by having the island of Malta as a region. The other two islands, Comino especially, are small enough to have a single destination guide each, with Gozo being the size of San Marino. Malta Island, however, already has 15 destinations listed. Even though the latter mostly contain three or less listings, they are legitimate, existing places, and on an island of that size and of such long history of advanced civilzation, there are abound to be multiple listings in each municipality.

I would thus advocate to:

1. Divide Malta Island into regions along the lines of w:Districts of Malta (the statistical ones, not the electoral)
2. Bundle up other destination articles, including their listings, into final-level destination articles for each district
3. Leave out Valetta, as it is already a pretty mature article
4. Should we gather enough listings for a particular municipality, we can carve it out down the road - but this seems to be a long time away,

...this would allow us to cut down on redundant content and bundle useful information into easily-digestible guides to each part of the small country, and help deciding where to add new listings, which often fall in between named localities.

I am willing to do most of this myself, but am not good with maps - anybody willing to help out with a districtified Malta map?

And, first and foremost, anybody for / against my proposal?

Thanks for chiming in,

--PrinceGloria (talk) 14:17, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Nice to hear from you, PrinceGloria! I'm not sure I completely understand your proposal. Are you thinking of the proposed districts as being bottom-level articles? That can certainly work, and they can probably be titled "[Name of largest city in district]", with the lede explaining that x, y, z, a and b villages are also covered, or "[Name of largest city in district] and environs", though I don't think we've used such a title before. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:05, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I was thinking to use the district names, i.e. Southern Harbor District of Malta or Southern Harbor of Malta. It is very hard to choose one particular municipality over another, as they tend to be of similar size and importance to travellers. What is important, however, is that they are in a particular part of island, sharing instructions as to how to "Get in" and "Get around", as well as general "Understand" and parts of others. This would also make it easier to easily allocate listings which are not in the centres of particular settlements, as Malta is generally one contigious small city now. PrinceGloria (talk) 04:21, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

That's alright with me. I suppose it would be best to use some kind of city template for these bottom-level region articles. About how many listings do you see there being in each of the bottom-level articles when you and anyone who helps you is more or less finished? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:00, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Let me try to cobble them together in Sandbox mode and we shall see. From the extant articles as they stand - probably a dozen altogether across all categories (which adds up to 1-2 per category, such as "See" or "Eat"). But each of the districts has at least a dozen of "See" actual POIs alone, not to mention Malta has 150+ hotels alone, not to mention other forms of accommodation. PrinceGloria (talk) 08:09, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

That's good enough for me. You have my blessing, but by all means, flesh things out, and I think we should have more comments, preferably from people who've actually visited Malta; I haven't had the pleasure. So maybe post to the Pub. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:14, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Spelling conventions

Per wv:spelling, it says Malta should be using Maltese English. Then why does it say British English here? (though I don't exactly know the difference here) SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 09:00, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Because they officially use British English, right? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:00, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Is there any actual difference in the written standard? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:27, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

It may be like Zimbabwean English where there's very few differences. But I'm changing it per the spelling conventions. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:03, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Does this mean just about nobody can make language variety related copy editing? Do we have a single user who knows in what ways Maltese differs from other varieties? –LPfi (talk) 11:57, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia provides nothing, apart from that in some areas, Italiano is also written. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 11:59, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

If we have no information on what Maltese spelling means, the advise to contributors to use Maltese spelling is quite useless. I think it should be changed back to something that contributors can understand and use, i.e., British spelling. If someone well versed in Maltesiana comes and explains the difference, I'll change my mind. Ground Zero (talk) 12:07, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

I changed it on second thought because, most travellers would be foreigners, and unlike en-GB, en-US or en-AU which are used in more than one country, Maltese English is only used in Malta. Canadian english is a different story since there'd be a lot of domestic tourism in Canada, unlike Malta. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 12:17, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Cities

Here's a list of the 10 cities that were listed here:

• 1 Valletta – the capital, named for Jean Parisot de la Valette, a French nobleman who was Grand Master of the Order of St. John and leader of the defenders during the Turkish siege of Malta in 1565. Valletta is a UNESCO World Heritage site for the massive number of historical buildings found in a tiny space.
• 2 Cottonera (Three Cities) – The name used when referring to the three historic and ancient cities of Birgu (aka Vittoriosa), Isla (aka Senglea) and Bormla (aka Cospicua), three towns conglomerated by 16th century fortifications called the Cottonera lines.
• 3 Marsaxlokk – fishing village south of the island. A big market is held every Sunday.
• 4 Mdina – Malta's well-preserved quiet old capital. pronounced 'im-dina'
• 5 Mosta – 3rd largest city (in population) of Malta, boasting of Mosta Dome – the fourth largest dome in Europe and the ninth largest dome in the world.
• 6 Rabat – hosts numerous historical attractions such as St. Paul's catacombs and the Domus Romana (previously known as Roman Villa)
• 7 St. Julian's – perfect area for nightlife & entertainment.
• 8 Sliema – shopping area just north of Valletta.
• 9 Victoria – the main town on Gozo.
• 10 Żejtun – the largest city in the south of Malta and one of the oldest cities in Malta.

There's 10 here, so I removed the redlink. But it seems that Zejtun is the largest city in the south so I'm just going to create the article. But what should stay, and which one should be removed. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 10:23, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

The former redlink being Żejtun, I presume. Just being large is probably not a sufficient reason to list it, but I suppose it has other reasons to be listed. Victoria being the main town of Gozo is neither – Gozo will tell that. Until Żejtun is better developed I think we don't have to change anything. –LPfi (talk) 12:32, 19 July 2021 (UTC)