Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Italy/Archives/2008/February

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Infoboxes of Italian Presidents

I'm must admit, using Roman numerals for numbering the Presidents? is neat. But, many English readers wouldn't understand them (atleast not right away). Perhaps it's best to change them back to 'numbers' 1st,2nd,3rd... instead of I,II,III...- GoodDay (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

In looking at similar infoboxes elsewhere, there does not appear to be any consistent standard. Most do not have any numbers at all. I would say that Roman numerals are understandable enough to most and fit with a civic-oriented article (and it's rather fitting for Italian articles, in particular). The only issue I have is that the infoboxes for the Italians PMs and Presidents should use the same format. Arabic or Roman numerals: either is fine by me. --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 03:31, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Roman numerals are standard usage for eg kings, so English readers will be perfectly at home with the idea. FlagSteward (talk) 18:07, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

That is why English readers will not be at home with the idea. There is a definite implication of royalty about the use of Roman numerals; it is misleading to use it for Presidents of a Republic. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:56, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Project page etc

As you may have noticed, I took the liberty of redesigning the Project page into two columns, based on the Wine Project homepage. I know there's a couple of red links on it for things like a Newsletter an article improvement drive, but I thought that they might act as inspiration. :-)) And hopefully having the assessment table more prominent might encourage people to work a bit more on some articles, particularly the Top Starts : History of Italy during Roman times, History of Italy during foreign domination and the unification and Piedmont. The middle one of those in particular needs some attention - since we already have articles on the Italian wars and unification, I suggest that it is pruned of the stuff that belongs in those two articles, renamed appropriately - and then expanded. I've also added List and NA classes to the template, and done a bit of assessment to clean up the assessment table. FlagSteward (talk) 18:07, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Emery Molyneux: Translation of non-English terms

Help would be much appreciated in translating the following book title appearing in the article "Emery Molyneux" that is not in English:

"Primo Volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi nel qual si contiene la descrittione dell'Africa: e del Paese del Prete Ianni, con varii viaggi, dal Mar Rosso à Calicut, et infin all'Isole Molucche... et la Navigatione attorno il Mondo".

Do respond on the article's talk page. Thanks very much! — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 04:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Assessments, frazione infobox

I've requested a frazione infobox along the lines of the comune -> CityIT infobox, it needs doing. As you may have noticed, I've assessed 900-odd Unassessed articles, and am planning to do more. I'm investigating various semi-automatic tools to help with this process, including writing some of my own and I've asked SatyrBot to give us a hand. He can look for stub templates in articles and assess them as class=stub on the Project banner. He can also add the project banner to any articles in a Category that doesn't already have them - I think this would be a useful thing to do, particularly on any italian... stub articles that aren't already in the Project. Anyone think this is a bad idea? FlagSteward (talk) 23:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I say comuni, you say communes

Can we sort out the comuni/communes thing once and for all, at least when it comes to article names. Over on Talk:Communes of the province of Bolzano-Bozen a debate has started that really belongs here, I tried to rename that article to be consistent with the following, but was reverted :

Looking more closely it's a real dog's dinner, we have Municipalities of Italy, Comuni of the Region of Basilicata, the categories use Communes of... and there's the following individual articles :

Amaro (municipality)

Bianchi (commune), Canna (commune), Fardella (commune), Lago (commune), Lesina (commune), Longobardi (commune), Ponza (commune), San Gregorio Magno (commune)

Bonito (Comune), Castelseprio (comune), Certosa di Pavia (comune), Grimaldi (comune), Lago (commune), Parenti (comune), Salento (comune)

And on Bonito, some inconsistent capitalisation to boot! :-) There's been some discussion of this over on Talk:Comune and the consensus was that commune is an imperfect translation of comune, whereas comune at least has the merits of accuracy and lack of ambiguity. I hear the arguments for WP:ENGLISH, but we're also in WP:COMMONNAME territory, and comune is not uncommon in English discussions of Italy. Unfortunately I'm about to go on holiday, but for the record I prefer both comune and township over commune, I'm not dead against the latter but I just think it is a problematic translation. But for me the priority is to get some consistency - I may not be keen on "commune", but it's a whole lot better than a mish-mash of "commune", "comune", "Comune" and "municipality". FlagSteward (talk) 14:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

As for individual articles, we could use for example Fardella (PZ), Salento (SA), etc., like we usually do for Italian cities.--Suppar luca 15:27, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Comune is not an English word; commune is. This may be a piece of geographic unfairness, but short of moving Italy retroactively to the English Channel, not much can be done about it now. Township is horrifying; it has strong implications in English, but they differ from one country to another, indeed from one American State to the next. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:59, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

"Haddock" is an English word - but we're not intending to rename these articles "Haddock of Italy". Why not? Because "haddock" is an inappropriate translation of the word "comuni" in Italian. "Townships" would be a better word - but not perfect - "municpalities" better still. I'm not convinced that "communes" is the right word to use if you're translating "comuni", although that's something you seem to assume by default. As discussed over on Talk:Comune one problem is that "commune" has acquired several meanings over the years. Does a list of "Communes of Italy" refer to a list of comuni, a list of kibbutzes or a list of medieval communes? In contrast there is absolutely no ambiguity about what is meant by "Comuni of Italy" - and that precision is a powerful argument in favour of using "comuni".

Besides, Commune is a French word that became used in English because it described a useful concept that there was no existing word for - unfortunately that word has now acquired a diversity of meanings. Comune is a word that is often used in discussion of Italy in the English language - just have a poke round Google Scholar - so in that regard it too is becoming part of the English language. You'll also see in those Google Scholar papers the translation of "Comune" as "township" in respectablle English-language journals. All of which has me thinking that in the words of WP:NCGN "in general, however, we should avoid using names unrecognizable to literate anglophones where a widely accepted alternative exists." I would argue that literate anglophones do recognise the word "comuni", just like in Britain at least, département would almost invariably be used over "department". Furthermore "If no name can be shown to be widely accepted in English, use the local official name." Commune, comune, municipality, township - better to use the local offical name of comune. Also note in WP:ENGLISH the "Borderline cases" section which states "more consideration should be given to the correctness of translation, rather than frequency of usage". FlagSteward (talk) 01:30, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I am pleased to see that the wording of WP:NCGN is so widely quotable; I helped write much of it. But this ignores a fundamental principle of WP:NAME: Our article names are intended for general readers, not for specialists; and knowledge of Italian is a specialization.

Comune, surely, has all the ambiguity of commune: or is it not used for kibbutzim and for the communes of the High Renaissance? The proper solution is to link to Comune, wherever that article winds up; but we should write English, not Italian. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Pmanderson - the proper usage is English, and the proper translation of comune is commune or municipality. You should simply take a vote and take the most popular translation form. Only in rare cases where a subdivision entity does not directly translate is it feasible to use the native naming convention. Comuni does not have that as an issue. Rarelibra (talk) 06:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I second most of what Raralibra says here, and I doubt that most literate anglophones who have no specialist interest in Italy would recognise the word comuni. As far as I understand these matters, both commune and municipality are proper translations, but neither is without its awkwardness.

For at least one British reader municipality comes over as archaic and rather obscure. It is true that the town I grew up in had its municipal baths, but even in those days when the busses still carried warnings against spitting (a tuberculosis thing), the local authority wasn’t called a municipality. (It was a corporation). I don’t even know which, if any, of the levels of local government would count as a municipality in the place in which I live today. Having looked at the relevant articles, I still don’t, but note this from the article Municipality: ‘In the United Kingdom […] the term municipality and the word municipal in general is not commonly heard.’

Commune is also likely to seem quite surprising to some literate Anglophones, although you might reasonably expect them to guess that it’s roughly the same kind of thing as a French commune, and they should have some sort of idea what that is.

But enough of my preferences, what do those real authorities the dictionaries say? ‘Commune' is defined in the Collins Concise as ‘the smallest administrative unit in Belgium, France, Italy and Swizerland’. The Collins-Sansoni Italian-English seems to concur ‘Comune (suddivisione amministrativa: in Italia, Francia, ecc.) commune.’ The Penguin Concise Italian dictionary (based on a 1962 C.U.P. dictionary) suggests ‘urban district’, ‘commune’ or ‘local goverment’. —Ian Spackman (talk) 17:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Also my Italian-English dictionary says "comune commune (in Italy, France and Belgium); municipality (in the other countries)". So I prefer commune.--Suppar luca 18:55, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Bilingual dictionaries are not terribly reliable on matters like this. Lots of times they just come up with a word, even if it's not really correct for the application you have in mind. In English "communes" has connotations you can't escape, and they're not appropriate here. --Trovatore (talk) 19:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

But I did start by quoting an ordinary English dictionary. And I think that givng due weight to the opinions of professional lexicographers is a way forward. —Ian Spackman (talk) 19:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

My due lire: "communes" is not going to work. It has far too strong echoes of either left-wing politics or of less ideological hippy free-love-and-ganja living arrangements. I think it would not be too strong to say that "commune" and comune are falsi amici.

If people aren't happy with untranslated comune, then I think "urban district" is probably the least bad of the suggestions I've heard. --Trovatore (talk) 18:45, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

But many are not urban! —Ian Spackman (talk) 19:19, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, frankly that's a good reason to use comuni, as it really appears that there is no precise translation in English. But almost anything is better than "communes". Note that your 1962 dictionary is from before the hippy meaning -- now the primary one -- was known. --Trovatore (talk) 19:27, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Can we refer to how the European Community translates that word in UK english? --Cantalamessa (talk) 16:57, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I don't see anything wrong with saying that, assuming it can be sourced, which I'm willing to believe. But I do see something wrong with naming articles and categories with the word "commune", which strikes me as not at all a good translation. Admittedly the hippy commune phenomenon was probably mostly an American thing so it may be that the word is still usable for other purposes in England. But if Ian objects to "municipality" on the grounds that it sounds archaic in UK English, I have to object to "commune" on the grounds of how it sounds in American English. --Trovatore (talk) 18:59, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I say town, Milan, you say town (MI)

Splitting this off from the previous thread :

Heh - that's another thing I'd been meaning to mention, to me that convention fails WP:ENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME - if possible I'd suggest the natural English usage is Fardella, Italy etc. There's also a bigger WP:COMMONNAME problem - North Americans in particular will assume eg "MS" refers to Mississippi rather than Massa-Carrara, whereas others might assume you meant an ISO country code - Montserrat. I know it makes it easier to sync with it.wiki articles, but for me it's unsatisfactory - spell out the province if there's more than one in Italy. FlagSteward (talk) 16:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

You mean Calliano (Province of Asti) - Calliano (Province of Trento)?--Suppar luca 16:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The standard Wikipedia format seems to be eg Rome, New York rather than Rome (State of New York), so I'd suggest that your examples would go to Calliano, Asti and Calliano, Trento - and to Calliano if there was only one in the world, Calliano, Italy if there was another one elsewhere in the world but only one in Italy. I know it helps the interwiki thing, but WP:ENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME seem to apply here - and there's a more general aim of consistency across all placename articles. I'd suggest this is really the sort of thing to be decided by WikiProject Geography, but for the moment I'd suggest the Calliano, Asti format is the one to go for. FlagSteward (talk) 17:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Man - this is a can of worms. The current guidelines are at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (settlements) and the talk pages there run to 23 pages of archives. The only convention seems to be that at the moment, individual countries set their own guidelines. About the only thing that people seem to agree on is that :

Calliano on its own should be used if there's only one in the world. (and even so some people argue about that. ;-/)

There seems a fairly wide consensus that :

Calliano, Italy should be used if there's only one Calliano in Italy

After that, at the moment each country is left to do it how they want. The one certainty is that for towns, you should not use Calliano (municipality) or Calliano (town), but disambiguate it with Italy or some other regional identifier. And also that while the Calliano (AT) format may be the standard use in Italy, that only works because they don't have to worry about whether eg PA stands for Palermo, Pennsylvania or Panama. On a global encylopedia we do have that problemn - and on en.wiki, Pennsylvania would be the WP:COMMONNAME. On it.wiki Palermo would be the common name. On the brackets/commas thing the official line is here and I'm not sure I'm any the wiser - brackets may be more technically correct, commas are more consistent with the rest of Wikipedia. So I'd tend to use :

Calliano, Piedmont if possible - more people will know where Piedmont is than Asti, and Piedmont is unambiguously a regional designation, whereas Calliano, Asti could be read as Calliano being a suburb of the town of Asti. But if there's two Callianos in a region, then you obviously have to use the province name or smaller unit. I accept bringing regions into it makes it slightly less consistent (although that problem is eliminated by the fact that we are a computer encyclopedia so can redirect from Calliano, Asti and Calliano (AT)) but seems better from the POV of the typical English-speaking user of a global encyclopedia.

FlagSteward (talk) 14:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Rome, New York is American usage, which is why we follow it. Florence, Italy or Florence, Tuscany are both acceptable American (and, I believe British) but we should not disambiguate Italian municipalities unless necessary. In particular, we should not move Florence; it's primary usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:03, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, moving Florence to Florence, Tuscany was such an obviously dumb idea it didn't even occur to me to make that explicit. No, I'm just talking about the ~1% of cases where there's more than one of a town name, and no obvious claim to primacy so there needs to be some kind of disambiguation in the article name. Like the two Callianos in Asti and Trento mentioned above. Right - that really is me off on holiday now, unless by some miracle there's a satellite dish where I'm going.... FlagSteward (talk) 01:31, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Assessment drive

As you may have noticed, I'd had a bit of a blitz on assessing the Unassessed articles. I've now pretty much knocked the non-comune ones on the head - please don't hesitate to reassess anything you take a different view on, subject to the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Italy/Assessment#Instructions assessment guidelines - assessments are rather subjective and are inherently rather fluid things, they're just intended to set rough priorities rather than be set in stone. I've applied for approval for a bot to handle the assessment of a large percentage of comune articles, and then I'll sweep up whatever that leaves behind. There's about 1000 comune articles within the project and more outside it that currently lack a CityIT infobox; as well as this being a significant goal in its own right, my assessment bot relies on extracting the population from that infobox to assign Importance to an article, so I've written a little thing to semi-automatically transwiki the it.wiki Comune boxes. Unfortunately I'm away for the next 10 days, I'd hoped to get it all done before I went but it ain't going to happen now. If there's an existing bot to copy the infoboxes, please go ahead and use it. I also feel that there's quite a lot of articles without a Project banner that ought to have one - including large chunks of the comuni articles, the Marche comuni are an example from memory. There's various bots around that can assign articles to Projects based on categories, such as SatyrBot I mentioned above - someone also might want to set up User:AlexNewBot to assign newly-created articles to the Project. FlagSteward (talk) 18:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

On the communes lacking an info-box, there’s a marginally out of date list at User:Ian Spackman/List of Italian communes lacking an info box. It was based on a list FlagSteward produced of Italian settlements more generally which lacked an info box. —Ian Spackman (talk) 19:14, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Latin Europe

Hello WikiProject Italy/Archives/2008/February! There is a vote going on at Latin Europe that might interest you. Please everyone, do come and give your opinion and votes. Thank you. The Ogre (talk) 20:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)