Talk:Outline of Cape Town

Suburbs or not?

Cote d'Azur, you deleted a number of what I have always known as suburbs, with edit summaries stating that they are not suburbs. Please let me know how you came to these decisions. If you are working from an official city listing or something similar I would like to know where to find it. Please ping with reply. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:59, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Pbsouthwood, if the removed articles are indeed about suburbs, then they must be edited to reflect this fact. Moreover, one cannot transclude the lead because the Outline will be considered a duplicate of the main article and deleted. Outlines must have new, original introductions. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 07:07, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Cote d'Azur, Are you basing your decisions on the content of the articles as opposed to any reliable external source? That is very similar in reliability to me having lived in the city for more than 50 years - ie. questionable. If that is the case we just have to check and fix the articles, or find references for the outline. However, I suggest that as your criterion for removal is just as lacking in reliable sources as mine for inclusion, please rather query the inclusion to indicate your uncertainty about what to me is trivially obvious, though admittedly, could also be wrong. Alternatively you could assume good faith and check them yourself.

Regarding transclusion of the lead from the main article on the topic: You state that Outlines must have new, original introductions. I am not aware of policy or guideline stating this. If there is, please direct me to it. If you disagree with this transclusion for logical reasons, I am open to discussion.

A transcluded piece of text has the advantage of serving a useful purpose in more than one place, as opposed to requiring update in different places, and in this case provides a far better introduction than the previous situation, which was none at all. If you feel that you can write a better lead than the transclusion, you are free to do that at any time. Deleting an article because a small part of the content is the same as in another article is not on any list of deletion criteria that I am aware of. Summary sections for split-out content are often based on the lead for the split-out article, or vice versa. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:26, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Cote d'Azur, I have just noticed that you removed from the list the actual suburb in which I live and pay rates to the City of Cape Town. Perhaps we should start by defining what a suburb is for the purposes of this list. My assumption, in the absence of anything to the contrary, was that it includes any built-up area which is serviced by the same municipality. i.e If the City of Cape Town charges rates, provides water and electricity, then the area is in a suburb of Cape Town. There may well be edge cases where a named area could be considered only part of a suburb and not a full suburb in its own right, there are districts which contain several suburbs, there have been historical changes, and there are regions where there are local municipal offices, however they remain part of the City of Cape Town. It is a simpler case than London, but still fairly complex. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:59, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Which suburb is that? —Cote d'Azur (talk) 09:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Cote d'Azur, I think that is not the sort of question one is allowed to ask on Wikipedia, but as I edit under my real identity, and you could probably find out by an internet search, I don't mind telling you that it is Somerset West. Now that I have freely answered your questions, maybe you could answer some of mine which are probably more pertinent to the topic.

Would you accept a map of urban areas supplied with electricity by the City of Cape Town as sufficient evidence that those areas are in suburbs of Cape Town? I can get that easily. Note that the City of Cape Town produces no electricity, except for emergency purposes, it just distributes electricity from the national grid as part of municipal services. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:16, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

This is a town in the Western Cape, not a suburb of Cape Town. This Outline is about Cape Town not the City of Cape Town, it is an Outline of cities. And that, I guess, is the source of the misunderstanding. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 09:36, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

Cote d'Azur, You may well be right that the distinction between "Cape Town" and the "City of Cape Town" is the source of the misunderstanding. Now we have to find out who is misunderstanding what. I suggest that the "City of Cape Town", the municipality, is with a few exceptions such as the Prince Edward Islands, an aspect of "Cape Town" the geographical and sociopolitical entity, and that "Cape Town" includes almost everything in "City of Cape Town" (except the Prince Edward Islands), but there is a lot more to "Cape Town" than the municipality that runs it, for examples, the geography, history, environment, population, climate, politics and economy to name a few. I also suggest that the areas of continental Africa administered by the "City of Cape Town" are legally and logically parts of "Cape Town". Do you have a definition for "Cape Town" that excludes any parts of "City of Cape Town" other than the Prince Edward Islands? Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 11:30, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

I will think about it. Cheers, —Cote d'Azur (talk) 08:08, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough Cote d'Azur. Please ping me when you are done thinking and have a reply. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:20, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

In the continued absence of any useful response, I will be editing the list to reflect the official status of some suburbs not currently listed as such, based on referenced updates in the suburb articles indicating their official status. These suburbs are listed in the references I added below, and are on official maps of the City, many of which can be found on official websites. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:56, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Please have a look at the Category:Populated places in the City of Cape Town. If all the places are suburbs of Cape Town, then why are there several pages which are not suburbs? It seems that WP makes a distinction between suburbs of Cape Town and other populated places in the City of Cape Town. In this case, the Outline should also make this distinction. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 08:24, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I have looked, some of those populated places are suburbs, possibly all of them. Not being specified as a suburb on Wikipedia does not necessarily mean the place is not a suburb, it may just mean the article is incomplete or inaccurate. I have not checked all of them, but none of the names were immediately obviously not suburbs, and many clearly are. Wikipedia makes whatever distinctions the editors make, which can be updated as better data becomes available. In this case is would appear that some editors have categorized to the best information they had available at the time. That does not mean that the categorization is perfect and should not be changed, it means that the editors who did it were not in possession of all the information.

What kind of populated place in Cape Town is not a suburb or a neighbourhood, that needs a separate section? Possibly places where it is not clear from the content of the article, but are there any other place types that are populated places but do not belong in any other section? It is fairly obvious that all suburbs and neighbourhoods are populated places, so the layout of the outline could be improved. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:00, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

A quick check against a list of suburbs of Cape Town from the City of Cape Town planning department shows that most of those populated places in the category are listed as suburbs by the City of Cape Town. Those not on the list are not necessarily not suburbs of Cape Town, as I do not know that the list is complete or up to date. Bakoven is listed as part of Camp's Bay. Cape Town would not normally be considered a suburb of Cape Town. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 16:37, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Before improving the layout of the Outline I propose harmonising the information contained in the articles, categories, and in the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality template. The (suburbs) articles should be edited to show the precise, current official status of the places, a new categorisation should be made, then correct the template. In this way we will obtain a clear picture of the populated places in the City of Cape Town and put it in the Outline. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 17:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Harmonising the information in the articles, categories and template is a worthy ambition, and I may do some of it when I have the time and inclination, but improving the layout of the outline does not have to wait for everything else to be done first. Doing things in parallel or in any other order is a quite reasonable alternative provided it is done correctly. Is there any chance you will at some time answer some of the questions I have asked you? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 19:06, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for starting the homogenising.List of Cape Town suburbs needs homogenising too...—Cote d'Azur (talk) 12:16, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Data sets available from City of Cape Town Open Data Portal

These are not very well known, so I am listing them here as free access official data from the City of Cape Town, so probably fairly reliable. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:11, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• Locations and boundaries of official planning suburbs of the City of Cape Town. The data sets are in various formats and cover the period 2013 - 2016
• The main page for the City of Cape Town Open Data Portal

Undiscussed changes to recent work

Cote d'Azur, Please discuss on this talk page any further reversions of my edits before removing what as far as I am aware are entirely legitimate changes which improve the article. Please ping with reply. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:00, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Scope of sections

Opinions are requested for clarifying the scope of the more vaguely named sections:

• What authority do we accept for what constitutes a suburb of Cape Town?
• What are "Neighbourhoods in Cape Town"?
  • To be used for populated places described in their articles as neighbourhoods that are not suburbs or another more well-defined type of region with a subsection to list them.
• What are "Areas of Cape Town"?
  • Changed to "Regions of Cape Town" as a high level section header for groups of suburbs or districts that are commonly referred to by a regional or district name. Historical regions may be included if there is an article to link.
• What are "Populated places in the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality"?
  • Changed to "Other populated places in Cape Town" to hold topics that don't fit into any of the other "Region" subsections.
• What is the scope of "Locations in Cape Town"? Is this a useful header for actual content, or only to contain subsections, or not useful at all?
  • Changed to "Places of interest in Cape Town" as that seems to be a good description of the content (Simplified later to "Places of interest")
• Should there be content other than internal links? (see history section)
• What about the introduction? Should there be one to establish context? Would a transcluded excerpt from the Cape Town article lead serve this purpose, or should it be written specifically for the outline, references and all?
• Are annotated links considered good, bad or indifferent? Links can be annotated by using the template {{annotated link}} which transcludes the linked article's short description, which is inherently referenced via the linked article, or by handcrafting a custom annotation, which is technically independent content and subject to citation requirements in the outline list.
• Are red links in the outline to be considered good, bad or indifferent?

Some of these questions may be more complex than they look at first glance. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 15:12, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

According to WP, the articles in the "Areas" and "Neighbourhoods" sections of the Outline describe areas and neighbourhoods of Cape Town. If this is not the case, then the articles must be edited. The populated places are in the Category:Populated places in the City of Cape Town. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 05:34, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

According to what in WP? What are "areas"? The extent of a surface is its area, my back yard is an area in Cape Town. The City planning department would confirm thise if anyone was to ask. I am fairly sure that niether of those meanings is intended. How is the word "neighbourhoods" to be interpreted in this context? The meaning can vary according to local usage. I would claim to live in a neighbourhood of a few blocks in at least two official suburbs of Somerset West, which in turn is an officially listed suburb of Cape Town. This neighbourhood has no name and is in no way particularly notable. I would not even be able to fix its borders, yet it is a neighbourhood, and I have neighbours who live in it. In South African usage a neighbourhood is a diffuse concept, seldom defined by fixed borders and not usually named. Wikipedia articles do not alwys use the most appropriate terminology, and are often written by people with little or no local knowledge. An area of Cape Town can also be a neighbourhood in Cape Town, and a suburb of Cape Town. In general, a suburb is both an area and a neighbourhood, but an area does not have to map exactly to either a neighbourhood or a suburb. I see no point in duplicating all suburbs in the list of areas or the list of neighbourhoods, as thy are generally subsets, but that is not how the outline is structured. I suggest that the set of Areas of Cape Town is not a useful distinction and should be scrapped. Neighbourhoods which do not map onto suburbs are a legitimate distinction, but we need to know that they are not just suburbs under a different classification, and that there should be an article for them explaining why they are not the same as an officially listed suburb. Both suburbs and neighbourhoods are regions of Cape Town, places in Cape Town, and areas of Cape Town. They are also, as a general rule, populated places in Cape Town, So is my house. It is a place in Cape Town, and people live in it as a permanent address, but it is unlikely to ever have a Wikipedia article. Like Areas of Cape Town, Populated places in Cape Town is mostly useless as a distinction. They are only useful as categories to hold idnadequately categorised articles. The outline structure should reflect the city structure. I would normally just fix this, but my edits to this article have been reverted without clear reasons before, so I am treating this as a controversial area and discussing first. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:58, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Then, please edit the articles to show clearly what these places really are. For clarity's sake, the articles must be corrected, categorised properly, and be mentioned in the List of Cape Town suburbs and the template. This work is necessary not only for the Outline, but for the topic of Cape Town in general. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 08:22, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

The more I look into it the bigger the mess appears to be. The navbox groups communities (mostly suburbs) wrongly at times. This is going to take a bit of research to fix. I would appreciate co-operation, and discussion where things are not clear. I may not have time to fix everything, but will try to leave a trail of references supporting changes. In things like navboxes the references must be in the linked articles, and may already be there, so if something is not obviously correct, please ask before reverting, but also accept that it is possible I may make a mistake occasionally, and feel free to ask if there is doubt. Some references may not be accessible on the internet. That does not make them inadmissible. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:31, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Concerning the mess, I am in complete agreement with you. There is no hurry, better to let the work progress slowly and thoroughly. One question, please: Tamboerskloof is a neighbourhood and a suburb. I think it should be listed only once in the Outline, but where? Cheers, —Cote d'Azur (talk) 05:58, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

There is no special reason that I know of why an article link should only be listed once in an outline, and there are outlines where it is quite logical to list the same article in two or more sections, but in this case I agree that Tamboerskloof need only be listed in the more specific of the regional groups it belongs to, which in my opinion is as a suburb, as there will be specific borders available, whereas neighbourhoods in South Africa tend to be more vaguely defined. I will make the change.  Done · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 08:40, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I see that Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is listed as a neighbourhood and as a shopping area. These are in subsections of different level 3 sections and are probably OK to repeat list in my opinion, as it is a shopping area and a residential area. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:36, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Annotations

From the guideline section Wikipedia:Stand-alone_lists#Specialized_list_articles: Outlines, from the general (Outline of mathematics) to the somewhat specific (Outline of algebraic structures), are part of Wikipedia's Contents navigation system, and are indexed at Portal:Contents/Outlines. A type of tree structure, they are hierarchies of subjects organized as a structured list including headings, subheadings, and list items (usually bulleted, and preferably annotated). For more information, see outline (list), and WikiProject Outlines. (my emphasis) – We can assume that annotations are desirable.

Discuss:

• Annotations are content, and may need references if challenged. In a very long outline this could lead to a very long reference section. Transcluded content can be referenced in the source article, and should not need to be referenced again when used as an annotation. I suggest that the use of the {{annotated link}} template allows links to be annotated using their article short description, which is based on the referenced content of the linked article, like the lead section. Not all short descriptions are suitable as annotation in a list. In some cases the short description can be improved, but sometimes a local annotation, possibly with reference, may be appropriate. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:53, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Lead

• From the guideline page section Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lists#Stand-alone_list_articles: List articles are encyclopedia pages consisting of a lead section followed by a list, so we need a lead section, to introduce the topic and set the scope of the outline.
• From the information page section Wikipedia:Outlines#Not_a_prose_article An outline is not a mere copy of the lead section of the main subject article followed by an unstructured list of links. Even the lead section must be in outline format, to differentiate the outline at first sight from a regular article.
  This means that in the lead section of an outline, there should be a lead sentence identifying the contents of the page as an outline, optionally followed by the primary entry of the outline (a list item presenting the main subject). The name of the subject is the top of the outline's hierarchy., so it is recommended that the lead section should be in "outline format". Presumably this means as a bulleted list.

Discuss:

• I am not sure how to go about this. If anyone has suggestions, go ahead. If no suggestions are forthcoming I will do what I can, and request anyone who does not like it to do better, rather than revert. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:53, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Other content

• From the information page section Wikipedia:Outlines#Not paragraph format: Entries in outlines are list items, and the list items may be in the form of a topic term, a sentence, or a topic term and an annotation.
• From the guideline page section Wikipedia:Stand-alone_lists#Content_policies: Being articles, stand-alone lists are subject to Wikipedia's content policies, such as verifiability, no original research, neutral point of view, and what Wikipedia is not, as well as the notability guidelines. so any text content is required to be referenced if challenged. This could lead to large reference section.

Discuss:

• I do not see the point in having a timeline as part of the outline, Better to have it a separate article or as part of the main topic, and link to it from the guideline. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:53, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
  • As there is already a more extensive Timeline of Cape Town I will remove the vestigial one in the outline. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 18:34, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Section titles

Sooner or later someone will either complain about or change the section titles, on grounds that they do not need to all specify in or of Cape Town per MOS:SECTIONS. I may do this myself. If there is any special reason not to do this, please explain here. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:27, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I decided to just do it. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 17:31, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Schools

Do we want a list of schools in Cape Town for which there are WP articles? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:29, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

There is room for schools in the "Education" section, if you wish. A few universities are already there...—Cote d'Azur (talk) 09:41, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Not personally very keen, but it is probably going to happen unless there is a good reason to prevent it, and I don't know of any. I will make a space and with any luck people will add them in the right place. I will specify the scope as only schools with a Wikipedia article. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 12:25, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Marine protected areas around Cape Town

Strictly speaking the Marine Protected Areas around Cape Town are not in Cape Town, but are directly adjacent. However they are part of the Table Mountain National Park, the terrestrial part of which is in Cape Town, so are they in scope for this outline? I notice that Biodiversity of Cape Town lists marine fishes, and the same argument applies - either both should cover the marine sector or neither. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 19:09, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

You remove the history of Cape Town, replace it with irrelevant links, and now you want to add subjects that are not in Cape Town? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cote d'Azur (talk • contribs)

1. I removed text content that is not clearly appropriate in an outline. This outline should not include a fork of Timeline of Cape Town. A short introductory comment at the start of a section can be appropriate, but not a whole bunch of text content interspersed with list links, which would need local referencing. If I misunderstand you, please clarify your point. The links I put in the History of Cape Town section are for articles about historical structures in Cape Town. In some cases it is possible that the historical content of those articles may be a bit tenuous, I have not studied them in detail, but it seems that you think they are not appropriate in principle, so I ask what type of article you think should be linked in the history section, so we can come to a clear understanding of what is within scope for that section and work together instead of at odds.
2. I take it that your comment indicates that you think the Marine Protected Areas should not be listed here, which is what I was asking. The reason it is not immediately clear is that most of them are part of the Table Mountain National Park, of which the entire terrestrial part is in Cape Town, so it is not as clear cut as one might think at first sight. So we have listed TMNP as in Cape Town, although some of it is not in Cape Town,and do not list parts of TMNP which could be a sub-listing of TMNP because those parts are not in Cape Town. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:28, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Useful reference

The City of Cape Town provides a free access GIS map website at https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/EGISViewer/, which includes a lot of official data on the city which is easily checkable by anyone who knows how to use the system. Instructions are available at https://citymaps.capetown.gov.za/egisviewer/images/help.pdf , which is linked from the map, but not obviously. The tools in the top menu bar can show a lot of things not normally displayed, such as official suburb borders. For some features it is necessary to zoom in to activate, and to have the right layer visible. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 10:50, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

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