Talk:Suftu

Merger proposal

I propose that Suftu be merged into Softu. "Softu" was the original page and also appears to be the commonname for the town. Middayexpress (talk) 14:06, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

My impression is that Suftu is the more common spelling (Google Books has only one non-Wikipedia-derived hit for Softu; most Google hits for recent news articles seem to use Suftu, etc.). That's why I merged the content of Softu into Suftu in the first place. I will, however, leave the matter to others now. Deor (talk) 16:41, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Suftu

The Suftu page is a WP:POVFORK of Melka Suftu. It was created by a single purpose account, who has also been vandalizing the Mandera page. The coordinates on the Suftu page clearly suggest that it's the same area as Melka Suftu. Moreover, one of the links on the Suftu page allude to a "Haya Suftu" [1], which may or may not be the same area as Suftu. Hard to tell since there are no coordinates for that area. The demographics material is also dead-linked [2], and the climate material is also OR. Middayexpress (talk) 15:22, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

@Middayexpress: Before you redirected the Suftu article again, I had added archive.org links to the dead refs, supporting the names "Suftu" and "Softu" (no "Melka") for the place. The ref in the "Education" section that you just added also calls the place just Suftu. Fallingrain, which is your other source, is a notoriously unreliable site. This article, which you created only 24 hours ago, is clearly the content fork, since Softu, from which I imported most of the material in the Suftu article (replacing most of the stuff created by your "single purpose account"), was created in 2007. I'm going to restore Suftu once again and recommend that you try to come up with reliable sources indicating that "Melka Suftu" is a different place (to justify the existence of this article) or another name for Suftu (in which case you should probably redirect this article to Suftu). Deor (talk) 15:42, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the single purpose account in question is User:Mashcali, who registered that account yesterday, March 23, 2014, not back in 2007. As the time stamps here also show, he/she created the Suftu fork at 20:25, 23 March 2014 and the Sufto double fork minutes after that at 21:11, 23 March 2014. That's after I moved Template:Suftu (which he/she also created) out of template-space and into article-space by creating Melka Suftu at 15:37, 23 March 2014‎. So yes, both Suftu and Sufto are forks of Melka Suftu. This is a problem because the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (not just Fallingrain) only has a geographic entry for Melka Suftu, not Suftu [3]. This is almost certainly because this is the same town, as the coordinates on the Suftu fork suggest. "Melka" is a common pre-fix for town; Cherti, Ethiopia is thus also known as "Melka Cherti". As for the other links in the wiki-text, the archived telecom link only alludes to a "Haya Suftu", not "Suftu" [4]. However, unlike "Melka Suftu", it's hard to establish whether these are even the same areas since no coordinates are available for "Haya Suftu". That said, the Ethiopian government does have a population figure for the town; only it's listed under "Softu" (page [5]). The Ethiopian government, incidentally, also refers to Melka Suftu as "Melka-Softu" [6]. Chatham House likewise positions Melka Suftu in the same geographical location as Softu, on the livestock trading routes to Mandera [7]. On the other hand, the other demographics link that I was actually alluding to is still dead [8], and the climate material is likewise OR. Since Melka Suftu is the same area as Softu and since its wiki-page was created before Softu, that fork should thus indeed be re-directed here. Middayexpress (talk) 17:51, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

The title of an article is determined by the preponderance of reliable sources, not by your say-so (the Google Books hits are divided, for instance, but plain "Suftu" seems to predominate); and your creation of this article is still a duplication of the preexisting article Softu. We don't "move" an article by creating a new article at a different title and then blanking the former one. If you think the information at Suftu should be at this title, I suggest that you file a proper move request at WP:RM or start a RFC to get a consensus for your preferred title or something. For now, however, I'm restoring that article once again, as you've essentially deleted the work of Llywrch for no reason that's immediately persuasive. (There is also no settlement of any kind at the coordinates you've given for Melka Suftu.) One more redirection of Suftu by you and this will be a matter for WP:ANI. I'd also be careful about merging information to this article from that one without proper attribution if I were you. Deor (talk) 20:30, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Interesting; the Softu page created by User:Llywrch that you allude to appears to be a different and older page from the Template:Suftu, Suftu and Sufto forks. Since you were apparently already aware of the Softu page's existence (I wasn't when I moved Template:Suftu from template-space to the Melka Suftu article-space), the appropriate protocol would have been to simply re-direct the various forks back into that original Softu page. If the rationale for not having done that is that "Suftu" is the commonname, then renaming of the Softu page to "Suftu" should've first been proposed. At any rate, I've merged this Melka Suftu page with Llywrch's original Softu page and requested a similar merger of the Suftu fork into that page. How relevant the 2002 "Haya Softu" items are to Softu proper twelve years later can be sorted out with Llywrch's input. I happen to know Llywrch and his work on our WikiProject Ethiopia, and have faith in his judgement. Middayexpress (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Just some observations on the alternatives "Softu", "Suftu", & Melka Softu".

1. If my memory serves me correctly, I picked "Softu" because the original report from the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency (CSA) called the settlement "Softu", & not knowing any better, that's the name I settled on. Since then, I've learned that (a) there is no generally accepted method of transliteration of words in Ge'ez script, so "Suftu" or "Softu" could be correct depending on the value of that vowel, & (b) the CSA can sometimes be sloppy in their English spellings, so although this is an official publication, it doesn't have any special authority in the matter.
2. What is worse is that while the CSA has an entry for its 1994 census (I have an offline copy of the pdf somewhere which I used to create the original articles on Ethiopia years ago), there is no similar entry in the 2007 census.
3. Failing an authoritative official source, the next step would be to look at what is the common usage. (Yeah, I know, "common usage" for a town in Ethiopia few people even in that country have heard of.) Glancing at the sources in the three related articles, IMHO no real consensus emerges: it is referred to as "Softu", "Suftu", & Melka Softu" in all of those sources. :-(
4. One reliable source I've found is the "Local history in Ethiopia" website at the Nordic Africa Institute. Looking at the entries in that database, I've found they prefer "Melka Suftu".
5. One thing to consider is that "Softu/Suftu" is, based on it's location, most likely a Somali (& if not Somali, then Oromo) placename -- which would mean it might be better transliterated as "Suftu". (I can offer my amateurish explaination for that transliteration, if asked.) And "Melka" is Amharic for "ford" -- thus Melka Softu would translate to "the Softu ford". Yet I doubt the Amharic form finds much favor from the locals -- thus favoring "Softu/Suftu" over "Melka Suftu".
6. However, that annoying principle of "no original research" means that we can't use common sense & base our decision that last point, but have to choose between published alternatives -- "Softu", "Suftu", or "Melka Softu". (There are many times dealing with Ethiopian topics I wished I could just invoke ignore all rules, evaluate the raw data & draw my own conclusions, but there's always some ruleswanker who wants us to wallow in the muck because process. So I end up just avoiding the matter & leaving it for the next person brave enough to tackle the problem.)

Of course, if we all just agreed this was a Somali name where both vowels are identical, we could then call this town "Suftu" until more evidence came along... -- llywrch (talk) 21:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that Llywrch. So "Suftu" is a Somali name; I figured "Melka" was probably Amharic. At any rate, "Suftu" is fine with me too as long as the page history on "Softu" is preserved. I'll ask CambridgeBayWeather or Gyrofrog if they can do the honours. Cheers, Middayexpress (talk) 18:40, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Iam in suftu ethiopia, i can clearly inform you that " suftu" and malka suftu is same place and the popular name is suftu but haysuftu and dakasuftu is another towns. Abdimajidmashka (talk) 21:32, 1 September 2017 (UTC)