Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cape Verde/Places

1. Should we have separate articles on islands and municipalities, in the cases where only one municipality covers the entire island?

• If so, how to name them, for consistency?
• If not, how to manage this with the articles for separate municipalities, i islands that have more than one?

2. For standardization purposes, a common layout for the titles should be used. Examples:

• Island (Cape Verde)
• Municipality (Island)
• Parish (Municipality)
• City/Village/Town (Island)

This is only an example; it most likely won't be usable if analyzed in depth. More suggestions are welcome.

(Note: Portuguese speakers, please read the discussion at pt:Wikipedia Discussão:Projectos/Países/Cabo Verde/Geografia)

3. Should we have articles on the parishes at all? What unique info would they have, besides statistical data and perhaps a description of the festivities of the patron saint's day? --Waldir ^talk 03:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation proposal

After some thought, I'd propose the following schema:

1. Always separate the articles on the islands (covering geographical data) and the municipalities (covering political data), even if they overlap in area. This provides for consistency of the model and makes it scalable for the future in case the islands gain more divisions (as happened with São Nicolau in 2005). For reference, only five such cases remain (São Vicente, Sal, Boa Vista, Maio and Brava), in a set of 22 municipalities.
2. Ignore the articles on the parishes. There's not enough data available (unless we can ask someone related to religion for data -- I'll see what I can do about this). Note, though, that some of the articles already exist.
3. The layout for the titles would be something in the lines of:
   1. <island> island (e.g. Santiago island / São Vicente island) - prevents overlapping with other entities with the same name, be them municipalities of Cape Verde, place names elsewhere, or even the saints themselves
   2. <municipality>, Cape Verde (e.g. Praia, Cape Verde / São Vicente, Cape Verde) - prevents overlapping with other homonym entities (including islands of Cape Verde!); also, there are no overlapping municipality names within Cape Verde
   3. <city>, <island> (e.g. Praia, Santiago / Mindelo, São Vicente) - prevents overlapping with the municipalities when they have the same name (as actually happens with many - perhaps most - of the villages), and with other villages with the same name

Notes:

1. Perhaps the suffixes could be dropped in cases of non-ambiguity, such as the "Ribeira Grande de Santiago" municipality (but having redirects from the suffixed title). That would break the common model, in the sake of simplicity.
2. The city model not always will work. Sometimes there are places with the same name not only in the same island (e.g. Cancelo, Santa Cruz municipality, Santiago / Cancelo, São Domingos municipality, Santiago), but also in the same municipality (Cachaço, Brava municipality, Brava island / Cachaço, Brava municipality, Brava island) and occasionally even in the same parish (Lagoa, São João Baptista parish, Porto Novo municipality, Santo Antão island / Lagoa III, São João Baptista parish, Porto Novo municipality, Santo Antão island). These cases should be dealt with, either individually as exceptions, or by changing the model for sub-municipal entities. This page might come in handy. Also take a look at {{geodis}} and the pages it's transcluded to.
3. In general, on the island and municipality level, the system is fail-prof - the only exception I know of being São Vicente island (there's an island with the same name in Brazil). If no more cases like this are found, we can keep this case as an exception; otherwise, we can extend the disambiguation to all other islands (it would become "<island> island, Cape Verde")

Please share your thoughts below. --Waldir ^talk 10:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts:

1. Agree.
2. Agree. Any info about the parishes (area, population, saint, etc.) may be located in a specific section within the municipalities articles.
3. Agree with the general idea but,
   1. Agree.
   2. Do not agree. Politically, a municipality should take precedence over a city/town: it’s larger, it covers more things (population, economical sectors, etc.). However, people looking up in an encyclopedia are more prone to seek info about a city/town than about the municipality. Perhaps, the easyest thing to look up (for instance, Praia, Cape Verde) should be the city/town. The titles such as Praia, municipality leave no space for misunderstandings, people will know what we are talking about.
   3. Do not agree, reasons above.

Ten Islands (talk) 08:25, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

So, if I understood correctly, your proposal would be:

Praia (municipality) for (obviously) municipalities, and

Praia, Cape Verde for cities/villages?

I agree with your reasons, but we'd still have to address the issue I referred in my note #2 above... do you have any idea?

By the way, do you have any objections to the note #1? Also, about the parishes: do you agree that the existing articles should be merged into the municipalities they belong to? --Waldir ^talk 16:12, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

About the note #1, I think that we might break the uniformity of the common model now and then and drop the suffix for the sake of simplicity. About the parishes, yes, if nobody objects, at least the info about parishes will fill up the municipalities articles... :-). About the note #2, don’t worry: let’s work the top levels first, and meanwhile we can check up about the existance (and pertinence) of all those small villages. Ten Islands (talk) 17:21, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You're probably right. In that line, I added visual clues to help visually assessing the importance of each place (that could be done by sorting the table by the first column, btw). A few notes were added under the table, I believe those are things we should look into. --Waldir ^talk 00:39, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Before implementing this solution, I was thinking about one case (there might be more), Tarrafal village. There's one in São Nicolau and one in Santiago. It's right in top level so we cant leave it to be dealt with later. Perhaps Tarrafal, Cape Verde should be a disambiguation page, linking to "Tarrafal, São Nicolau" and "Tarrafal, Santiago".

My suggestion would be to leave the word “Tarrafal” for a disambiguation page (as it is now), and for the villages (or towns) to use the model “town, island” for each specific case. As far as I know, there is not more than one “Tarrafal” in whichever island. Ten Islands (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Another solution would be using the "village, island" name as default, and "Village, Cape Verde" would redirect to them when there's only one, otherwise they'd be disambiguation pages. What do you think? --Waldir ^talk 19:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

O. K. Ten Islands (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

By the way, we could (since we decided to use the "Praia (municipality)" form for municipalities) keep the "Island, Cape Verde" form for the islands, since they don't overlap with any other entities. That would not only make it a more meaningful name (geographically speaking, at least) but most importantly it would prevent clashes with other islands in the world with the same name. The "Santiago island" forms would redirect to them, but if other articles were created (such as the São Vicente island from Brazil), the redirects would only have to be converted into a disambiguation page, without moves and such :) --Waldir ^talk 19:59, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

O. K. Ten Islands (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Official/colloquial names

I agree that Cidade Velha is the name that should be used, but perhaps since it is referred in INE's database as "Cidade de Santiago de Cabo Verde", it is a similar case to Vila do Maio / Porto Inglês? In that case I believe we should redirect the official title to the colloquial one, and note the official name in the article in bold, pretty much as we see the full name of some people in biography articles when the article title only has the first and last name (or, in a much more close example, Cape Verde). Note however that I am not proposing to suppress a mention (or unbold it) of the colloquial name in the introductory section of these articles. Both names should be present in the first paragraph, in bold. (Gosh, I am writing too much!) Waldir ^talk 16:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

They have completely changed the INE’s site, I couldn’t get in again. But I find it strange for them to use the name “Cidade de Santiago de Cabo Verde”. That was an old name, back from the days when the “Cidade da Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde” was the only city in C. Verde. I’ve seen in a site from the Governement that they officially changed the name from “Cidade Velha” to “Ribeira Grande de Santiago”, but it seems that it didn’t stick up, people still use “Cidade Velha”. In the same site, it shows that Assomada and Porto Novo are already considered cities (cidades) and not towns (vilas). Ten Islands (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

The INE website is always going down, so I made a copy of the pdf on scribd.com, and linked to it on the main page. But perhaps you were referring to another page in their site, but anyway, here's what I'm gonna do:

• Make "Vila do Maio" a redirect to "Porto Inglês", with a mention in the article;
• Make "Cidade de Santiago de Cabo Verde", "Cidade da Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde", "Cidade de Ribeira Grande de Santiago" (and their equivalents without the "Cidade" prefix) redirects to Cidade Velha, also with a mention in the article;
• Mark Porto Novo and Assomada as cities in the table. I am pretty sure that the databases are outdated in this matter;
• Remove the "Vila de" prefix from the municipal capitals. Perhaps use them as redirects;
• Use "Village, Island" as default for settlements, "Island, Cape Verde" for islands (with rediects from "<Island name> island"), and "Municipality (municipality)" for (of course) municipalities. I'll edit the table accordingly, and make necessary moves.

I think it's all, and I believe this reflects what we agreed upon. If I misunderstood anything, please correct me. Otherwise, I believe I won't need to bug you again with RfCs on this :P --Waldir ^talk 02:39, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Update: all islands have standardized titles now. See the progress in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde/Places/Dab. --Waldir ^talk 11:43, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

You’re doing a hell of o good job!!! Ten Islands (talk) 19:02, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a problem (again...): Several municipalities have the same name as other municipalities in other Portuguese- or Spanish-speaking countries... we have to come up with an ambiguity-free pattern. What about the "Praia, Cape Verde" form (with a "(municipality)" suffix when necessary, to to distinguish from the islands)?... Some of the longer names will have to be made exceptions, both for the sake of brevity and because there are no ambiguities possible (see Santa Catarina do Fogo for instance). Do you agree? I'll keep any changes on hold until I hear from you. --Waldir ^talk 13:14, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, the problem here is that we are not aware of the criteria used for dab in other countries’ places, they might not be using the same model. My choice would be the model “Ribeira Brava (municipality), Cape Verde” and “Ribeira Brava (municipality), Portugal” over the model “Ribeira Brava, Cape Verde (municipality)” and “Ribeira Brava, Portugal (municipality)”. But it seems that people in charge about the articles of Portugal places (or other countries) just don’t give a damn about distinguishing a town, a municipality and a parish. On second thought, perhaps the long names should be kept long, and the short versions should be kept as redirects (that may be converted in dab in the future). We can never be sure if there is somewhere else in the world with the same name, we can come up with a surprise within a few months...! Ten Islands (talk) 19:02, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

A side note: on the government site you mentioned, where you read that they changed the name from "Cidade Velha" to "Ribeira Grande de Santiago", are you sure it was "Ribeira Grande de Santiago" and not "Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde"? I am asking because if that's correct, we'd then have to have two pages, "Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde Santiago" (the municipality) and "Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde Santiago" (the redirect to Cidade Velha). --Waldir ^talk 15:42, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I am sure: “Ribeira Grande de Santiago”. (perhaps they thought that the only place else that had the name “Ribeira Grande” was in Santo Antão, and not anywhere else outside Cape Verde...) Ten Islands (talk) 19:02, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Oops! Just spotted it out: the official name of the municipality is “Ribeira Grande de Santiago” and not “Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde”. Therefore, the page “Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde Santiago (municipality)” should be a redir. And here is the page (I really must re-organize my favorites folder...). Ten Islands (talk) 19:10, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Summing up (I hope)

1. Wow!! that page is all we needed to verify some of the information INE was lacking! Too bad http://www.incv.gov.cv/ is still inaccessible for registration (and anyway they don't have any B.O.s from before 2006, so it wouldn't be useful for this purpose...)

2. I agree that we should keep the long names and redirect from the short ones. That's basically the model I adopted in the dab page. Only one remark: I would use "Ribeira Brava, Cape Verde (municipality)" instead of "Ribeira Brava (municipality), Cape Verde", it feels more natural to me (and in most cases we would just have to add the (municipality) when they clash with other entities (typically islands). Those cases are stroke out in the working page (in the section Municipalities > targets). Apart from these exceptions, the Municipality, Cape Verde is good enough to prevent overlapping any other municipality in some remote country. Or did you mean, by long names, the form with both "cape verde" and "(municipality)" suffixes? I don't think it is necessary to be that extreme. It would of course be nicely standardized with no exceptions, but I think we have to think a bit esthetically, too...

3. Still in the "keeping the long names long" department, I used this criterion for most municipality targets, because it makes sense: without any suffix they are mostly only the name of a saint, which is a very common name to give to places. However, some of them have the "de Xxxx" suffix (they are marked as bold) and even though they were named as such do disambiguate between other place names inside Cape Verde, I believe it makes them unique enough (worldwide) to be kept as the targets an not the redirects.

4. About Cidade Velha: we both wrote wrongly the name of the municipality! I stroke out above to avoid repetition. Anyway, I just want to confirm: when you said "back from the days when the “Cidade da Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde” was the only city in C. Verde.", did you really mean "Cidade da Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde", or "Cidade da Ribeira Grande de Santiago" instead? Or perhaps the "de Cabo Verde" wasn't part of the official name? I'm just making sure so I can take care of the redirects properly when I get to the cities.

Waldir ^talk 22:07, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I really meant “Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde”. This name is not used for a couple of centuries, but I did see some ancient maps and ancient texts reffering to the (then) city as “Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde”. That is a clue that the Island of Santo Antão was probably not inhabitated yet. So, I did mean that whatever article named “Ribeira Grande de Cabo Verde” should redirect to “Cidade Velha” (or “Ribeira Grande de Santiago” if we decide not to keep “Cidade Velha”). The municipality, however, should remain “Ribeira Grande de Santiago”. The seat town of S. Domingos municipality is the town of S. Domingos (Vila de São Domingos). Ten Islands (talk) 23:12, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I thought so about S.Domingos, however the table extracted from the INE data doesn't have such a town! What should we do? Do you think there's a gap in their data, or perhaps the official name is different?

As for Cidade Velha, thanks for the clarification. We should obviously keep Cidade Velha. I'll make the redirects as appropriated, according to what we discusssed here.

Last but not least: can I assume that your silence regarding the model I presented in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde/Places/Dab#target4_2 means you give me green flag to go forward and implement it? --Waldir ^talk 12:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I think that there is some misunderstanding, I don’t know exactly where. My choice would be leaving the model “Name, Cape Verde” to cities and towns, and the model “Name, municipality” (or “Name, municipality, Cape Verde” or “Name, Cape Verde (municipality)” or whatever) to the municipalities. First, because there is no clash between islands and cities/towns, the clashes are between islands and municipalities and between municipalities and cities/towns. Second, because although I think that the info about a municipality is more important than a city (bigger, more population, etc.) it tends to be overlooked, what people seek most frequently is info about the cities/towns. But, hey, I’m not your boss, you don’t have to wait for my “green light”! Do what you think it’s better, if necessary we change it some few months later. As for S. Domingos, the last time I travelled from Praia to Tarrafal, the town (S. Domingos) was there, I hope nobody has stolen it... Ten Islands (talk) 13:06, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Wait a moment... we have previously agreed above about this! I'll copy the text from above, for convenience:

My suggestion would be (...) for the villages (or towns) to use the model “town, island” for each specific case. (...) Ten Islands (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Another solution would be using the "village, island" name as default, and "Village, Cape Verde" would redirect to them when there's only one, otherwise they'd be disambiguation pages. What do you think? --Waldir talk 19:39, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

O. K. Ten Islands (talk) 23:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

So basically, we originally decided to use name, cape verde for towns, then decided to change to name, island since there would be clashes among towns (such as Tarrafal). Then, because this freed some names (the ones that would be clashes between municipalities and towns, as you referred), we agreed on keeping "name, cape verde" for municipalities.

So the cities/towns aren't losing the "name, cape verde" because the municipalities (or islands) took them, but the other way around: the municipalities took them because the cities/towns freed them.

Do I make any sense? --Waldir ^talk 22:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that you are working hard to make a good job, and I am only here slowing you down. Therefore, although I am pretty busy, I took some time to build this table to try to sum up. Perhaps, nothing better than a table that can also be useful for future reference, to explain the choices taken.

Islands	Municipalities	Cities or Towns	notes.
		Assomada
Boa Vista	Boa Vista
Brava	Brava
		Calheta de São Miguel
		Cidade Velha	I am not sure if the city has effectively changed its name to “Ribeira Grande de Santiago”; however, it seems that the practice in the English Wikipedia is to choose the name by which the things (objects, people, places) are more known;
		Cova Figueira
Fogo
		João Teves
Maio	Maio
	Mosteiros	Mosteiros
		Mindelo
		Nova Sintra
	Paul
		Pedra Badejo
		Picos
		Porto Inglês	The official name is “Vila do Maio” — nearly all the maps I have checked show “Vila do Maio (Porto Inglês)”; however, it seems that the practice in the English Wikipedia is to choose the name by which the things (objects, people, places) are more known;
	Porto Novo	Porto Novo
	Praia	Praia
	Ribeira Brava	Ribeira Brava
	Ribeira Grande	Ribeira Grande
	Ribeira Grande de Santiago		The official name bears the full form: “Câmara Municipal da Ribeira Grande de Santiago”
Sal	Sal
		Sal-Rei
	Santa Catarina
	Santa Catarina do Fogo		The official name bears the full form: “Câmara Municipal de Santa Catarina do Fogo”
	Santa Cruz
Santa Luzia
Santiago
Santo Antão
	São Domingos	São Domingos
	São Filipe	São Filipe
	São Lourenço dos Órgãos
	São Miguel
São Nicolau
	São Salvador do Mundo
São Vicente	São Vicente
	Tarrafal	Tarrafal
	Tarrafal de São Nicolau	Tarrafal de São Nicolau	The official name for the municipality bears the full form: “Câmara Municipal do Tarrafal de São Nicolau” I am not sure if the town is known as “Tarrafal de São Nicolau” or simply “Tarrafal”;
		Vila das Pombas
Adopted model: Xxxxx Xxxxx, Cape Verde Xxxxx, island justification: to avoid confusion with islands bearing the same name in other countries;	Adopted model: Xxxxx Xxxxx, Cape Verde Xxxxx, municipality Xxxxx, municipality, Cape Verde Xxxxx, Cape Verde, municipality Xxxxx, Cape Verdean municipality justification: to avoid confusion with...;	Adopted model: Xxxxx Xxxxx, Cape Verde Xxxxx, island Xxxxx, city Xxxxx, town justification: to avoid confusion with towns bearing the same name in Cape Verde;

Notes:

• Clashes are shown in light blue background;
• Only the municipality seats are shown here; for the other towns, the same model will be applied;
• When the name is unique, the consistency of the model may be broken for the sake of simplicity;

Does this help?

Ten Islands (talk) 19:08, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

will this be the last section?

Thanks a lot for taking the time to build this table :) I thiiink we have reached consensus, but I want to make sure about the disambiguation titles for the municipalities

• my proposal is: "Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality)"
• you propose "Xxxxx, municipality, Cape Verde", "Xxxxx, Cape Verde, municipality" or "Xxxxx, Cape Verdean municipality".

I was going to argue in favor of my proposal, but I erased what I wrote and decided to go look for Wikipedia guidelines already written about it. There are LOTS of pages talking about this problem, but the most relevant for our case is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places)#Determine prevalent usage and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (city names)#General rules. According to these, we could have the following options (excluding those that would clash with the previously agreed names for settlements and islands) (note that "municipality", as a qualifier suffix, never comes after a comma):

1. Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality)
2. Xxxxx municipality, Cape Verde
3. Xxxxx municipality (Cape Verde)
4. Xxxxx (Cape Verdean municipality)
5. Xxxxx (municipality of Cape Verde)

From these, I'd exclude the option 2, as it would prevent the usage of the pipe trick. The options 4 and 5 also seem to me a bit like pushing the line on those guidelines. For choosing between the two options left, Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality) and Xxxxx municipality (Cape Verde), I believe the first one is better, as it would render like this when used with the pipe trick: "Xxxxx, Cape Verde" while the other would become "Xxxxx municipality". The first one would be much more unambiguous, IMO.

Then the simplification part: With the model I propose, we'd drop the "(municipality)" prefix, using it only to prevent clashes with the islands. this is basically what I have proposed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Cape Verde/Places/Dab#target4 2, but now I have two guidelines to back me up :P

After we finally settle this issue, we should create a Cape-Verde specific guideline and link it from Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Specific countries. So, do you agree with my proposal? To make it clear, it is Xxxxx, Cape Verde for municipalities whose names don't clash with island names, and Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality) for those who do. And simply Xxxxx for those that really unique (these are marked in bold in the /dab subpage). --Waldir ^talk 23:01, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, you know me (also from the Portuguese Wikipedia), and you already know my way of thinking. I am more concerned about uniformization and standardization that about model-X or model-Y. If you want to be you to choose a specific model, go for it, I trust in you!
About your last paragraph, only three municipalities are really unique (simply Xxxxx), I think: Ribeira Grande de Santiago, Santa Catarina do Fogo, São Lourenço dos Órgãos. Perhaps the model “Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality)” over “Xxxxx, Cape Verde” is safer. I am not aware of any village, mountain, creek, person, etc. with the names “Santa Catarina” and “São Miguel” in Cape Verde, but we never know what the future may reserve after careful investigation. But I repeat: whatever you decide, it will be O. K. for me. Ten Islands (talk) 11:39, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Wellll, by writing «Perhaps the model “Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality)” over “Xxxxx, Cape Verde” is safer» seems a bit like you're contradicting yourself when you wrote above «When the name is unique, the consistency of the model may be broken for the sake of simplicity», but you know, I actually agree with you. We'd better have the simpler names redirect to the complex (complete?) ones, as that would prevent future moves if anything else with the same name eventually appears. We'd instead just have to change the redirects to disambiguation pages in case such thing happens, which is an easy thing to do. So yea, I agree, let's use Xxxxx, Cape Verde (municipality) instead of the simplified versions (without one or two of the suffixes). Oh, and by the way, there are four unique municipality names, not just 3: you forgot "Tarrafal de São Nicolau" ;-)

Secondly, come on, we both know this is not about who gets to choose the model that's gonna be used, it never was :) we are both committed to find the best solution for the problem. So don't bother mentioning that (thanks for your trust anyway! May I add, it's reciprocal)

Finally... well actually I forgot what the third point was, but anyway, I'll use it to say that since it seems we've reached consensus, I'll go on and start working on the renaming/updating links/creating redirects stuff. I will as time permits also start work on the Cape Verde naming convention guideline, which btw can later be translated to pt so we can avoid having the same discussion all over (it's pretty exhausting, isn't it?). Well It seems to be all, thanks a lot for your help and patience. Let the changes begin! --Waldir ^talk 15:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Regarding Boa Vista, Brava, Maio, and Sal

This is about the current setup of the municipalities of Cape Verde, where the four islands below, and the municipalities with the same name, have separate articles:

• Boa Vista, Cape Verde and Boa Vista, Cape Verde (municipality)
• Brava, Cape Verde and Brava, Cape Verde (municipality)
• Maio, Cape Verde and Maio, Cape Verde (municipality)
• Sal, Cape Verde and Sal, Cape Verde (municipality)

However, the four islands and municipalities cover exactly the same territories. So I think it makes sense to merge the articles together, and not have separate articles, because what applies to the island also applies to the municipality, and vice versa.

A similar example can be found for the provinces of Indonesia. Here, some provinces cover more than one island, some provinces cover only part of one island, and some provinces cover exactly one island. For example, the island of Bali cover the same territory as the province of Bali. We do not have separate articles, one for the island, and one for the province, as this would not make any sense. (Contrast this with Maluku and Maluku (province), which are separate articles because they cover different territories.)

I think the article of any of the above Cape Verdean islands can be easily changed to reflect that it is both an island and a municipality. We can just add one sentence at the end of the introduction paragraph:

Boa Vista (Portuguese meaning “good view”) is the easternmost island of Cape Verde. It is located in the Barlavento group of the archipelago. The island is known for marine turtles and traditional music, as well as its ultramarathon and its sand dunes and beaches. The island itself is also one of the 22 municipalities of Cape Verde.

Hope to hear your opinion on this matter. Chanheigeorge (talk) 15:24, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, my opinions have already been extensively stated in the discussion above. I would like instead to hear your thoughts on the points that were raised and agreed on it. Sorry, I know it's big, but we had a hard time going through it all until we reached a consensus, and this would somewhat require repetition of arguments already presented. --Waldir ^talk 19:52, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The only significant opinion I can find about this topic in the discussion seems to be this one:

Always separate the articles on the islands (covering geographical data) and the municipalities (covering political data), even if they overlap in area. This provides for consistency of the model and makes it scalable for the future in case the islands gain more divisions (as happened with São Nicolau in 2005). For reference, only five such cases remain (São Vicente, Sal, Boa Vista, Maio and Brava), in a set of 22 municipalities.

I don't see how this is necessary, for the following reasons:

• Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, so we do not write and plan articles for possible future events. If the islands do gain more divisions in the future, we can just easily split into two articles when that happens.
• Other countries do not separate geographical and political entities that cover the same territories, as shown by the Bali example.
• Right now, three of the municipality articles: Boa Vista, Cape Verde (municipality), Brava, Cape Verde (municipality), and Maio, Cape Verde (municipality), have very little information. The other, Sal, Cape Verde (municipality), have some information about the economy and transportation. However, all these information equally applies to the island itself. So the island article Sal, Cape Verde actually becomes worse as a result, as some useful information is lost. If the articles are merged, all information are in the same article, and readers can easily find the necessary information in one place.
• After merging, "XXX, Cape Verde (municipality)" will redirect to "XXX, Cape Verde", so there's no worries about people going to the incorrect pages, or having red links.
• Uniformity about names is not really that important. For example, look at Category:Provinces of Spain. A lot of articles have "(province)" in their titles because they clash with city names, but a few do not. So I do not see why we need to have "(municipality)" in every Cape Verde municipality article title.

So here's my opinions. And I'm not proposing some sort of big changes, just some minor tweaks by merging a few articles together. I hope my suggestions make sense. Chanheigeorge (talk) 01:45, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Chanheigeorge. Aside from the arguments already provided by Waldir, I would like to add others:

• Yes, Wikipedia is not a “crystal ball”, but we do intend to expand articles regarding Cape Verde. The only drawback is, since we are very few involved in that, the articles take time to take shape. Perhaps it’s better to leave the articles ready for expansions instead of having again all the trouble we had in moving, renaming and redirecting articles.
• Some municipalities cover the same area as the islands, but they are not the same thing! A municipality is an administrative division, while an island is a geographical landform. In a municipality article one can put some political info, administrative info, but it makes no sense putting, let’s say, geological info... Separate issues can be described in separate articles.
• Don’t forget that Wikipedia is a multilanguage project. In Portuguese and Italian Wikipedias the separation of islands and administrative divisions is very clear. Merging the articles in English would provoke some troubles with the interwikis.
• There are a lot of cases of ambiguity regarding place names in Cape Verde. It was decided that, following the Wikipedia criteria, a place name alone would be reserved for a disambiguation page, while the place names would bear the suffix of the geographical category immediately above. But municipalities (which are not places, but they are coincident with places) would bear the suffix “municipality”.
• By the way, I haven’t made any change yet, but I did not agree with other moves you made. For instance, there is a village near Calheta de São Miguel that is called São Miguel. If the article about that village will be made, there will be a conflict with the article regarding the municipality.

Did I help?

Ten Islands (talk) 06:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

On your second point:

Some municipalities cover the same area as the islands, but they are not the same thing! A municipality is an administrative division, while an island is a geographical landform. In a municipality article one can put some political info, administrative info, but it makes no sense putting, let’s say, geological info... Separate issues can be described in separate articles.

That's exactly the problem, and it goes against common practice. For example, Iceland the geographical island cover the same area as Iceland the political state. So do we have one article for all the geographical stuff and one article for all the political stuff? No. We have one and only one article, Iceland, which covers everything from geology to history to government to demographics to economy to culture. Same for Bali, both an island and a province. If that can be done for articles with so much more information, why not Sal, Cape Verde? And dividing up the information into "geographical" and "political" stuff is problematic. What exactly are economy and transportation, are they geographical or political, as they would seem to be important to both the island and the municipality? If Wikipedias of other languages separate them into different articles, I think that's a mistake, and I wouldn't follow them.

On your last point: If there's another village in Cape Verde called "São Miguel", then no problem, we should move back São Miguel, Cape Verde to São Miguel, Cape Verde (municipality), and make the São Miguel, Cape Verde page about the village or a dab page. However, if there are no other Cape Verde places with the same name, like Ribeira Grande de Santiago, Cape Verde (I assume), then I don't see why we need the "(municipality)" added to the title, as this would be redundant. The current redirect scheme works without any problem. Chanheigeorge (talk) 09:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree with George here and support the merger. Yes, an island and a municipality are not the same thing, but they can and should be in one article if the municipality in reality covers the island exactly. As pointed out above, we have one article for Iceland, which discusses the history of the island starting from long before the modern state of Iceland was formed. Same thing with Cyprus, Madagascar and so forth. Sri Lanka is both an island and a country, discussed in one article. Puerto Rico is both an island and a territory of the United States, discussed in one article. Norfolk Island is both an island and a territory of Australia, discussed in one article. I could fill a dozen more lines with examples like that. (spoiler: see List of island countries)

To respond to "separate issues can be described in separate articles": Yes, they can, but they can also be described in separate sections of the arcticle. This way, the reader finds what he's looking for, and doesn't have to look at two separate articles to find the information. Better for the reader, and certainly better for the editor writing about the page. By the way, that's the way it's done in Iceland, Cyprus, Madagascar, etc. As long as the articles don't become too long (which is hardly the problem here), I see no problem in putting everyting in one article. Also, how things are done in the Spanish, Italian or Swahili Wikipedia gives no indication of how things should be done here. Every Wikipedia has its own rules that may differ significantly from each other. If you're concerned about ambiguity (for example, if you want to create an article about the village near Calheta de São Miguel), we have a guideline explaining the different possibilities. Jafeluv (talk) 20:44, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The articles have now been merged by NickPenguin. Jafeluv (talk) 07:05, 29 July 2009 (UTC)