Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China/Chinese provinces workgroup

Hi, I am interested in taking part in this project. Do you have any external resources about some detailed information (population, area etc.) of the provinces? --Lorenzarius

The population can be gotten from the Fifth National Census (第五次全国人口普查) result from last year (here). The area can be old area since it mostly unchanged. Density can be calculated. Rest of data can't really be gotten from a single source. Some provinces have websites that describe itself to promote investment.

As of right now, anyone who wishs to participate can list their name on the project. --voidvector

List of 甲A Soccer Teams
上海申花
八一振邦
前卫寰岛
北京国安
四川全兴
大连万达
山东鲁能泰山
广州太阳神
广州松日
延边敖东
武汉雅琪
沈阳海狮
深圳平安
青岛颐中海牛
陕西国力

--voidvector

This project resembles Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. States and WikiProject French departements, ideas can be borrowed from them. --Kt2

National Bureau of Statistics of China - Some data that might be useful. The website is very incomplete like it does not even contain census results. --voidvector

http://www.cncn.com/ Another good source of information about the provinces, much numeric data can be found there. The page is in Simplified Chinese. --Lorenzarius 10:35 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

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I think putting a conversion log on the project page maybe useful. --Lorenzarius

How do you guys (voidvector, Lorenzarius, Olivier) communicate with each other to agree upon a format of the province? Is it discussed on IRC, the newsgroup or other means?. The page is obviously lacking signs of communication among participants where other wikipedians can enter the discussion and contribute. -- kt2

hmmm... you're right, voidvecter started it and I joined, but I think the format by voidvector is very well-done already. Do you have any suggestions? --Lorenzarius

Well I can contribute to some histories of some provinces. Another question. Do we use the format for defunct Chinese provinces, like Rehe, Chahaer, Suiyuan, Fengtian, Xikang etc. ? kt2

Defunct provinces? Although the scope of the project is all the PRC provinces, I can see no reason that we shouldn't apply the template to those. Some parts of the template may not be applicable, though it is not a big problem. (However I would prefer to let those articles stay in their original form) --Lorenzarius

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Questions: (see Hebei)

• should the transportation paragraph be under "tourism", "economy" or "Miscellaneous topics". I would be more in favor of "economy".
• where do we place the list of major cities? In the definition paragraph or in geography?

olivier 12:26 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)

I would favor "economy" as well for "transportation".

I have been putting "cities" under "geography", even though I originally listed it under "demographics". (I forgot about it myself.) I originally put it under "demographics" because "demographics" is about human population. (WikiProject U.S. States puts "cities" under its own paragraph.)

My original template is just my brainstorm of things. Feel free to add, modify, and remove.

--voidvector

I would prefer transportation and cities get their own paragraphs. -- kt2

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I was wondering what constitutes a complete article. --voidvector

I would say everything comprises a successful article with degree of detail defined by readability. A section gets its won article if users add so much about it. All wikipedia articles are not and will never be considered finished with everyday contributions. kt2

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Guys, mind if you check out my history section on Fujian. Is it too long, too concise or just about enough? I'm trying to write sections of similar length on other provinces and would like to have an idea if you are happy with it. Thanx. kt2

It is very well-done! Actually I think that the history section can be a seperate article and we can leave a brief summary on the main province page (just like the WikiProject Countries and US States etc.). --Lorenzarius

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Municipalities

I am pasting below the conversation from Talk:Chongqing. It is probably applicable to other municipalities. olivier 07:29 Jan 22, 2003 (UTC)

I think it would be better to use the title "Chongqing" for "Chongqing city" and add a link to "Chongqing Municipality" on the page. Since most of the other articles refer to "Chongqing city" as "Chongqing". (Please pardon my poor expressions.) --Lorenzarius 15:34 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

New articles mentioning the Municipality will probably simply call it "Chongqing" too. If we follow your suggestion, these links will lead to the City, and that might be confusing. Before changing the name of the "Chongqing city", I would suggest that we create the "Chongqing Municipality" article, and see how many articles link to each of them. If there is a big majority linking to the city, then it might be a good idea to make the change you are suggesting. olivier 15:41 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

You mean these? =) --Lorenzarius 15:46 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

• Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Chongqing
• Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Chongqing Municipality
• Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Chongqing City

Exactly. 12 for "Chongqing city" and 13 for "Chongqing Municipality". Maybe we should leave the article names like this for the moment and keep disambiguating at "Chongqing". olivier 15:49 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Hmmmm then I guess the same thing should be done to the other three Municipalities right? ("municipality" is a hard word to spell =P) Lorenzarius 15:53 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

In the case of the other municipalities, is the territory covered different from the one covered by the city? olivier 17:02 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Another possibility... What about merging the Municipality article and the City article into one? I think most people won't be able to distinguish between the two, but I may be wrong... Lorenzarius 16:06 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

That is an option. We could actually write 2 articles into one, in this case. But what would we do with the "Provinces" template? olivier 17:02 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

Does municipality articel much differ than the city one? IMO Merge them if they are same and explain the small differences in the article. Before they are done, just left them as it is for now. Kt2

I think that in the case of Chongqing, the city is quite different from the municipality (which is basically the size of a regular province). I am not sure about the other ones. olivier 07:24 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)

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Query: Is there anyway of making the Chinese provincial maps more "neutral" when it comes the to status of Taiwan. I don't want to get into a flame war about this, but I suspect that there is a way of doing the colors so that it doesn't take a position as far as the sovereignty of Taiwan.

Note: I do *not* want to get into a flame war about this, but I have seen very clever color schemes (especially from maps from Taiwan) that skirt the issue.

Roadrunner

My suggested answer to the question would be to simply add the island of Taiwan as an additional province on the map. My understanding is that most people in the PRC and in the ROC agree on the fact that china = mainland + island of taiwan. The debate tends to center around "who should rule this entity" rather than "what is the entity". olivier 13:04 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)

As my map source did not include the Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality split I have to correct the maps anyway, so I just uploaded a new version of the Sichuan map which now also includes Taiwan in a light color (not sure if it's notable enough). If that's acceptable I will upload corrected versions of the other maps next days. andy 22:47 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)