Talk:East African Islands

Extremely remote islands

Should we give equal billing to Europa Island and the Glorioso Islands, which are very difficult to visit and lack accommodations, or should we list them below the list of nations, with links but not a color, as in:

There are also two remote French possessions:

Europa Island is a small atoll with an unpaved airstrip and no public accommodations

The Glorioso Islands are all part of a small atoll with one airstrip, some anchorages and no public accommodations

I think at any rate that they should not be put in the list alphabetically. Ikan Kekek (talk) 01:10, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Capitalization

Shouldn't this region be "East African Islands"? It seems bizarre to capitalize only the adjective phrase and not the noun. Does anyone disagree with my proposed change, and if so, why? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:12, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Frankly I have an inherent tendency to see nouns as more "capital letter worthy" than adjectives and consider the concept of "proper adjectives" a bit odd, so I agree with you on that one. Plus, having it all have capital letters is a bit more aesthetically pleasing to me. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:14, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

"East" is capitalized because it's the first word of the title. "African" is a proper adjective. "East African Islands" is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized as a whole. Powers ^(talk) 20:04, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I disagree. We are treating this as the name of a region. I would consider it improper to use sentence case, as if this were just a section of an article and not an article title. How many destination articles have lowercase words (other than "the" and the like) in their titles? Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:08, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree with LtPowers - the East African islands are a grouping that we've created for the purposes of this guide, not a region recognized by a government or international body. WV:capitalization addresses a similar issue: "Points of the compass (north, southeast, etc.)... are capitalized only when they form part of a proper name, such as Northwest Territories or South Korea. Where the name of a region has attained the status of proper names (as with the North of England, Southern California or Western Europe), then the direction word is capitalized. Otherwise it is not, as with eastern Spain or southwest Angola. If you are not sure whether a region has attained proper-name status, assume it has not." I don't think that these islands have attained proper-name status. We're not Germans, after all (not that there's anything wrong with being German.) Ground Zero (talk) 02:02, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I completely agree with WV:Capitalization - as concerns prose, not article titles. I think that leaving "islands" as a lowercase word in a title is very weird. This is a title. Title capitalization, in which all words except for "the", "a", "of" and the like are capitalized, should be used. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:27, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Like Wikipedia:Manual of Style, we use sentence case for titles, not title case. For example, Winter in the Nordic countries (not Nordic Countries), Next-to-impossible destinations, Traveling with high blood pressure, Dealing with emergencies, Renting a motorhome in New Zealand, Rail travel in Africa, and so on. Ground Zero (talk)

Those are travel topics; this is a region. Not the same at all. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:57, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Where is that distortion distinction made in WV policies or in the WP style guide? And isn't "Nordic countries" a region? Ground Zero (talk) 11:51, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

OK, it is. So what it comes down to is this: I find it bizarre and bad-looking to treat region articles as prose, rather than titles. Do what you want, but I think it looks bad. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:38, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I think East African Islands looks more aesthetically pleasing than randomly capitalizing an adjective and not doing the same for a noun. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:42, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, "East" is capitalized because its the first word. I really think that these sort of decisions should be made on the basis of principle-based policy, rather than what people think "looks best". But we probably won't face many of these situations, so I'll let it go. Ground Zero (talk) 21:22, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

We have no obligation to follow WP policies on title case vs. sentence case. I for one think title case is not entirely a bad idea for article-titles. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:30, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

That would be a discussion for Wikivoyage talk:Naming conventions. For now, we should be consistent with other existing article titles like Nordic countries. Powers ^(talk) 00:25, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Outdated East Africa regions map

Swept in from the pub

Well and good that we now treat Somaliland as an independent country and the East African islands as a separate region. Can someone please update the East Africa regions map to reflect that? -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:18, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Island formats

As work in progress, I am following the same format as most other "island" collective pages, by simply marking the islands. Trying to mark the cities just blots out the islands, and adding in the parks blots out both - these can be mentioned in See & Do. SHB2000, you've reverted back to the previous unreadable layout, please explain. Grahamsands (talk) 18:53, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Agree. Ground Zero (talk) 19:15, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

I found your layout even more unreadable because you removed the static map and per Wikivoyage:Map, a static map is strongly favoured for regions with multiple countries breadcrumbed underneath it, compared to your use of markers with whole swathes of text that's completely out-of-style. Although I'm a strong advocate for using dynamic maps, not in this case – the static map clearly highlighted the countries better, and we also don't use markers for regions. I'm not sure which other "island" collective pages you're referring to. All the other "island" collective articles that I've aware of but South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the Lesser Antilles (and I plan to make one) and Antarctic islands use a static map, and it looks perfectly fine. Make your argument on Wikivoyage talk:Map if you want to make your argument. A crowded dynamic map in this case does not particularly matter because the reader can always zoom in, but they probably won't, because there's a good static map. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 08:41, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

So take a look at either map and tell me where is Reunion, and where is Port Louis?

A format designed for land countries needs some adaptation for islands that are tiny dots on the map, though their archipelago nations may be large. You could only focus down on Reunion by knowing where Reunion is. The problem is simply solved by setting an island marker on its chief city, removing all other markers but mentioning key sites (7 +/- 2) in See & Do. Clicking on the island bluelink brings up the next level of detail. Grahamsands (talk) 09:16, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Right, let's take this a step at a time and see what we can all agree on. First, I've moved all the Parks and similar to See and unmarkered - they just clutter the map at zoom=4. Rodrigues however I treated as "other island". I shifted those markers to green to avoid populating the Indian Ocean with railway stations. Grahamsands (talk) 08:40, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Without looking at the map, Réunion is to the southwest of Mauritius and southeast of Antananarivo and Port Louis is situated on the west coast of Mauritius. I still object to moving the ODs to "see" because this will be an outlier and the reason I gave above. Can we come to an agreement before changing the format? SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 10:15, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, don't follow your point about ODs, expand on that? Grahamsands (talk) 12:10, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

While you're mulling that, note I've tweaked the one-liners, and especially removed the misleading description of Mayotte as a "disputed territory". It's clearly not that, there is a rival claim but it's French de facto and de jure, all explained in the Mayotte-Understand section. Grahamsands (talk) 12:26, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

A disputed territory is when two countries claim a territory, and Mayotte is because Comoros claims it (and the encyclopedia agrees with me), so I don't get how the description is misleading. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta) 12:31, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

W Mayotte and WV Mayotte give it only passing mention. I'll shift this particular debate to WV-Mayotte, as that seems the right place to hold it. Grahamsands (talk) 20:30, 25 August 2022 (UTC)