Talk:Lake Tanganyika

Is this article needed

Bodies of water and all.... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

VFD discussion

Lake Tanganyika

A body of water is this article that is hardly more than a skeleton really necessary? Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:13, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• Speedy delete. Clearly against policy. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:40, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• Merge Nkupi Lodge listing to an appropriate article. I'd like to redirect this search term, but the problem is that the lake is between Southern Africa, East Africa and Central Africa, so the redirect would have to be to Africa. But we should probably do it anyway. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• This is a lake on a border, so it cannot fit well into our hierarchy; I think it should be handled like Lake Tai, as an extrahierarchical region (see Wikivoyage:Extraregion). On the other hand, we have articles like Lake Tahoe, Lake Como, Lake Garda and others which are tagged as regular regions although some of them do not fit well either.

In any case, I oppose deletion since it is a real place, and I'd say anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa that I've actually heard of must be fairly important since in general I am profoundly ignorant about that region. Unless a good redirect is found, an extra region tag seems the obvious solution. Pashley (talk) 04:43, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, you're probably right about this as an extrahierarchical region. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:53, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• comment: Even if we were to make it an extra-hierarchical region, most of its current content would have to be moved or deleted. And I don't see it getting new, appropriate content anytime soon. If anything the extra-region should be "Great African lakes" or "African rift valley" Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:01, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
• Convert to extra-region - I believe that this title should be made into an extra-region, but as there is little or nothing to say to unify the region as a whole, it should be a very stripped-down one like Lake Ontario. That ferry information and sleep listing should be likely moved to a new article on Mpulungu. Texugo (talk) 12:27, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• A related and quite problematic article is MV Liemba, about a famous ferry on the lake. See its talk page for (too) much discussion. I suggest we merge and redirect it to the lake article, dropping unnecessary detail en route. Pashley (talk) 15:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• I'm sorry for being terribly blunt, but I don't understand what's so unclear about "we don't write articles about bodies of water". What little information is in the article itself does not describe a region, extrahierarchical or otherwise - it describes the lake itself. Perhaps we should redirect (though the point about what to redirect to is well taken), but there's no rationale for converting this into an extraregion that has any basis in current policy. This case is about as clear-cut as it gets. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 15:51, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• I've done some editing and it does now describe an extra region, albeit not very well yet. Of course the article can still be deleted if consensus goes against me, but at least now we have a concrete example of what I think is worth keeping.

I have not tried to do the merge I suggested above & won't until this vfd is resolved.

What is unclear about "we don't write articles about bodies of water" is that in fact we do. I gave four "Lake ..." examples above and there are many others. Lake Baikal, Great Lakes, Mediterranean Sea, Caribbean, Persian Gulf, ... Pashley (talk) 16:08, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Pashley: of the examples you gave, Great Lakes and Caribbean describe pretty well-known, well-established regions that happen to be named after bodies of water, and the other three probably should be VfD'd too. The mere fact that we have lots of articles that were written in defiance of policy doesn't make the policy itself ambiguous. If we want to change policy to accommodate these articles, great. but that's another matter entirely. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:13, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I do not believe any of these "defy policy", since the last paragraph of the policy page reads:

"Where the information on the body of water is contained within several articles, or the body of water is large and not specific to a single region, create a extraregion page referencing the destination guides, travel topics and itineraries associated with it."

That is exactly the case here!

Perhaps some of the examples mentioned should be changed to extra regions rather than treated as regular regions, but that is a separate issue & I think not at all urgent. Pashley (talk) 16:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

• This could be an extraregion, but with this amount of content, the article seems unnecessary. I am not sure if this region works as a region in terms of being more homogenous for the tourist as a lake than the parts of surrounding countries are within themselves. I'd merge the content, if any applicable, to the appropriate articles on surrounding regions. MV Liemba apparently is a major attraction and has no website (from what I infer from the article), so I could see this article stand as a travel topic, much like the Baltic Sea ferries. PrinceGloria (talk) 09:14, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

• We are past two weeks & I'd like to close this as keep in its current extraregion form. Does anyone object? User:AndreCarrotflower? Pashley (talk) 13:49, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm late to this discussion but would support a keep as extraregion, by lack of a better name or structure. To me, this article is not about the body of water itself and thus is not against policy. May not be as well known as its Western counterparts, but I'd say it's an African version of Lake Como and such. "Lake Tanganyika" is a travellers' destination as a region, including all the different towns where one could sleep or eat. Deleting it would be a clear mistake to me. JuliasTravels (talk) 14:03, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Result: kept Pashley (talk) 14:47, 20 July 2015 (UTC)