Talk:Mediterranean Europe

Moved from Project:votes for deletion by (WT-en) Evan

• Mediterranean Europe. Made redundant by new Europe categories. All pages which linked to it now link somewhere else. (WT-en) Professorbiscuit 18:32, 15 Oct 2004 (EDT)
  • Disagree - Page should REDIRECT to Europe or somewhere that is similarly relevant. It could be a disambiguation page if multiple pages are relevant. - (WT-en) Huttite 00:59, 16 Oct 2004 (EDT)
  • Disagree - REDIRECT, not delete. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:01, 28 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Map Coloring

I've prepared (WT-en) alternative map coloring of Mediterranean Europe. Please comment if you like it. -- (WT-en) JanSlupski 10:25, 12 Feb 2005 (EST)

Nobody commented... So, now revert if you dislike ;-)
BTW. If still nobody care to comment I'll go forward and change coloring of another European region :-P --(WT-en) JanSlupski 20:17, 22 Mar 2005 (EST)

I don't like it. There are way too many colors, it's hard to read and doesn't look professional. (WT-en) Jpatokal 21:05, 22 Mar 2005 (EST)

title-what countries

Shouldn't Serbia be removed from this category now that Montenegro is no longer part of Serbia and Montenegro?

I agree Serbía is hard to define as a Mediterranean country now that it is no longer part of a country with a Mediterranean coastline, the same goes for Macedonia as well. I personally know geography quite well and don't think of either as being Mediterranean.--84.153.71.221 12:57, 3 November 2006 (EST)

France?

Why isn't the South of France included in this page?

It is the same problem in wikipedia, where a lot of people doesn't accept (for ideological geopolical reason I think) the fact that France is a latin and mediterranean country, for no rational reasons they think that France should be arbitrary linked only with UK and Netherlands; (countries with which ones France doesn't share much in term of culture and language - only a little bit of common points in regions such as Nord-pas-de-calais, Normandy or Britanny who share some superficial similarities (such as climates and ambiance) with Wales (in the case of Britany), with Netherlands (in the case of Nord-pas-de-calais) and with England for Normandy. France, as a country with mediterranean coasts, of latin herency, whose culture is rooted in the mediterranean area share a lot of the common point that share Spain and Italy (even more in some cases). —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 71.6.12.114 (talk • contribs) 14 August 2006

On the other hand, some countries like Serbia or Croatia could be excluded, since the mediterranean part is very limited, and because the culture and mopst of the people of this slavic country is not of mediterranean origin but rooted in the central-eastern Europe.—The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 82.224.59.166 (talk • contribs) 2 September 2006

• I'd say Nice and Marseilles were obviously Mediterranean. Dubrovnik certainly feels that way to a visitor. (WT-en) Pashley 02:25, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Change name?

I've just added a remark about Alexandria and other places which to me are also obviously Mediterranean, though mostly not European. Comment? I'd say we should scrap "Mediterranean Europe", especially if it does not fit current European hierarchy, replace it with a "Mediterranean region" article covering more. (WT-en) Pashley 02:25, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Macedonia

I rolled back the change of Macedonia to FYROM. Unless there's a really important reason for us to use this longer and clumsier name, I'd rather not. --(WT-en) Evan 17:36, 4 December 2006 (EST)

Sub-regions

It's bothered me that this region of a dozen nations and a half-dozen city states, stretching from the Atlantic to the Middle East isn't formally broken down into more specific sub-regions. We have the sub-regions of Iberia (which appears in the breadcrumbs) and the Balkans (which does not), but they aren't acknowledged here. What remains are Italy and its neighbors, and the the eastern countries... which I'm not sure what to call. Is the "Apennine Peninsula" too geo-geek a term for Italy and friends? Would it be insulting to Cyprus to call the eastern region "Aegean" (which is certainly what binds Greece and Turkey together)? Or do we include Greece in the Balkans and call Turkey and Cyprus the, er, "Asia Minor" region of Europe? - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 09:58, 22 May 2007 (EDT)

Agreed, this article should definitely include its subregions. "Aegean" may not be very accurate for Cyprus, but for once politics would work in our favor since this classification would firmly group the island with either Turkey or Greece, depending on how you prefer to interpret it. Besides we can argue that it has an "Aegean culture" ;) Wouldn't the Apennine Peninsula only include San Marino, Vatican City, and Italy? If so, the region page would necessarily run into content overlap with the Italy article, since the latter comprises 99% of the former's territory. I think we could do without a subregion for the Italian Peninsula and just note in the Italy article that it surrounds two independent city states, San Marino and the Vatican. In any rate, our current practice is to list all sovereign regions contained by a parent region (e.g., Saint Lucia is listed in North America as well as the Caribbean), so the Vatican and San Marino will still be linked. So I suppose that we will continue listing all the Mediterranean, European countries on this page regardless of what regions we also list. I'm not a huge fan of this practice though. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 14:45, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

Bump. With Kosovo and Montenegro added to the list, this region now covers 20 countries, which is way over the suggested limit of 9. "Southeastern Europe" (everything east of Slovenia) seems one fairly obvious group, but how to label Italy, San Marino, Vatican, Spain, Andorra and Portugal? (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:23, 18 February 2008 (EST)

You might want to follow this discussion: http://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Talk:Europe/Hierarchy#2_proposals

(WT-en) Globe-trotter 09:22, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

NOT FRANCE ??

Not a word about the most tourist mediterranean european region : the southern coast of France. Not a word about French riviera, where the most famous mediterranean spot lies: Nice, Monaco, Cannes, Saint Tropez

Not a word about Provence, Languedoc regions ? not a word about Marseille, the french oldest city, second biggest city of that country, the biggest mediterranean port, which construct itself as a euro-mediterranean capital ?

Not a word about Corsica, the fourth mediterranean island ?

excluding france of the mediterranean europe is a deep misconception. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 82.224.59.166 (talk • contribs)

If you'd take a moment to look, you'll see we have articles about the French Riviera, including Nice, Cannes, Corsica, etc. The city-state of Monaco is even listed on this page. It's just that most of France is not on the Mediterranean, so we included it in the Western Europe region instead. It's simply a method of organizing the guide into a geographical hierarchy, not some misguided unawareness that these places exist. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 13:32, 24 June 2007 (EDT)

Whether we have articles somewhere is not the point; the question is whether to include (at least parts of) France in Mediterranean Europe. The answer is "Naturellement!". I've added some text; please comment or edit. (WT-en) Pashley 03:02, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

That text was intended as a stopgap, the absolute minimum we could say about France here. Just to be clear, I'd like to see my text deleted and France added in the list of countries. I did not feel I could do that directly since the question is under discussion, so I did what I could. (WT-en) Pashley 03:57, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

I think 82.224.59.166's remarks raise an important point. Anyone looking at a "Mediterranean Europe" page expects (rightly) to see France. Listing France does go against a small and, I would argue, misguided piece of Project:Geographical hierarchy. While we certainly have to make a choice about France's breadcrumb parent, it really does no harm to list it in both indexes Western Europe and Mediterranean Europe as this creates no significant content overlap. It does however do harm to leave it out of the Mediterranean article because readers less familiar with our practices will think it to be missing, making our guide look less professional—I can certainly see why someone just becoming acquainted with Wikivoyage would be shocked not to see France on this page. Can we please discuss this further at Project:Geographical hierarchy#Single parents. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 04:47, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

If we include France in this region, that adds yet another country to the list, making this an increasedly unwieldy region. It's a long way with a lot of stops in between (physically and culturally) from Portugal to Cyprus. Sub-regions? (See above.) - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 08:50, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

Splitting up Europe is exercise in frustration, because as soon as you label a country as (say) Southern somebody will come yell that Molvania is definitely Western/Central/Eastern/Mediterranean/Balkan/not-Balkan/... if "Mediterranean Europe" is good enough for L***** P*****, it's good enough for me. (Just this once.) (WT-en) Jpatokal 13:26, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

That said, I wouldn't object to renaming Med. Europe as Southern Europe if it solves something -- which I doubt. (WT-en) Jpatokal 14:22, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

I understand the objection of a too long list if we include France - but then, why including Serbia ?? Which is NOT at all a mediterranean country, and whose slavic culture is not much linked with it, but better among eastern European countries than with Spain for exemple. I think you should exclude Serbia and include France instead.

"It's just that most of France is not on the Mediterranean, so we include it in western Europe ". Can we say really that most of Spain is on the mediterranean ? it is forgetting that most of it is more continental or Atlantic. And what about Portugal, which is not at all on the mediterranean (having no shores on it, contrary to France), why is it listed in mediterranean Europe and not in western Europe ?? Portugal and Spain are Atlantic countries which are much more situated at west than France. Vigo, Santander, Santiago de compostella, Basque country, or even Castilla-Y-Leon or Madrid are not mediterranean either. —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 82.224.59.166 (talk • contribs)

Agreed, it is kind of silly to include Serbia and Portugal (and don't forget Macedonia and not-at-all-Mediterranean Andorra. Now if we didn't make such an exception for countries (by listing all contained countries on all parent regions throughout the hierarchy) and just listed countries or their immediate parent regions on this article, then everything would suddenly make sense. Serbia looks silly on the Mediterranean Europe article, but Balkans looks perfectly appropriate. Same with Andorra and Iberia. I'm not a fan of our practice of listing all countries in every single region page up the breadcrumb trail (does Macau really need to be listed in Asia?). I think we may be guilty of not taking our region articles seriously enough. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:05, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

I'd just like to add that Monaco is not situated between France and Italy, but inside the french départment of "Alpes maritimes". Italy stands some kilometers away from Monaco.

As I said above, I added an explanation of why France isn't there. It has just been deleted with a comment that self-reference, explaining the hierarchy in article text, will lead to chaos. That may well be correct, but I'd say it is better than leaving France entirely out of the article. To me it seems obvious we should just find a way to include France here, since it obviously belongs. If we can't manage that, then I'd say we need the explanation. (WT-en) Pashley 14:44, 29 March 2008 (EDT)

I'm fine with adding a mention of additional regions. I'd suggest have a pointer paragraph at the end of the regions section to other subregions which may be considered part of the region. I'd druther France was not singled out for special treatment in this. Could we combine it with the rather bizzare paragraph about "Historic Cities" into some kind of see also at the end of the regions section? - (WT-en) Colin 15:54, 29 March 2008 (EDT)

Alphabetic or geographic order?

(WT-en) Peter just alphabetised the list of cities. While that is consistent with what others have done on other pages, my reaction is very strongly negative. Methinks they should obviously be listed in geographical order, in this case West-to-East or vice versa. What do others think? Is there a policy governing this? (WT-en) Pashley 03:23, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

The only place I have ever seen this practice discussed was here, and the general consensus of this brief discussion was that alphabetizing is the way to go. I see why you might prefer a geographical order. But I think I still prefer alphabetical lists—since it would be hard to determine geographical order for other regions that are not clearly lined up from east to west (or north to south), alphabetized lists will give us greater consistency across Wikivoyage and could easily be written up into policy pages. I'm certainly open to other arguments, though. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 04:10, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

I appreciate Pashley's argument, but from the point of view of consistency I support the alphabetized system. If we change it here, then it opens the way for contributors to start listing cities on other articles geographically and, as Peter mentions, that would be very difficult to organize in many cases. Actually, there is a policy. It is something like, capital city on top (not relevant in this case) and other cities below in alphabetical order - though don't ask me where that policy is listed. (WT-en) WindHorse 10:06, 30 June 2007 (EDT)

Cities

This ties in to discussions above about which countries to include and "Not France?". In general, I'd say the article is a bit muddled and needs sorting out. Not sure, how, though.

What on Earth are Belgrade, Lublijana and Lisbon doing on the list of major Mediterranean cities? Lisbon is at least a Mediterranean culture, but are the others? None of the three is geographically near the Med. Someone just deleted Izmir, but left those three. Are you joking? Izmir is on the Med and is the center of a major tourist area. And what about Marseille, Nice, Naples, ... or for that matter, Beirut and Alexandria?

If we are limiting it to nine, and I think we should, we need some discussion of which nine. (WT-en) Pashley 08:39, 14 August 2007 (EDT)

I only removed Ismir because it was added most recently, there was no explaination and I personally do not know it. But I agree I should have removed Belgrade and Lublijana, too (just did it now!). As far as I can see nothing happened after the above dicussions. So maybe we should just do the sorting out, if someone does not like it he could revert... --(WT-en) Flip666 ^writeme! • 09:09, 14 August 2007 (EDT)

Portugal

Since when was Portugal on the Mediterranean? It may have a Mediterranean climate but it's on the Atlantic! (WT-en) Rhys 03:26, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

Mediterranean culture, too. But then, so does France which does have a coast on the Med and we do not include it. These have been discussed before; see above. I'd include both. (WT-en) Pashley 08:52, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

In the new regions of Europe Portugal is part of Iberia and the region Mediterranean Europe is n't in use anymore. --(WT-en) Rein N. 09:37, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

...and I've just redirected it to Europe to make this clearer. (WT-en) Jpatokal 10:09, 2 April 2009 (EDT)

France IS on the mediterranean (geographically) and IS of mediterranean culture as Italy, Spain or Portugal are (romance language, catholic religion, etc). The architecture of all the southern half is very similar to that of Italy, Spain or Portugal. the red-roman tiles that are emblematic of southern Europe are found as far as Vendée end southern Burgondy. Urban characteristics of cities (densily populated historical core) is also a characteristic found in most of France, not only in the south... France has much more in common with Spain or Italy than with UK and Netherlands. If Portugal is incuded in mediterranean Europe there is absolutly no reason that France is not! Portugal is even much more situated at west than France is... Portugal is not situated on the mediterranean... and finally that is Portugal that is included in "mediterranean Europe" and France only in "western Europe" while situed on the mediterranean and much more east than Portugal!... if it is such those terms loose completly all their signification. Either Portugal and Spain have to be included in "western Europe" (since more western European than France), or either France has to be included in mediterranean Europe with Spain, and Portugal in "atlantic or 'western' Europe" only.

You have joined an old discussion. The region doesn't exist anymore on Wikivoyage. --(WT-en) inas 06:12, 27 January 2011 (EST)

"Do" section

Assuming this article isn't going to be reverted to a redirect (which perhaps it should be), does anyone dissent from deleting all the contents of the "Do" section? Extra-hierarchical regions of this nature should have very brief descriptions and direct readers to more developed articles with more content. The entire Mediterranean area of Europe is much too big for it to make sense for there to be specific "Do"s. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Those were more of less my thoughts, tough I wasn't specifiably thinking of the Do section. Some of tease sections should defiantly go. Also pretty much anything that would become seriously out of date of left unmaintained should be left to the Europe article; we don't want to need to waste time and effort doing much maintenance of this. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 18:41, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Why is this a useful page?

This page had been redirected to Europe, I think on the basis that there is such a long Mediterranean coast that it's not very useful to have a page devoted to all the countries that have one. So why not turn this back into a redirect? What is gained, otherwise? Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:58, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

This was redirected before we had extra-hierarchical regions, so I plunged froward and wend ahead with that method; being of limited usefulness is precisely the reason this is an EHR. It seamed to be that if a reader had bookmarked this page, or specifiably looks up "Mediterranean Europe", it would be better to present him with this page. Limited usefulness of a region seems like a week argument when a reader is specifiably requesting that region. I don't feel that strongly about this tough. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 18:28, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Why would it be better to present this page than to simply have the search term redirect to Europe? That's what's not clear to me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:33, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Although now that you've pared this article, it seems pretty good to me, so I'm fine with it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:35, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not really fine with this, even if we got rid of the very un-WV-like fruit-loop-colored lists. "Mediterranean Europe" might be a useful division if you're giving a lecture on the trade networks of sea-faring civilizations of antiquity, but from the traveller's perspective it is simply not a useful way to divide the continent, which was essentially the conclusion we arrived at when this was reduced from a real article to a redirect the first time 5 years ago. A simple redirect to Europe#Regions shows the reader all they need to know at a glance — that our coverage breaks down Mediterranean Europe into 5 regions. Texugo (talk) 12:30, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

As I said, that's precisely why this is an EHR. What's the point of sending the reader to the Europe guide when we have this "guide" about Mediterranean Europe specifiably? Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 14:36, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

As the one who basically came up with it, I am a big fan of the extra-hierarchical region idea. However, it was not meant to justify simple list articles for any and every way of slicing up the world - and we have always sought to avoid list articles. The extra-hierarchical region idea is meant for cases where there is plenty to be said about a given region - general information, relevant to the traveller, that applies uniquely to that full region and which cannot be reasonably covered elsewhere. In this case, however, there are no such shared cultural or logistical generalities among all these various countries; they simply happen to be on the same sea, and as such, all this article could ever be is a list article. It's no more useful than a "Pacific South America" or a "US Atlantic Seaboard" article would be - a simple glance at a map will tell you what you need to know about how our content is organized, so a redirect to such a map makes perfect sense. Texugo (talk) 14:52, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Reviving the discussion around this. Presently this page offers no information that is not found in Europe and seems to be be at most a list article. Can we merge? Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

There has been no further comment since February. I think User:Texugo summed it up nicely by saying: there are no such shared cultural or logistical generalities among all these various countries; they simply happen to be on the same sea

Any final objections before a merge? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:20, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Instead of a merge, I went for a disambiguation for now. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:34, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to have a disambig page for the whole body of water and a second separate disambig for the European portion thereof, so why not just redirect to Mediterranean Sea? Texugo (talk) 21:53, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

I was unaware of that article. Redirecting. Andrewssi2 (talk) 03:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)