Talk:Upper Egypt

Reversion

Ceever, you've reverted the list of towns to exclude "separate destinations", but IMHO this is unhelpful. Abu Simbel is a town. El Kab is a sight near Edfu, and Silsila is a sight near Kom Ombo, both mentioned next to those towns and sufficiently marked thereby. "Destination" doesn't seem quite the word for red-ink Lake Nasser, it doesn't have water sports, marinas etc as far as I know. Grahamsands (talk) 17:37, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

1. I also converted spoken language to readable/written "it's" to "it is" and other minor grammar/spelling things. Why this reversion?
2. I added Silsila as a proper listing. All places under the region should be at least once appear as a proper listing.
3. Someone put El Kab before, so why would we remove it as long as we have enough space? Because it does not have its own article?
4. The rule on cities is alphabetic order, no matter what - as you can see from the manual of style.
5. Cities is for actual cities and towns, and "Other destinations" is for the rest unless you want to put it under Do or See. This is why we have those chapters, to actually use them.
6. Separating such things helps the traveller, since he will be used to it from other article and he can actually distinguish cities/towns from other places aka non-cities.
7. We always use markers with wikidata entry, for proper GPS and Wikipedia reference. Even for lake Nasser.
8. Never have I see any standard that allows to use By bus: instead of the regular subchapters. If there is such, please direct me to the appropriate style manual.

Ceever (talk) 07:41, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

There's one exception to alphabetical order in "Cities": If one of the cities is the capital of the country or region, it goes first. Otherwise, yes, alphabetical order for all. And Ceever is right: Grahamsands, please look at Wikivoyage:Quick big city article template for an example of proper section header format. I'm highly inclined to revert your edits for format, regardless of anything else, and I strongly suggest you take care of the fixes as soon as you can. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:45, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I did revert you. Argue about the content here, but please don't mess with standard Wikivoyage structure. All aspects of standard structure here have been debated till there was a consensus. You can try to reopen a discussion into what format is optional in the appropriate thread, but until or unless your ideas win the day, all of us need to operate within the existing consensus. Ikan Kekek (talk) 09:07, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I am baffled by this, because I don’t believe I am flouting WV style. For instance, it is not generally the style to convert “it’s” to “it is”, “that’s” to that is, etc – the effect is stiff and robotic. The guidance is for lively conversational style, without degenerating into slang. Ceever’s rollback also introduced typos, which no doubt he would himself have fixed by and by.

This is a regional page so it can mark and mention all its constituent “cities” since there are fewer than nine and with no subregions – using “city” in its broad WV sense, some are obviously bigger than others. Abu Simbel is therefore a “city” and it seems odd not to treat it like the others.

Regional pages often don’t contain all the same sections as city pages. “Upper Egypt” had almost none, they appear to have been removed in Jan 2018. Selfiecity added them back before I could do so. No change has been made to the constituent city pages: some are poor outlines and need development.

A regional page can’t mention all the sights, just the highlights. This is naturally done if each city marker gets a line saying what they are; and they might also feature in “See” and “Do”. Obviously they get further description and markers on the relevant city page. So Valley of the Kings is on the edge of Luxor, it's mentioned on regional page but doesn’t need a marker (which would obscure the city). I suggest that El Kab and Silsila are similarly close to their base towns on this map scale - and “range of hills” misses the point that the latter were the royal quarries.

Lake Nasser is the oddity in this and I suggest it pipes to the explainer in “Aswan”, as its political impact has been as great as its geographical.

“Alphabetical cities” I understand to be the default standard if there is no obvious better arrangement. But there often is, in this case the River Nile, and I like the phrase (which I think was yours, Ikan) of “curated list”. De facto many WV lists of cities are not alphabetical, and are all the better for that, being grouped in a more comprehensible way for the reader. TTCF. Grahamsands (talk) 14:07, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

A few things:

(1) Bottom-level regions are not limited in the number of "Cities" or "Other destinations" they can include. Instead, they must include every blue-linked city and other destination there's an article for in that region. Doing anything less means there are orphaned destination articles.

(2) In an article with only 5 cities, alphabetical order seems simplest, although if you'd like to use an order from downstream to upstream on the Nile, I suppose that's possible, providing you explain at the beginning of "Cities" that that's the order in which they're listed.

(3) Whenever subtitles are used, they should be in standard Wikivoyage format. That means ===, not bolded and with colons. I change those or ask for them to be changed every time I see them.

(4) I agree that detailed listings normally don't belong in region articles, and especially so if they should be covered in destination articles linked in the article. But what listings are you arguing about? Had there previously been detailed listings one of you wanted to keep in the article? Because there are none now. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:37, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

That makes plenty sense, Ikan, and tallies with what I supposed the policy to be (but was beginning to fear I’d hallucinated). Please consider fleshing out the written guidance along those lines: the covid-blight on the “cities” makes it timely to improve the counties / provinces / regions, so there might be similar debate elsewhere. About the buses: many Get in and Get around sections don’t need subdividing if there’s only a line or so about each mode. It seemed helpful to embolden the term for each mode, not to create sub-sections but to avoid them, but since it bugs you (and no doubt others) I’ll desist.

Back to work. Would you, Ceever and anyone else with a POV be content if:

- The cities are here listed north to south, which happens to bring the chief city Luxor to the top? This is without prejudice to the orderings in Middle and Lower Egypt.

- Abu Simbel is marked as type=city, reflecting the underlying "usable" page?

- El Kab is described with Edfu? It’s about 12 km north.

- Silsila is described with Kom Ombo? It can keep its own page unless anyone feels it should redirect.

- Lake Nasser keeps its green marker, but its facilities are expanded under Aswan? There’s no highway or development lakeside except at the High Dam.

Grahamsands (talk) 12:25, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm fine with an order of cities from downstream to upstream, provided that that order is explained at the beginning of "Cities". If Abu Simbel is currently a city, it should be included in "Cities"; if it's just ruins, it should be in "Other destinations". I don't know what you're getting at in regard to COVID-blighted cities. COVID-19 hasn't spared rural areas, but anyway, I don't know how that would affect where full listings go. If in 2 years, cities are all depopulated and everyone moves to the countryside, we can revisit this. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:36, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Ikan Kekek: Re the city vs country thing, I read it as COVID-19 making it moot to update our city articles, because we don't yet know which listings will reopen. This being the case, it's a good time to press pause on editing cities, and get on with articles further up the hierarchy, because they don't tend to have listings, and much more of their content is generalist, so likely to remain true after the pandemic. Correct me if I've misunderstood, Graham.

I happen to agree with that analysis. There are proportionally more region articles at outline than city articles, and also far fewer guide and star regions than cities, so now may be a good time to address that.ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 21:20, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

I see. Yeah, I'm good with this, too. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:04, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Exactly that. There's still much that can be done on the cities, but I doubt it will be possible short term to lift Esna, Edfu and Kom Ombo out of their present scratchy status. Regions are zoomed out and have more scope for improvement. Consider whether style guidelines written primarily towards cities and listings merit tweaking to address regions. Upper Egypt has the twist that there isn't "country", it's either ribbon development or desert. The artery of the Nile means that though it's far from the capital, it's always felt the pulse of events: the journeys of VIPs, the wars, and the plagues. Grahamsands (talk) 07:43, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Please bring that up at Wikivoyage talk:Region article template#What to do with listings that belong to a region, but not a city. More people will see a discussion there, and it's about more than one article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:04, 16 April 2020 (UTC)