Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ethiopia/Geography

This page is for discussing topics related to articles within the geography department of WikiProject Ethiopia. For general strategies, hierarchy, tasks, and all around general issues of the WikiProject as a whole go to its talk page. For more specific discussions, go to the talk pages of the specific sub-pages (i.e. /History and politics, /Geography, /Languages, /People and culture, /Economy and infrastructure, /Climate and environment, /Resources, /Transliteration, etc.).

Infoboxes

Elfalem is working on some infoboxes for Ethiopian cities (and I think he'll help out w/ woreda and Region ones), but he needs some idea of how much information we can know. Llywrch, I know you have access to CSA data; how many cities does it analyze? If it only gives numbers for the big ones, there's also a site that has current estimates for all cities greater than 20,000 people that we can use, but I have to remember where it was located. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 21:04, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Also, see below for discussion on the information we have. I think that for all cities above 20,000 (72) the standardized information should be Zone, Woreda, Region, Population, Area, and Density, with the last two being missing in probably at least half of the 72 cities. I don't know exactly how the code works, but if "Foundation" can be added for the infobox for cities like Gonder, Addis Abeba, Debre Tabor, Harer, etc. Those below 20,000 in most cases probably don't deserve infoboxes, but if they're relatively prominent despite a size less than 20,000 (e.g. Aksum), or if they have the density information and have potential to be a longer article, then the infobox should still be used. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 21:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Towns and Woredas

Wow! I've been hoping to find somewhere I can explain just what I've been doing & what my goals in creating all of these articles is. So let me begin, first by answering Yom's question. What I have been using is the latest version of pdf files that the CSA has on their website. It contains population statistics for 509 woredas & 927 towns. I have gone thru the latest publication & marked all towns with more than a 20,000 population, which comes to about 72 towns or cities. If people think this is a useful list, I can update the List of cities in Ethiopia with this research.

However, the CSA information is a very brief summary of population estimates for the country: names of administrative units, the area in square kilometers of some of these, & the population, broken down into male & female inhabitants. What I'd like to end up with is something as close to the Rambot entries as possible that it created for all of the cities, counties states, & census units for the United States -- but I can't I can't get that much detail unless I spend a few hundred dollars for the latest Ethiopian census report from 1994. (Take a gander at the CSA website, & calculate just how much a full copy of this work would cost!) This also means that I am trying to follow established standards for structuring information, follow a consistent transliteration scheme, & provide a skeleton for future wikipedians to flesh out; while I want to do it all correctly, I'm willing to settle for getting this mostly right.

As a result, (1) I have drawn from material available from other, plausibly reliable sources (e.g. the World Bank & UN agencies) for further detail, & (2) I have found a number of surprising omissions in the CSA data (the most noticable example being the Tonga special woreda, which is part of the Benishangul-Gumaz Region). I've been working around the problems with this data; it's been slow going because I've been learning as I've been creating entries & fixing my mistakes, but I suspect that even what Wikipedia has is far more comprehensive than any other one online site -- & possibly even all printed sources, except for what the CSA has themselves.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out whether I should next tackle articles for all of the woredas of Ethiopia, or all of the towns/villages listed in the CSA report; when I tackle the town/villages, I will include the longitude & latitude from the Geonet Names Server website. But in the end, there will be about 1100 more geographical articles, most of which will be (unfortunately) stubs. And, BTW, I've seen rumblings that the CSA will be starting their delayed next census by the beginning of next year -- which means that I'll have to update all of these articles with far more information in the next 12-18 months!

PS -- anyone want to repeat Bumm13's work to create maps of all of the US cities/towns/census tracts for Ethiopia? How about for any other non-US country that supplies this degree of census coverage? -- llywrch 22:10, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Aha! I've finally found the CSA PDF with all the information. How far on the cities are you? If you'd prefer to work on the woredas, then I'll start creating some city articles, unless you've already began systematically. The city populations are all on Table B.4 on page 28 on this webpage for all others who are curious. Here there are numbers for altitude (also highest mountains above 3000 m +1 below), average temperatures (per month as well), and average rainfall for 7 major cities (Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, Dire Dawa, Jimma, Gore, Kombolcha, Debre Zeyit, and Debre Marqos). I'm not sure where we could get similar data for other large cities (e.g. Harer, Gonder, Meqele, etc.; also cities over 20,000 but not as big as those in the range of Gonder). I'm not sure what other information we can get, or where (e.g. area). Also, you can get agricultural information per woreda here, and students per region here (pg. 10) — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 04:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I've actually pulled all of the numbers for the cities & woredas from the pdf file & have them in a pair of Excel files; the challenge I'm working on at the moment is how to best convert the data into a useful format -- & add to the city articles the correct latitude & longitude from the Geonames server. Once I know what this should look like, then it's easy to create the articles: I just use a simple perl script to plug values into an outline with all of the wikipedia tokens around it (e.g., stub & category lines, etc.).

The challenge then is to put all of this information up into Wikipedia. This will be about 1100 articles, like I stated above, & I'm not sure I can cut-n-paste that much information by hand -- even with the help of several volunteers. Anyone have a bot that needs work? -- llywrch 05:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a bot, but if it's cutting and pasting, then I'm up to it over a couple of days. Believe me, adding the template to that many talk pages, and rulers of Ethiopia per year from 1270 was no picnic (though I stopped around 1800 after it was obvious the rest were already done)! A bot would definitely be best, though. Are there really 1100 cities or towns with a population of over 20,000 though? I would think those would all qualify as urban areas, and the urban population is more like 12 million. Perhaps you're talking about all of the cities on that list? Do you know where we could get other information like land area and mayor? Also, Llywrch, maybe you could comment on my proposal at /History (no rush, though)? — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 05:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a bot either. And if we can't definitly get a bot, I can do some cutting and pasting. Elfalem 09:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

No, there aren't that many cities -- or cities & towns -- in Ethiopia. Having done some merging of the Geonames database with the CSA list, I estimate that there is enough info to create a total of about 600 articles on Ethiopian cities, towns & villages; add to this the 509 non-urban woredas I have counted from the pdf file, & that's how I arrived at the total of 1100. (I guess you missed my comment above about there being 72 towns with more than 20,000 inhabitants.) And seeing how there are 70,000 Rambot articles on the US (& there could easily be tens of thousands for England, France, Germany & Japan each), I have no problem with creating this many articles with the intent of fighting systemic bias.

But having thought about it overnight, unless we can get someone to volunteer the use of a bot I may leave the chore of the woreda articles to someone else for a couple of reasons:

1. Each woreda article requires someone to create a list of all of the adjacent woredas in counterclockwise order, starting on the south. I don't see a way to automate this.
2. Unless we uncritically accept the CSA transliterations for each woreda, someone with knowlege of fidel needs to adapt this to whatever system we agree to as a Wikiproject. (I've said all I can usefully say on that subject, & don't see any reason not to consent to the consensus being hammered out in that conversation.)

But in either case, all of these articles will need at least one more set of eyes to look for mistakes, to add material, & so forth. For example, I noticed yesterday morning that it appears a number of woredas are the same as the town within its boundaries: should we have two entries on the same community, or just one? (I suspect that some of these identities will be debated for a long time.) -- llywrch 16:16, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I didn't see that. I was just looking at the most recent paragraph in that case. I do think (as you do), that articles should be created for those cities with less than 20,000 citizens as well (what should be the cutoff? Should there even be a cutoff? Some of these towns have under 500 people, though. Should we be including them?). I'll try to work on this since I know fidel, but since it requires no other special knowledge than fidel and perseverence, Elfalem, MikeG, yhever, Codex, and Sendeq could also help out. Since the CSA is only one agency giving a transliteration (and our system will differ from theirs, though much close to theirs than Leslau's), we will probably change the names for those without established spellings (i.e. our Meqele for their Mekele(?), but their Nekemte for our Neqemté). A really good script could take our transliteration system and read the fidel values and create articles with the correct transliteration, to be corrected by already standard spellings by humans, or the CSA spellings could be used for the bot and then corrected by humans where applicable. The best course of action would be a bot, but here is not the place to ask for help, I don't think. Is there some sort of Bot task request page in Wikipedia? If need be, however, I am willing to do this manually. By the way (partially from seeing Llywrch's edit to Bahir Dar), I found that we do have density and sq. km. data for most sizable towns (i.e. greater than 20,000k?), though it's difficult to tell in some cases (where density is less than 1,000 people/km2) whether the data is referring to a city, or a woreda with the same name as the city and encompassing it (e.g. Meqdela/Magdala/Mekdela). We may be able to differentiate by comparing the population figure listed with the name with the number later listed for the population by town figure (i.e. if the former is equal with the latter, then the data is usable for the city, but if it's less, then the data is for a woreda). I guess I can see argument over this, but in cases where the city has some notable history or is not the same as the woreda (i.e. lower population), the division should be clear. In the later case, it seems more to me that the woreda is defined as the town, so perhaps the two should be merged unless a further delineation of the city will take place. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 22:41, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, looking over the CSA materials once again, with only a few clear exceptions (where both name & population are identical, & no other towns or communities are listed for the woreda -- I count 8 of these), all of the woredas are clearly different entities than the communities identified by that Agency -- so I'm inclined to treat them as separate items. Does this match what you are saying, Yom?

BTW, for lack of better criteria, if a community is listed on one of these population lists, I'm inclined to consider it a "town"; if it's not on one of these lists, then I'm inclined to consider it a "village" -- & a village may just fail to gain an article for lack of enough evidence to either confirm its existence -- or to ever become more than a scrap of a stub.

Also, to give an example of what I'm planning for these units of local governments, I've created all of the woredas for the Benishangul-Gumaz Region. (I plan on creating the town articles by the end of the week -- unless I run out of time.) These are here for serious re-writing by everyone (& the list of neighbors need to be added -- all one needs is a copy of the Region map, & the article has an external link to the one I've been using), because if there is a better way to phrase or explain something, I would like to have my article-writing script do it right the first time. -- llywrch 20:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

That's basically what I was saying Llywrch (with a little variation, but it doesn't matter). I also agree with your "town vs. village" description and conclusion. Where exactly is this regional map? I looked through the population pdf, but I don't see it in there. BTW, you may want to have your script add the {{WikiProject Ethiopia}} tag to all the discussion pages. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 21:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The regional map is linked on the Wikipedia page of the Benishangul-Gumaz Region; it points to a UN-OCHA map here. And my script only creates the articles by inserting names & numbers into a few paragraphs of text; I have to add the actual articles to Wikipedia by hand, which means that I also have to add the WP:Ethiopia tag by hand to every Talk page. Forgive my laziness. :-) -- llywrch 04:01, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

That's okay. I didn't realize it was a script thing. That's a great map (as are the others). I wonder what it's copyright status is as a UN map? Even if it's copyrighted, I think we could claim fairuse (but we wouldn't be able to modify it is the thing...). I can go around adding specific names, if need be. I don't think that'll be a problem. Also, unrelated to this, please see my comments at /History. I think it'd be a great addition to the Aksum king articles (which obviously need some textual juicing up as well). — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 04:22, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

UN Map

I'm still curious about its copyright status, but there do seem to be some deviations from CSA spellings (i.e. non-Leslau in UN), and some regions mssing. I was unable to find Begi and Komesha woredas on that map, so perhaps it is out of date and the woredas were created later (though that wouldn't make sense if they existed in 1994 or whenever the census in that part was taken)? These gaps mean that once we find where they are, some of the borders mentioned in the articles have to be redone to show that (and it could result in the loss of some borders). It also makes using the UN map (whether by public domain reasoning or fair use) less desirable. — ዮም (Yom) | contribs • Talk 06:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If you look again at the UN-OCHA map, though, notice that they include Komesha in the Kamashi Zone, not the Asosa Zone; why these two sources vary here, I wish I could give you a simple answer. As for the other district, I noticed that across the border in the Oromia Region, there is a Begi woreda in the Mirab Welega Zone; I can't help wondering if this is a mistake made by someone in the CSA -- a woreda from one region duplicated in the list of another, although the statistics for the two Begis don't match. (I added this information to those 2 articles this morning, before I saw your post above).

As for the quality of the UN maps, I don't think we have much of a choice: I haven't been able to find a post-1995 map of Ethiopia with sufficient detail that gives as much information as these do. BTW, when I was first wrestling with this geographical info, I asked a friend who has done professional GIS work whether he ever encountered any problems with uneven quality of data; he laughed. Even when the data is provided by trained & experienced professionals, there are problems like these!

The transliteration system used for the names of the districts & towns concerns me more. Before we get too far in the creation of these articles, we should have settled on one system of transliteration (right now I'm following the CSA's transliteration scheme, unless Wikipedia has established another transliteration form first). Would the best way for us to handle this be that I prepare the lists of the woredas for each Region first (just as I created one for the Benishangul-Gumaz Region? Then experts like you can fix them to conform to the transliteration system agreed upon. -- llywrch 04:58, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Woreda categories

I've just had a brief chit-chat with Llywrch (talk · contribs), who is in the process of creating articles for every single woreda in Ethiopia. They're all being put in Category:Woredas of Ethiopia. Llywrch has just told me that in the end, there will be about 500 articles, which would mean that the category would span two-and-a-half pages. I suggest sorting them by region, which would lead to eleven daughter categories:

• Category:Woredas of Addis Ababa
• Category:Woredas of Afar Region
• Category:Woredas of Amhara Region
• Category:Woredas of Benishangul-Gumaz Region
• Category:Woredas of Dire Dawa
• Category:Woredas of Gambela Region
• Category:Woredas of Harari Region
• Category:Woredas of Oromia Region
• Category:Woredas of Somali Region
• Category:Woredas of Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region
• Category:Woredas of Tigray Region

This would be consistent with the sorting of subdivisions in other countries (see for instance Category:Municipalities of the Netherlands). Special woredas could be double-categorized. Any thoughts on this? Aecis ^{I'm too busy acting like I'm not naive.} 23:24, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Not to criticize your general idea, but there is only one woreda article worth writing for Dire Dawa, & I don't plan on writing separate articles for each woreda in Addis & Harar. (Doing so would be the equivalent of writing an article about every electorial ward in Chicago; I may be wrong about this, but someone else will have to populate that category.) I also think that some of the smaller regions could be lumped together into one miscellaneous category, viz. Dire Dawa, Gambela & Benishangul-Gumaz. Other thoughts? -- llywrch 02:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...well Dire Dawa and Addis don't really have woredas, though, do they? I thought they just go straight down to the kebele ("neighborhood") level, which would be like American electorial wards. They're simply chartered cities (astedader akababi, singular). Harari, as a region, might have one or two, though it doesn't seem worthy of Category. All the rest do seem worthy, however, and spliting them as above, excepting the two chartered cities, and maybe also Harari Region (on the other hand, it is still a region, and thus its importance might warrant such a category. — ዮም | (Yom) | Talk • contribs • Ethiopia 05:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Llywrch, thank you for drawing my attention to this discussion. The issues you raised of few woredas in some categories are real and worth considering before making the categories, however in none of the cases I would move away from the consistency of breaking the woredas up by regions. The categories should not only be compatable with each other, but also consistent with categories at different levels (for category linking), as well as meeting the expectations of those searching, for example alphabetically (Benishangul-Gumaz could be under the "D" by lumping it with Dire Dawa). I know I may sound rigid and liked your creative thinking, but here the rigidity serves our goals best. So every region that has woredas (even one) should have a category. gidonb 05:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, until we come to a consensus, any objections to my continuing to lump them all under one category? I'm certain that this won't be the last time these articles will be corrected. -- llywrch 19:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I think we have a consensus. No objections at all to you continuing as you prefer! gidonb 19:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

No objections whatsoever on my part either. Is there a bot available that could do the resorting for us? Aecis ^{I'm too busy acting like I'm not naive.} 22:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Access to Yem special woreda

Does anyone know whether there is bridge across the Omo River that links this woreda to the rest of the SNNPR? If there isn't (& I suspect that this is the case), then this should be added as an example of a "Subnational inaccessible district" to List of enclaves and exclaves. -- llywrch 20:27, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Indexing Tissisat Falls

At the moment, if you search for "Tissisat Falls", Wikipedia returns no hits. (The article is under "Blue Nile Falls") If someone knows how to "tell" the Wikipedia index to send people looking for "Tissisat Falls" to the article cited, I think (judging from Google hits for that) it would be a good idea. Tkbwik (talk) 17:21, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Done. (Perhaps I'm the first person to read this page in 3 years.) Nurg (talk) 05:33, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Woredas or Districts

I have noticed that works mentioning Ethiopia's third-level administrative zones use the term "Woreda", rather than its English translation "District", in both the title and the body. For the body MOS:FOREIGN would appear to apply, this requires the word to be defined unitalicized in major general purpose English dictionaries; my review has found that it is not defined at all.

For the title WP:NCCS would appear to apply, and it would seem that Woreda follows the example of Provinciae, not Oblast; a brief review of English-language sources shows that while Woreda is mentioned, the preferred word is district.[1][2]

I am hoping to get your collective input on this, to determine whether a consensus for Woreda already exists or if I have misunderstood MOS:FOREIGN or WP:NCCS. BilledMammal (talk) 02:22, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Tagging users for input, as reading up it appears like this page is infrequently browsed

• User:Janweh64
• User:Llywrch
• User:Yom
• User:Elfalem
• User:Aecis
• User:Gidonb

BilledMammal (talk) 02:26, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't know how many of these editors are still active; I regret that Yom, for one, is not. But I am the one who standardized the use of "woreda" in these articles, & did that back in 2007 likely before the relevant section of the MOS was written -- without seeking my input. After all, "woreda" does not accurately translate as "district", beyond that both are terms for third-level governmental units. IMHO, at the time I wrote these articles I felt "civil parish" would be a close equivalent. I regret that in this need to translate all terminology -- even at the cost of respect to different cultures & imposing Western European preferences upon other cultures -- we are denied the use of the words these people describe their world with. -- llywrch (talk) 06:46, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I understand and sympathize with the issues you raise, but I feel we also need to recognize that this Wikipedia is written for those seeking to read articles in the English language, and we must choose the words we use with their comprehension in mind. I'll give the other editors a few more days to reply, and if I don't hear anything close this out and start implementing the change, making sure to leave a mention in each articles lede mentioning the local name such that the reader can still understand the words Amharic people use to describe our world. With that said, if you wish I have no objection to creating a RFC to get a wider range of opinions; if they could provide a justification to leave it as woreda then I would be happy to do so. BilledMammal (talk) 03:03, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I've changed most of them. There are a few more floating around that I plan to get to during another session. BilledMammal (talk) 06:15, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

I hadn't seen this discussion until now. Please hold off making more changes, pending further discussion. You didn't say you were going to change the qualifier from "(woreda)" to "(Ethiopian District)". Issue 1 – why a capital 'D' for "District"? Issue 2 – why include "Ethiopian" in those cases where there are no articles for districts of the same name in any other countries? Issue 3 – why not drop the parenthetical qualifier altogether in those cases where there is no other article for something with the same name (e.g. Ada'ar)? Thanks. Nurg (talk) 10:58, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Hi @Nurg:; apologies for the delayed reply. I will hold off making more changes. Going through your points one by one: 1. I am somewhat unfamiliar with the style guide, and the capital D was in error. Thank you for letting me know. 2. "Ethiopian" was included to keep the districts distinct from the alternatives, as woreda did. 3. I assumed that if the page currently has the qualifier, the qualifier should be maintained - pages without the qualifier I merely altered the constituent links. I'll make sure to check the pages before making any moves in the future. BilledMammal (talk) 06:58, 28 July 2021 (UTC)