Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 1

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Disambiguation

(moved here from User talk:Stan Shebs)

Hi Stan, I notice you have a Rivers Wikiproject...I thought I should mention that I can think of one river in particular that has a naming problem at the moment, the Thames River/River Thames. The British one is River Thames, the one in Ontario is at Thames River (formerly "River Thames, Ontario"), and there is one in Connecticut that doesn't have an article (but I think the red links to it are under River Thames, Connecticut). Does the project have any recommendations for cases like that? Adam Bishop 04:01, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hmm...I think I see. "Thames River (Lake St. Clair) sounds kind of strange thought. Perhaps I will just leave them alone until someone else renames them :) Adam Bishop 04:25, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Actually, Adam, the idea for disambiguating was mine. And the reason I was proposing giving preference to a geographical identifier over a political one was due to the Jordan River. I suspect that there are a number of various waterways in the US & elsewhere named for the one in the Near East, yet how do we identify that one without a flame war? Jordan River (Israel), Jordan River (Jordan), Jordan River (Palestine) ... You see the problem. Calling it Jordan River (Dead Sea) nicely avoids the fireworks.

But if you can think of a better way to handle disambiguations, please put it forth! -- llywrch 04:51, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see...how about Jordan River (Asia) or Jordan River (Middle East)? Or the most common river may not have to be disambiguated at all...presumably people searching for Jordan River would mean that one. Similarily, people searching for Thames River would mean the British one, not the slightly less impressive one that flows behind my house :) (Also similarily, London is at London, but London, Ontario has extra info.) Adam Bishop 04:55, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The Jordan River in the Middle East is so much better known than the others it doesn't really need the disambigger, but others will. Stan 05:01, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Problems with disambiguation:

Michigan has 7 separate Black Rivers. 3 of them flow into Lake Huron so Black River (Lake Huron) is out. Some of them flow through multiple counties like Black River (Cheboygan/Montmorency/Presque Isle/Otsego Counties) which is overly cumbersome and Michigan has four counties which each have two rivers of the same name. In one case both rivers have their mouths in the same county so that wouldn't work in that case. I would use Black River (Michigan) and describe all of them on one page but there is also the problem that one of the rivers runs through Michigan and Wisconsin.

It seems we have a mix of pages so far: pages with all named rivers described on them (Grand River, Jordan River or Bug (rivers)), pages separated by political boundary (Rogue River (Michigan) or Colorado River (U.S.)); pages using an alternate name (Red River of the North but Red River (Mississippi watershed), not Red River (Mississippi) or Red River (Mississippi River)) and pages described by what body of water their mouth is in (Wietze (Aller) or Wietze (Örtze)). Also some disambiguating from other non-rivers of the same name like Lippe (river).

Quite a confusing mess Is there anyway we can do better? Rmhermen 19:34, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)


I'm very happy to engage in a discussion about this. I have been adding many rivers to the database lately and I have encountered a great many instances of that would require disambiguation. I personally favor political ones when possible for disambig, because that's the way people usually refer to rivers. I did disambig Jordan River, but completely avoided the issue by leaving the default as the Asian river and simply pointing to a disambig page for the others. Like everything else, I regard these as ad hoc additions to keep rivers from building up on the same page, which I personally feel is not good, considering that the two bodies of water may have nothing in common other than a name, and certainly the Jordan River in Utah deserves its own article page, for example.
Here's the rule I've been using personally, mainly for rivers in the United States. When a river flows through one state only, it can be unambiguously identified by the state of its location. This seems to be the convention being used, with some exceptions like Red River, which is sort of a tricky one, but having a few anomalies is OK by me, so long as there can be a general rule of thumb. When a river flows through more than one state, I have been using the state in which its mouth is located (like I said, these are ad hoc rules that I have willing to change). In the case of multiple rivers in the same state with the same name, there obviously would have to be a further method, perhaps by county, or region in the state, or by body of water of its mouth. I haven't encountered that problem yet, but I know Rmhermen recently expanded the List of Michigan rivers that brought this issue up.
I don't know if there can ever be a coherent and simple rule that can apply to all instances around the world. But perhaps there doesn't need to be, perhaps. I've happy so long as there are some rules of thumb. My feeling is that this is the beauty of lists of rivers, which can serve as the de facto convention for a particular river's naming classification. Obviously it's nice if things are harmonized to some degree. There is the case of rivers which are so well known that they should be the default article, probably. In disambiguating Jordan River, I realize it had the side effect in this particular case of avoiding a world of controversy how to label in disambiguation (which I was very happy to avoid). Most rivers of course will have no such political controversies. I'm willing to alter my contributions in any way according to good practice, or to rename pages as necessary, but I am addng many rivers lately, as I somehow motivated to, with each river has its own article.Like I said, I'm very happy to engage a discussion about this. I think it is very necessary too. -- Decumanus 20:37, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I would certainly like the main river to stay at the main article like Jordan River. I suggest we rewrite this as the first step of disambiguation. And rewrite the second step as smallest political entity. So state if all within one state, country if within one country. But that would still leave the problem of international rivers. Currently we have Saint Mary's, Ontario which should be Saint Mary's (North America)]] except that there are at least 3 other Saint Mary's in North America. Maybe Saint Mary's (Canada/U.S.). I would think that in most cases rivers that run through many countries would be important enough to be the main title (Niger River, Danube River).

I don't see a need for each river to have its own page. Most rivers won't have huge amounts of text and the table of contents and even sectional linking would help. It would certainly reduce the problems of trying to establish a complex disambiguation scheme to cover some cases.

Some other problems I have seen we have groups of articles under name, place like Saint Mary's River and others under name (place). We should certainly use the second (such as Indian River (Michigan) to avoid confusion with the town of Indian River, Michigan. "River Thames" is the article on river in England with "Thames" and "Thames River" as redirects and the disambiguation stuck at the bottom. So far the two disambiguated rivers are both "Thames River" so couldn't we take that title back for the disambiguation page. Thames River isn't really correct for the English one anyway. Also some of the German rivers on List of rivers in Europe have started showing up as, for instance, Tegeler Fließ and Neuenhagener Mühlenfließ. Isn't this just Tegeler River? Rmhermen 21:10, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think I quite understand your concern about Thames River. It seems to me to be a good way of presenting the information. -- Decumanus 21:29, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
If you mean that the disambig reference on River Thames is stuck at the bottom of the page, I agree with you that it is deficient. It should be probably in italics at the top (because it is a redirect of Thames). -- Decumanus 21:35, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I agree. Also we could use Thames River (disambiguation). Rmhermen 21:37, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)
I just noticed we have an article titled Colorado River (U.S.) which doesn't even mention the other Colorado River in the U.S. which is titled Colorado River (TX). I don't like the abbreviated state name at all. Rmhermen 21:49, Feb 21, 2004 (UTC)
Yes, that's a mess indeed and needs to be fixed. The abbreviated state name is ghastly (disclosure I used to live along the Texas river). -- Decumanus 23:20, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The (TX) is gone. It's now Colorado River (Texas), as it should be, with all current links fixed. Feel so good. Now the Colorado River (U.S.), I don't know what to do with that. Of course, it flows through Mexico too (or at least it would if any water actually made it across the border :) ) but it looks ghastly as it stands. -- Decumanus 23:47, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There are too many rivers to have a clean and simple naming scheme, so it's going to be messy no matter what. One thing to consider is that really minor rivers that are tributaries can just be described inline in the parent river's article; there is literally nothing to say about some of the uninhabited tributaries of the Congo beyond location and length. I would do that for any river whose article doesn't seem to support more than 2-3 sentences, and for which links to it are uncommon (only passes through two towns with articles, say). Ditto for minor feeders of bodies of water; add a section to Lake Huron for instance. One can always be split out later if it becomes notable, perhaps if an endangered species is discovered in it. In general I've come to prefer a breadth-first rather than a depth-first approach to WP-building, because depth-first tends to result in uneven quality, and generate ambiguity difficulties before we have enough experience to know the best way to disambiguate. Anyway, my preference is to express as "()" disambiguators (some days we may want automated processing, so the special syntax is good), prioritize in the order of country/countries, tributary-of/watershed, body of water at mouth, state/province, county. This should be sufficient, since one-county rivers are unlikely to support their own articles. If more than one formulation seems rational, pick randomly and make a redir or note on the talk page. Stan 23:14, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree with that very much, about putting minor tributaries in line with the body of water. I've actually done that in quite a few articles. Some creeks and very small rivers without a significant history associated with them are going to fall into this category. -- Decumanus 23:18, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm the one who originally suggested favoring body of waters or principal rivers for tributaries over political names to disambiguate rivers, & I still favor that approach -- although I can be persuaded differently. (And, as usual, no one likes my ideas. ;-)

The best reason why I chose this preference is to side-step messy edit wars grounded in national pride; however, the fact we have lists of rivers by nationality is also a good poiont. Probably the deciding point between these two approaches I can think of is how the majority of the cases are done -- following an old Open Source rule that "He who does the work makes the rules."

I do concur with the point that we should consolidate minor streams or tributaries under the major one; to use one river in Oregon (the Tualatin River) as an example, I can't think of one tributary one could write more than a couple sentences -- which would consist of the origin of the name, its length, & perhaps some infamous crime. The traditions of the native Americans in that area have not survived.

And I concur with Stan's preference for parentheses to express disambiguators over an attached prepositional phrase -- unless the later can be proven to be an observed practice. (A hypothetical example of what I mean by "an attached prepositional phrase" would be "The Deschutes of Oregon" or "The Red River in Ohio".) Again, as Stan said, "it's going to be messy no matter what." -- llywrch 00:22, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This is hilarious. I could literally write a book about Chicken Creek in Sherwood. Sigh. But an encyclopedia article, no. -- Decumanus 06:35, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I definitely prefer political body before which body of water it is a tributary of. I would think someone trying to link say to the Yakima River is more likely to know that the river is in Washington (Yakima River (Washington)) than that it flows into the Columbia (Yakima River (Columbia)). (I would think that particular one could go at just Yakima River which I see it is.) Also I think the format name (place) is the most common in Wikipedia so far (after just name). Of course that leaves problems like Milk River (Montana) which also flow through Alberta.
Listing minor rivers under their body of water will not be practical for say the Great Lakes or the Oceans where you will have hundreds of minor rivers. I still favor putting say all the same named rivers in a politcal body under one title like all seven Michigan Black Rivers under Black River (Michigan) instead two of them under Lake Huron, two of them under Lake Superior, one of them under Lake Michigan, one under Lake Macatawa, one under Black Lake (Michigan). That seems needlessly messy to me. Rmhermen 19:54, Feb 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well, Decumanus, I myself couldn't write a book about Cedar Mill Creek, although it is the subject of some fond childhood memories. Two further points I'd like to throw into the discussion:

  1. Should the disambiguation token be the source of the river or stream, or its mouth or confluence? I ask this just in case some rivers are better known for where they rise than where they empty.
  2. Having just waded thru a number of articles of Anglo-Saxon Kings, let's not disambiguate for the sake of disambiguation. (I still wonder that someone could think that there could be more than one Eorcenberht.) -- llywrch 20:27, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Etiquette for updating project

What's the etiquette for joining the project? Do I just add my name?

I would also like to add a section on rivers with multiple names. This is a big problem in Africa, at least. I wanted to outline the rules I used when creating pages for rivers in Africa as a first draft.

-- Walt Pohl 19:45, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No formalities. Just join the discussion. The problem you mention with African rivers is very interesting. I see you've been adding some redirects. The question is of course which name is the normative name that appears in the title. I'm guessing this can be a matter of delicate sensibilities between languages and cultures at times. Have you come up with any rules of thumb so far? --- Decumanus 20:19, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
In the long run there's some danger of someone being offended, but based on how sparse the information on African rivers currently is, there doesn't seem much interest in the subject in the moment. Here are the rules of thumb I evolved to deal with the situation:
  • Choose the name used closer to the mouth, unless
  • An earlier part of the river is much longer, then use that (so Cunene River instead of Kunene River, unless
  • For whatever reason some other name is more famous in English (so Okavango River, which is famous primarily for the freakish Okavango Delta, rather than Cubango River.
I'd like to eventually add these to the project page for reference, and as an important source for future flame wars. :-) -- Walt Pohl 20:57, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Votes for deletion - Trasvasement

Trasvasement is currently being voted on for deletion, as there is no verification for the word yet, nor an alternative. If you have any related opinions / ideas / facts, please add to the discussion. --Zigger 03:36, 2004 May 2 (UTC)

Template Ready?

I haven't seen any discussion of the proposed template on the project page. Is this ready for prime-time? I was going to start adding it to river pages. -- Walt Pohl 22:47, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The river articles using w:Template:River are listed here --scupper 08:49, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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