Talk:Victoria Falls
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[edit] Proposed name change
I don't want to start a flamewar here, but I think we should consider moving this article to Mosi-oa-tunya and doing a redirect from Victoria Falls. The falls are no doubt best known as Victoria Falls in English, but this is purely a colonial name bestowed by Dr. Livingston. A colonial name bestowed by an outsider after a foreign monarch should not be considered the proper name for a great landmark that already had a proper name when Dr. Livingston "discovered" it. Ntk 04:09, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I decided to be bold and go ahead and move it rather than just throw the question out there. Ntk 04:28, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- First of all, cut and paste moves are bad, and violations of the GFDL. If in the future you want to move a page, please use the "Move" button at the top of the page. I have reverted the two pages to the previous status quo, until more discussion can be had. Being bold is fine, but please let the community have more than 20 minutes to reply to such a drastic change. I've copied this discussion from Talk:Mosi-oa-Tunya, and think further discussion should take place here, for clairity. Gentgeen 10:39, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry about not using the Move button, that was my mistake, although from what I have read it is debatable whether it "violates the GFDL," but thanks for correcting me on that. I won't go ahead and move it properly now because I don't want to start a mess of reversions, so I will open the discussion presenting an argument for both names, and why I think that Mosi-oa-Tunya is the best choice. I will reconsider moving it after some discussion takes place (or fails to take place).
- Victoria Falls—this is much more widely used and known worldwide, at least in English. Futhermore both Zambia and Zimbabwe have English as official languages, and the name used and recognized locally as well.
- Mosi-oa-Tunya—this is the original name of the falls in the local language. It is still locally used and recognized. Furthermore the park in Zambia containing the falls is called Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, not Victoria Falls National Park. Mosi-oa-Tunya is already often used along with Victoria Falls, and often in preference to Victoria Falls, by many organizations including UNESCO. Victoria Falls, on the other hand, is a colonial name given by a foreign explorer in honor of a foreign monarch, and is thus a relic of colonialism and cultural imperialism. Furthermore, the greater prevalence of the name Victoria Falls is not a strong argument in favor of it—for instance Myanmar is still much better known as its colonial name Burma in English even though it has long been independent. Lastly, I do not feel this is a terribly drastic change and it certainly does not make the article less useful or easy to find, since my revision prominently retained both names and Victoria Falls would still redirect to the same article. Ntk 19:11, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Sorry, I ment to get back to this sooner. According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), the most common name used in English is the proper title for an article. If the efforts to change the commonly used name to Mosi-oa-Tunya result in it becoming the most common name in English for the falls, then the page can easily be moved to that title.
- A similar situation to this one, a well known geologic feature named in English after a distant head of state while the native name is still known and used, can be seen at Mount McKinley. Mount McKinley is named Denali in atleast one of the native languages of Alaska, is located in Denali National Park, Denali is the name of the mountain used by the state government, and is widely known to many speakers; yet the mountain's article is still located at a title named after an American president, as that is the most common name for the mountain in the English language. However, Denali does redirect to that page, as is appropiate. Gentgeen 00:41, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- First of all, the Denali example is not parallel. While it is true that Denali was the native local name, Alaska has long been part of the United States, and even so, Inuits are a minority people in Alaska today. So it would be unreasonable to suggest at this point that we should not call Mt. McKinley after an American president, because even if a person were to disagree with the United States's possession of Alaska, it is a fact. It's not like someone is trying to call it Mt. Lenin or something like that. Whereas Mosi-oa-Tunya is an African falls in an African country. The only reason it is called Victoria Falls is because of a foreign explorer and some colonial history--and these countries have long since been independent of imperialism.
- That said, I will not attempt to move it again. Although the policy you cite does mention some uncertainty (i.e. "There is a trend in part of the modern news media and maps to use native names of places and people, even if there is a long-accepted English name."), if we are following that policy it would certainly indicate towards using Victoria Falls. I do not completely agree with this policy--when people call something by the wrong name, the only way a better name will be established is if they see it. To cite an example, for hundreds of years white people called Native Americans (or First Nations), "Indians." Now most Americans call them by "Native Americans," and this happened not because people liked it better, but because this was introduced top-down in texts, books, media, government and schools. But this is not the place to debate policy, so I won't push for moving the name unless or until the policy is changed. I will, however, make some slight modifications to the article to NPOV it a bit. Right now it makes it look as if Mosi-oa-Tunya is no longer used at all. NTK 03:15, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- First of all, cut and paste moves are bad, and violations of the GFDL. If in the future you want to move a page, please use the "Move" button at the top of the page. I have reverted the two pages to the previous status quo, until more discussion can be had. Being bold is fine, but please let the community have more than 20 minutes to reply to such a drastic change. I've copied this discussion from Talk:Mosi-oa-Tunya, and think further discussion should take place here, for clairity. Gentgeen 10:39, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This is the English Wikipedia. In English, the place is called Victoria Falls. I doubt more than a handful of English speakers ever even heard of Mosi-oa-Tunya. Leave it at Victoria Falls. RickK 01:10, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
- As I said before, moving it to Mosi-oa-Tunya is not going to confuse anyone, thanks to the magic of redirects and the fact that I included the name Victoria Falls prominently at the beginning of the article in my modified version. And as I said just because it is most prevalent doesn't make it the best name. Again I cite Myanmar, which the great majority of Westerners know as Burma. Why should people who know hardly anything about the country or the place anyway get to decide what to call it? Why not look at the local people's interest? What about places that don't have an "English" name? There are plenty of other precedents for changing to more appropriate, NON-English names. i.e. Formosa (Portugese) -> Taiwan (Mandarin Chinese). But as I said I will not contest this unless there is a different consensus developing on the policy page. NTK 03:15, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Orders of magnitude links need adding. I'll say this about "dual unit" articles -- they're a mess to read, all parentheses everywhere :( -- Tarquin 17:23 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)
I am not aware that anybody has agreed upon what the "seven world wonders" are. I only know the old ones. Pls clarify.
[edit] Victoria Falls--why the move?
Victoria Falls (as opposed to Victoria falls) appears to be overwhelmingly the most common English formulation of this name, according to both Google and its entries at Britannica and Encyclopedia.com. Any particular justification for moving it to "Victoria falls"? For now I'm being bold and moving it back according to the consensus above, but if anyone has a sourced explanation for why it ought to be here, post a note here and we'll figure it out. Cheers, --Dvyost 19:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
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However much some posters try to dress up their justifications, the proposal here is very simply political correctness. Wikipedia should avoid PC at all times. It matters not what the locals call it. What matters is what the place is UNIVERSALLY KNOWN as. Danzig is a good example. The Poles now insist everyone calls it Gdansk, but ask a man in the street to describe where it is or if they've even heard of it and he won't know. Wheras Danzig was universally recognised. We British do not call Rome 'Roma'; we don't call Brussels 'Bruxelles';we don't call Munich 'Munchen'. i could go on but you get the point, I hope. As someone else said above, this is the ENGLISH LANGUAGE edition of Wikipedia. Again, we should be using the universally known appellations, not obscure ones.
86.139.185.234 17:28, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Leaping water
The part of the Falls I thought was "Devil's cataract" (and have called so in a caption), is named as "Leaping water" under the sub-head "The Falls. It's probably me that's wrong, but anyone know about this? JackyR 14:44, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Most Spectular?
I believe this goes against NPOV, isnt it a matter of opinion? Give me insight... --217.129.205.214 19:24, 2 April 2006 (UTC) (AKA Chaos Reaver.... I lost my pass, please bear with me as I look for it... LOLOL ;) )
- The article actually says "one of the most spectacular", which is pretty woolly. It's also hard to disagree with given the Falls keep cropping up on naff "seven natural wonders of the world lists" [1]. But yes, true WP style would be, eg, "described by source X as one of the most spectacular...". If you wanna research it - the job's yours! JackyR 23:57, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] water flow units of measure (per second or per minute)
The section Victoria_Falls#The_falls currently uses the 'per minute' water flow rate whereas other parts of the article use the 'per second' rate. Other wikipedia waterfall articles also use 'per second', e.g. Boyoma_Falls and other sites as well, e.g. http://www.world-waterfalls.com/database.php?s=N&t=W&orderby=avevolume&sortLimit=5000. IIRC, most waterfall articles I've seen use the 'per second' measure. Maybe the entries in this section should be changed?
[edit] Esperanto milestone
The Esperanto version of this page is the 50,000th Wikipedia article written in that language. --Slgr@ndson (page - messages - contribs) 21:26, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Proposed expansion and reorganisation
I have been looking at this article with the aim of rectifying the lack of in-line references and expanding the info on how the falls formed, the gorges, and the wildlife. But I’ve come to the conclusion that the article needs a bit of reorganisation. There is duplication, for instance flow rates are in separate paragraphs under ‘The Falls’ and 'Below The Falls’. Secondly, some of the flow rate figures aren’t supported by references from good hydrology sources. The statement ‘During the wet season the falls have over 500 million litres . . of water falling over its crestline each minute’, which is on the UNEP website, is contradicted by this hydrological reference (see Annex 13) which gives a figure one-third of this (and I agree with the comment above that flow rates should be cu m/sec, with cu ft/sec in brackets. The article tries too hard to establish the Falls’ credentials as bigger than Niagara and Iguazu Falls. Lastly many of the measurements are inaccurate eg the height of 128 m/420 ft is contradicted by references which give 108 m/360 ft as the greatest height (Rainbow Falls). I have also checked some of the horizontal distances on Google Earth and come up with some different figures. I propose this reorganisation:
Introductory section emphasising right up front the three most notable features of the falls, ie size, gorges, wildlife. Then get the ‘world’s largest issue’ out of the way in 2-3 sentences, then give location details. The use these headings/subheadings (latter indicated by indents):
Physical features
— Flood and dry season flow rates
The Victoria Falls Gorges
How the Victoria Falls formed
History of the area
— Up to 1900
— Since 1900
— Victoria Falls Bridge
— Tourism
National parks
— Vegetation
— Fauna
References
External links
Rexparry sydney 01:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Revisions and additions made, 11 March.
As flagged above, I have revised the article with in-line references, and added material on how the falls formed, on the gorges, on historical backgrounds to tourism at the falls, and on wildlife/vegetation. I have moved some details (such as measurements on the bridge) to that article. I have tried to avoid duplication. If I have not carried over any previous points it may have been because I couldn't find a reference for them, if they are still pertinent please re-instate; and accept apologies. I have not put in a lot of specific information about visitor facilities because this changes, and is quite well covered on the websites of the Zambia & Zimbabwe tourist boards listed at the top of external links. Rexparry sydney 10:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
