Talk:Communities, regions, and language areas of Belgium

Image

There's an interesting image at the Walloon Wikipedia at [1], discussing (to the best of my knowledge) disparity of occupations (you know what I mean) in the Belgian kingdom. I think I can figure what "Eterprijhes" and "Indepindants", but am clueless as to "Estat". If anyone can figure this out (or can speak Walloon), this image should be translated and used In Regions. -- Itai 18:26, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

As far as I can understand (just guessing), it seems to show parts of the population working in private companies (Eterprijhes), as civil servants (Estat) and as self-employed (Indepindants). By the way, the picture layout and colors are rather ugly, don't you think? And would need more explanation and statement of sources. --Edcolins 21:14, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Your translation seems good enough. What do you reckon the title means? (Or, alternatively, how would you phrase an appropriate English title?) Changing the colors won't be a problem once we've imported the image. As far as sources go, adjinçna fwait pa Lucyin Mahin. It would appear to be that the image is derived from data provided at [2], but I really can't translate it, on account on not speaking Walloon. -- Itai 00:28, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

An image is now available at [3]. Truth be told, this is the first time I used The GIMP, but I think I managed rather well. -- Itai 01:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

For the title I would say something like "Distribution of employees by sectors (in Belgium)" (still a guess), but your title is good enough maybe. For the labels: rather than "Private sector", "Civil servants" and "Self-employed", I would say "Employees in the private sector", "Civil servants" (or "Employees in the public sector") and "Self-employed in the private sector"... but obviously when you're self-employed, you're in the private sector.. -- Edcolins 10:57, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Thought about that, actually. Funny bunch, the Walloon. Probably eat their own self- but no privately-employed grandmothers out of sheer confusion. Anyway, it's going to some time (think 24 hours) before I'll have access to my trusty GIMP, in which time I fully expect you to learn Walloon. Go! -- Itai 18:02, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

The title (Sipårdjaedje des bouteus(es) pa cwårtî) means Distribution of working people by sector; eterprijhe is company (here it stands for private company sector), estat is state, that is public sector (paid by taxpayer money); and indepindints means independents, that is people that work as their own bosses. I don't know the usual English names for those categories. AS for the image; I think it would be better to have the graph be drawn trough html code, I just have no idea how that could be done. Srtxg 20:04, 20 May 2004 (UTC)~

Thank you for your quick translation! Edcolins, you are no longer obliged to learn Walloon. I will consider using HTML. I've taken translating this graph as a challenge, and translate this graph I will, even if it will bring about the end of Wikipedia and all dear to me. -- Itai 15:51, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

There is no such language as Walloon. The Walloons speak French. But the text in the image is not French neither. To me it looks as Turkish - French , some phonetic French of a foreigner.

The translations are fine, except that by eterprijhe the editoe probably meant enterprise. 14:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.23.84.133 (talk)

What is the capital of Belgium ?

The article states: the Belgian Constitution makes it clear that the capital of Belgium is Brussels in the broad meaning of the term (cf. Art. 194 and 166 of the Constitution)

I'm not convinced, after I've read these two articles as published by the Belgian Senate offocial site (constitution in french - dutch - german).

Art. 166 is long and only refers to the capital in sentences like "l'agglomération à laquelle appartient la capitale du Royaume" = "the agglomeration(=?) to which belongs the Capital of the Kingdom" (I'm not sure of the meaning of agglomeration: an urban conglomerate in the informal sense, or the former "Brussels agglomeration", ancestor of the Brussels Region ?) : which means the capital lies in the "agglomeration", not that the whole "agglomeration" is the capital: so it's compatible with capital = the city of Brussels in the strictest sense.

Art. 194 is short, let me propose this translation: "The City of Brussels is the capital of Belgium and the seat of the federal government". I never know what "the city of Brussels" is exactly supposed to mean, but at first sight, it's more the municipality of Brussels or even the historical center of it, rather than the whole Brussels Region or Brussels in a broad sense of the term.

--FvdP 19:39, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Your translation of Art. 194 includes a significant (yet probably unintentional) mistake: you capitalized (..) the "c" in "City of Brussels". In the original Art. 194 of the Belgian Constitution however (both in French[4] and Dutch[5], and here also in English [6] and again also in Art. 126 of the 1831 Belgian Constitution), the "c" is not capitalized. The official site of the City of Brussels [7] seems to make clear that the municipality is to be written with a capital letter. If the City of Brussels was the capital of Belgium, then there would be a mistake in Art. 196 of the Belgian Constitution (since the municipality should always be written with a capital letter - according to me). Also, why would the Brussels-Capital Region be called Brussels-Capital region and not simply Brussels Region if the whole region was not the capital...

Art. 166 [8] is a bit obscure I must admit...

By the way, what is the capital of the Brussels-Capital Region? It seems there is no capital yet... [9]. --Edcolins 20:54, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)

Constitutional definition is one thing; actual reality begs to differ ... In reality, national institutions are spread all over the agglomeration, present in each of the 19 muncipalities of Brussels; In reality, national budget pays several 100 millions EURO per annum to support the 'capital function' of Brussels and this money is shared by ALL 19 municipalities, without any restriction between the city of Brussels and the other 18!

So, given this reality -with both the 'buildings' spread over de 19, as well as the money for the specific functions as the capital, I tend to favour the idea that indeed the entire region acts as the Belgian capital.

I concur. It might be interesting to add in the article a few examples of national institutions which are not in the City of Brussels municipality. --Edcolins 19:45, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Error on the territorial basis of the communities

Someone pretends that the communities have no geographical boundariesand that the division by communities is not territorial. This appears to me as a gross factual error, and a biased presentation. fact is that the community authorities have a very precisely defined geographic and territorial area of legal authority. The Flemish government has legal authority (for its community competencies) only within the areas of the Flemish and Brussels region; the French-speaking community analogously has powers only within the areas of the Walloon and Brussels region. I've modified these wordings. --Rudi Dierick 12:36, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Actually the communities have no territory of their own; the linguistic regions (there are 4 of them: Nl-speaking, Fr-speaking, De-speaking and a "bilingual" one (the constitution doesn't says which languages, but it is Nl/Fr)) have. And then also the communities can only have juridiction on one or two of those linguistic regions. But the fact that in one of those linguistic regions there are two of the defined comunities operating means that the communities doesn't have exclusive territorial boundaries (as opposed to the so called regions (not the linguistic ones, but the pollitical ones, eg States).

So, yes, the communities have geographical boundaries in their scope, but, at least on the bilingual linguistic region the communities don't have territory of their own.

The two only entities with real permanent territoriality are the linguistic regions and the (political) regions (eg: Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels), as the other subdivisions ultimately depend on them; the communities depend on the linguistic regions, and the provinces and municipalities (communes) can be redefined, suppressed or created at will by the (political) regions.

Srtxg 23:07, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Districts and municipalities

I deleted the district and municipalities section because: - the term district is not clear: there are different electoral districts for different types of ellections, administrative "arrondissements" and judicial "arrondissements", each with a different territorial scope; - both of them don't really add something to this page. MaartenVidal 19:45, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Move to Communities and regions of Belgium?

THis article doesn't say much of provinces. Shouldn't it be rename to Communities and regions of Belgium.

Communities, regions and provinces of Belgium should then be a dismabiguation page linking either to

• Communities and regions of Belgium
• Provinces of Belgium

--Donar Reiskoffer 08:55, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree something should be done about the name to get rid of the strange non-list comma. Any of "Communities and regions", "Communities, regions and provinces", "Subdivisions" or "Political subdivisions" would be preferable - any preference? Aquilina 11:22, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The current title has gone mad. If this article includes provinces, it should be at "Communities, regions and provinces" or "Subdivisions" or "Political subdivisions". If it does not include provinces, it should be at "Communities and regions." john k 12:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Note: Provinces of Belgium was moved to Provinces of regions in Belgium. (The term 'Belgian provinces' has become outdated since the provinces became regionalized, now Belgium has a region having 5 provinces + another region also having 5 provinces + a region that is no province, neither contains provinces, nor is part of a province). — SomeHuman 11 Oct2006 02:19 (UTC)

moved back. use standard artilce naming. whether the provinces are provinces "of" or "in" Belgium is not considered in article _title_. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

So-called 'Standard' article naming cannot fit a non-standard structure. Ignoring that structure is a violation of WP:NPOV. Tobias Conradi also is/was splitting the article into what seems to become 'Communities of Belgium' and the by him already created 'Regions of Belgium'. The reason to remain together, is that a comparison between these is more clarifying than reading separate articles. — SomeHuman 12 Oct2006 01:46 (UTC)

WP:NPOV violation? Ignoring the strucure? AFAIK What are you talking, none of these happened. And no, Belgium is not the most complicated country with respect to subdivisions. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 04:26, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Stop unilateral disruption of a multitude of articles. Indeed changes were violation of WP:NPOV and now newer changes are inaccurate as 'Subdivision' cannot handle communities. There are aple reasons why regions and communities were and should be handled in one article. — SomeHuman 12 Oct2006 04:49 (UTC)

If I take away your unsourced disruption and NPOV accusations there is not much left. Belgium like all other countries deserves an overview article like "subdivisions of Belgium" or similiar. And then subarticles for each type of subdivision. Like all other articles the name should be "xy of Countryname". This is done so for all other subdivisions. I revert your province move. Consider following common practice. Tobias Conradi (Talk) 04:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that the content of subdivisions of Belgium was trimmed to decrease overlap with Communities and regions of Belgium. I believe the correct title for the article on provinces should simply be Provinces of Belgium, since nobody in Belgium makes that subtle nuance that the provinces are part of the regions. I've invited the people over at WikiProject Belgium to throw in their $0,02 too, since it might be a little hard for just the two of you reaching consensus...
--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:29, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

---

The following discussion was moved from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Belgium.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 10:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

There's an ongoing debate (and associated revert war between User:Tobias_Conradi and User:SomeHuman) here about the organisations of some articles:

1. Should Provinces of Belgium be moved to Provinces of regions in Belgium, because the provinces are subdivisions of the regions?
2. There was some overlap of Subdivisions of Belgium with other articles, but that seems to have improved.

You're invited to expand the consensus beyond just those two people...
--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the article should be moved. The Provinces are not really subdivisions of the Regions, they are in the case of the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region, but the Brussels Capital Region is not divided into Provinces, nor is it a Province.--Ganchelkas 16:10, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

...and it is not part of a province either. Ganchelkas just came to a false conclusion "The Provinces are not really subdivisions of the Regions". They do not exist in any other sense. Which is why it needs to be 'Provinces of regions in Belgium', there is no other than a regional competence (a region can now even decide to abolish its own provinces) and 'Provinces of Belgium' refers to a historical situation, suggesting it still exists (or should still have existed) as in most countries having provinces: those are subdivisions that when added together constitute the whole country. Brussels however, is still part of Belgium (some have suggested bringing it directly under the European Community, in order to facilitate splitting Belgium in separate countries which are now the other two regions). I do not allow a so-called 'standard' or an easy like for all other countries to enforce a de facto violation of WP:NPOV. — SomeHuman 13 Oct2006 19:03 (UTC)

I think you're abusing NPOV; remember, NPOV is a POV, i.e. the general POV. I'd like to see another encyclopedia that hammers on such a minimal distinction: if you would like a source, The Columbia Encyclopedia keeps it simple: "Belgium is divided into ten provinces" (although they mention Brussels somewhat weirdly), and I suggest Wikipedia does the same.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 20:09, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

We have Districts of Germany, not Districts of the Länder of Germany: Arrondissements of France, not Arrondissements of the départements of France, ... The article describes the situation quite correctly, and the title is succinct, to the point, and correct (they are, after all, the provinces of Belgium, i.e. the provinces which together with Brussels fill the border completely). Fram 20:49, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

There never were 'Districts of Germany' in contrast with 'Districts of the Länder', the arrondissements always belonged to the départements as well. But there were 'Provinces of Belgium' not very long ago. Therefore calling provinces of the regions still 'Provinces of Belgium' is either outdated or an attempted reformation/revisionism/... And all the arrondissements form all the départements which in turn form all of France. Provinces of Belgium used to form all of Belgium. Provinces of regions do not. — SomeHuman 13 Oct2006 21:48 (UTC)

And Stevenfruitsmaak, see also section 'Waving flags'. "Belgium is divided into ten provinces" is false. I assume the article in the Columbia Encyclopedia still needs to be updated. Belgium used to be divided in 9 provinces, then 10, and now none because when you put all provinces together, you're still missing an important part of Belgium. 1 divided by 10 = 0.1 because 0.1 x 10 = 1. — SomeHuman 13 Oct2006 21:55 (UTC)

"there is no other than a regional competence (a region can now even decide to abolish its own provinces)" The provinces are instituted by the (Federal) Constitution, hence they are subdivisions of Belgium, not just of the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region. And I must say that I've never heard of the possibility for regions to abolish their provinces, I believe that can only be done at the federal level. Their existence depends on the federal level. I do know that the Governors of the Provinces of the Flemish Region are commissioners of both the Federal Government and the Flemish Government. That makes the provinces subject to the Federal Government too, which is also demonstrated by the fact that the College of Provincial Governors consists of all 10 Belgian Governors. I believe that, as well as some of the other reasons cited above, makes Provinces of Belgium the appropriate article. --Ganchelkas 13:44, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Whether provinces can be abolished (officially or de facto) by the regions, may indeed be arguable, and is not most relevant. [I assume that the borders of the provinces and the names of their institutions ('Governor', 'Provincial Council') remain out of scope of the regions, but the regional supervision (which can be cancelling) of all decisions cannot be overthrown by the federal level, and since there is no chance of extra-regional conflict, neither by the Arbitration Court. Which matters are left to the provinces are decided by the regions and thus can be nullified. Who decides on the budgets for the provinces? So...]

Your arguments are (nearly) equally valid for culture, education, and all matters for which the Constitution enpowers subnational entities. For education however, the Constitution still leaves the federal level a specified authority (e.g. on the age one is no longer obliged to go to school), besides the regions to have an obligation to organize it. But your argument is invalid, in the sense that one does not generally use the phrase 'provinces of the European Community' or 'Kingdoms of NATO' or 'surface waters of Belgium' (another regional matter). Such articles, if there would be any reason for such to exist, would only come second to the more accurately and/or correctly named articles.

Theoretically, ideally, 'Provinces of Belgium' should be a disambiguation page towards the precise 'Provinces of Flanders', 'Provinces of Wallonia' and 'Historical provinces of Belgium'. But because the common history; and because for the present factual situation, much of the textual content for the regionalized provinces is still identical; and also because of the general expectation of finding provinces of a country in one article, that moreover would by many be expected to have the name 'Provinces of Belgium', and to then avoid double redirects: it is better to keep a single article that must however not have a title expressing a misconception and inaccuracy. Thus 'Provinces of Belgium' fluently redirects to 'Provinces of regions in Belgium' (I also anticipated 'Provinces of regions of Belgium', which is an equally correct title but sounds awkwardly, and provided a link to Provinces of regions in Belgium').

Also the term 'subdivision of Belgium' is false for provinces, because adding the '(sub)divided' areas together does not make the whole country again. One should better and accurately use the term 'subnational entities of Belgium', which can be used for true subdivisions as well as for provinces which only exist in some regions, for districts which only exist in municipalities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, and for entities that have different relations to upper levels (regarding BHV). The use of the term 'subdivision' for 'communities' which are essentially people (within certain geographical boundaries), is rather disrespectful. As subnational entity, a community is covered in a more neutral way.

— SomeHuman 14 Oct2006 18:20 (UTC)

I'm sorry but I really don't have the time or the concentration to read such lenghty comments, if you want others to read what you're saying, please be more concise.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:49, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

In which case 'others' do not grasp the argument correctly. — SomeHuman 15 Oct2006 00:07 (UTC)

Adding the German districts together doesn't make the whole country either, as it would exclude the Länder of Berlin and Hamburg. Anyway, I believe we had a consensus prior to the change to "Provinces of regions of Belgium", so I suggest that the article is moved back to "Provinces of Belgium" until such time as a new consensus is reached. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the article was moved to "Provinces of regions of Belgium" before a consensus on such move was reached (in fact only one person advocates that move), which justifies moving it back to its original location.--Ganchelkas 13:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Ganchelkas, I appreciate your constructive attitude here and elsewhere in discussions with me. I would like to hear more than about 3 people on this, though I can easily agree on a middle ground:

  2,340,000 English pages for "municipalities of "
  3,720,000 English pages for "municipalities in ".
  8,910,000 English pages for "districts of ".
11,800,000 English pages for "districts in ".
  6,300,000 English pages for "provinces of ".
  3,490,000 English pages for "provinces in "
[No departments (e.g. 'of' Universities) or regions (vague)]

These are quick-and-dirty Google searches on grouped words in English language pages. You will notice that for provinces, usually true subdivisions of a country, the term 'of' is most common; for both other circumscriptions that always have a higher subnational level that is not the highest, 'in' is most common. Both words are obviously proper English. But 'of' has a belong to sense that 'in' lacks. I cannot possibly deny that the provinces of regions are 'Provinces in Belgium'. How and why others may have named articles on Wikipedia is not my major concern, as you may have noticed - a correct title is. I do not however, insist on that title delivering information (about being subdivisions of regions): that can remain inside the article just as well. I like your opinion before moving anything. (Please, also once more your reaction on that article's content here; and on the suggested term in the last paragraph of my above comment of 14 Oct2006 18:20 (UTC).) — SomeHuman 15 Oct2006 19:33-19:43 (UTC) — (And, if you don't mind, on my suggested terminology guideline I added three days ago in the [far above before moving this comment here; section remained at:] WikiProject:Belgium section "Arrondissement" and "Municipality"). — — SomeHuman 15 Oct2006 21:17 (UTC)

SomeHuman, you have now five times moved the article from its original title to your new preferred one, even though no one seems to agree with you, either here or at the discussion page of the article. Please leave it as it is. Your arguments are not convincing and not based on any policy. They don't follow any precedent, and they don't have any consensus. You don't WP:OWN these articles, and you shouldn't continue your unsupported actions to make a WP:POINT. You can make a WP:RFC to get outside input to resolve this dispute (you can't use WP:3O as that is only available if only two editors are involved). Fram 19:43, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Exactly at the time people may come to an agreeable consensus - hands were being reached - and while I did not move anything since 2006-10-14T06:02:28 (and then only because the one who without [except for 1 unconstructive] reactions on talk pages started edit-warring while this discussion – to which he never took part – was going on here), and not 5 times the way you implicate: 3 of those moves were just 1 by which I repaired my own typo, and the two others where the initial move and one revert that occurred before discussion took place, your sudden present attitude and incorrect accusations of WP:OWN and WP:POINT form a violation of both WP:AGF and WP:NPA. I'm not interested in demonstrating how many WP:WHATEVERS I'm aware about either. I'd like to see Ganchelkas' reactions on my constructive comment here above, and Steven's. — SomeHuman 15 Oct2006 20:15 (UTC)

Initial move plus three reverts, makes four (not five, my mistake, but not two either). And an argument about someone's behaviour with articles may be a violation of WP:AGF, but is definitely not a personal attack. And there is an agreeable consensus, with one disagreeing voice, yours. A consensus (at least on Wikipedia) doees not mean that each and everyone has to like it, as long as it is clear that a majority of the editors is happy with the solution. Here, there is a clear Wikipedia:Consensus. If you disagree, again, seek outside comment at WP:RFC. Fram 05:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

When pointed at your incorrect assumption, I expect you to check carefully. An initial move (not against consensus as it had not been discussed and I had not expected controversy), one revert, another attempted revert which had a typo immediately rectified by going back to the name before that attempt [null operation] and immediately followed by the revert as intended [thus with correct names 'moved from' and 'moved to']. That is 2 reverts or 3 moves. The single person who had reverted my move twice, did not take part at the discussion and had not awaited the discussion to show consensus and seems to run from one war to another. All this was days before your outburst. I did not (have to) make another move and would not have done so either as people had clearly argued against my move: Your outburst came nearly two days late at an ill moment when consensus was nearer than ever before, and precisely when I had just agreed to move anything (in casu towards old [of] or middle ground [in instead of of] title, depending on Ganchelkas' preference, which I still await). — SomeHuman 16 Oct2006 12:46 (UTC)

Expect whatever you want. You did the first move on October 10th[10], a first revert on October 12th[11], a second revert again on October 12th[12], and a third revert on October 14th[13]. I have not counted your typo corrections, although they confused me in my first count. My second count was obviously correct: 1 move and three reverts, or four moves from the original title. Secondly, tyhis was not "days before my outburst", but one and a half day before my comment, and only 25 minutes after you commented to ganchelkas that "I like your opinion before moving anything", which made my comments quite relevant. Anyway, it's just that I don't see the need for your "middle ground" proposal (Provinces in Belgium), since the original version was perfectly allright. Although Belgium does nnot only exists of provinces, it is a list plus description of all the provinces of the country Belgium, with their region etcetera listed. We also have Category:States of the United States, even though the country is more than only the states as well. From Wikipedia:Naming conventions: "article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity", and "Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists". More specifically: "Convention: In general, country-specific articles and categories should be named using the form: "(item) of (country)". See: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics)." Without a good reason why in this case "in" would be clearly better than "of", I don't see any reason to change it. Fram 13:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry Fram, you're quite right about 2 reverts on the 12th (thus also the other party had reverted three times and not twice as I had put in my above comment). You're dead wrong about the timing of my third and last revert [finished 2006-10-14T06:02:28] being 25 minutes after I commented [2006-10-15T21:28:45] to Ganchelkas that "I like your opinion before moving anything", which made your comments quite relevant: it was two days (daytime) or if you prefer more than a day and a half (24Hr/day) before! That made your comments quite irrelevant and out-of-place. I assume you had been misinterpreting my proper edits [SomeHuman and IP while my log-in had expired] the same way at that time, in which case I can understand you loosing assumption of good faith and your patience. Shake hands, then?

I appreciate your arguments this time, though at first sight only the last one seems relevant for distinguishing 'Provinces in Belgium' from 'Provinces of Belgium'. A sample in that guideline is 'History of Portugal', which of course cannot be "in" and thus the generalizing '(item) of (country)' which will often be either the only or a very valid possibility. The guideline is not at all concentrating on "in" versus "of" for geographical inclusions but handles in our case using '(country)' instead of '(region)' if such is common English usage (arguable because it's a relatively new situation and we should not assume usage in English being conservative and because the guideline's 'country-specific' could here be 'region-specific', but I gladly conceded to that anyway). Taking a closer look, choosing 'in' seems supported by "with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity": the word is just as plain English [even more common when there is an intermediate geographical level, as here], just as short, and cannot be ambiguously and unnecessarily interpreted as 'owned by, controlled by'. — SomeHuman 16 Oct2006 16:31 (UTC)

Agree on dropping the move/timing thing, no hard feelings. As for the "in" instead of "of", I disagree because I see no reason for it (I don't see anyone interpreting such an expression as "being owned by", but I may of course be wrong there), and because it would mean that we do things differently from all other countries for no (to me) good reason at all. But I guess we should wait and see what the consensus and/or additional arguments are, I guess both our positions are rather clear by now. Fram 18:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

---

A picture that says it all

Hello,

this isn't easy to find on the net : a picture that shows the linguistic borders, the regions and the provinces all together. It might give a better view on the situation. What do you think? Evilbu 21:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I've added one. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 16:48, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge Regions of Belgium?

As I've said on the talkpage of the article Regions of Belgium, I think it would be better (at least for now) if that article is merged into this article. Regions of Belgium includes exactly the same information about the Belgian Regions as this article's section on the Regions, so in my view nothing justifies the existence of that article. What do you think about merging that article into this one?--Ganchelkas 15:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support. As its history clearly shows, 'Regions of Belgium' was created as and is supposed to remain a redirect page. Only user Tobias Conradi seems to insist on having the seperate article, even though I had already argued why the communities and the regions need to be in a single article. — SomeHuman 25 Nov2006 17:58 (UTC)
• SupportJulien Tuerlinckx 18:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support--Donar Reiskoffer 19:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Decategorization

Could the person who referred to the category on "States of the United States" during a discussion on this talkpage please edit his or her words so that this page no longer appears in the list of articles in that category. Thanks.--Ganchelkas 15:40, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Move to most commonly used terminology in English

The former article name 'Communities, regions and linguistic regions of Belgium' became 'Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium'.
The Wikipedia guidelines leave no option other than to use the term with most common usage in English for an article title, and a glance at Google results (as suggested by the guidelines for this determination) delivers nearly twice as many 'language areas' [813] for Belgium than 'linguistic regions' [444] (just counting the actual pages shown by Google, not the uninformative and entirely unverifiable 'hits'). My advanced Google search was on pages in English including one of the words 'Belgium' or 'Belgian', and the specific terms as exact phrase.
Furthermore, and perhaps more important pragmatically, (the four) 'language areas' are not as easily confused with (the three) regions [the Flemish Region, Walloon Region and Brussels-Capital Region (never named e.g. Flemish Area) often thought of as based on language, which is largely correct because their borders are set by exactly following those of linguistic areas], it is also more normal and unambiguous English because 'linguistic' can refer to linguistics, the study of languages, and that usage is more common than simply referring to plain languages spoken somewhere. Thus at least this once, following the guidelines will make our articles more easy to understand. — SomeHuman 10 Jun2007 18:44 (UTC)

Country subdivisions

At the beginning of this section, there is a sentence "..589 municipalities..(..municipal merger operation mainly in 1977).." Isn't the word "reform" more appropriate than "operation", which makes me think of what goes on at a hospital/medical clinic or in a "military operation". Having just gone through a municipal reform etc. from January 2007 (officialy called the "structural reform") in my native Denmark, I am convinced the word "reform" should be used here instead of "operation".Bornsommer (talk) 07:46, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I would suggest a change to "...a municipal restructuring in early 1977." Also, just a little further in the same section, I would suggest that "...as laid out INTO the Belgian Constitution" be corrected to read "...as laid out IN the Belgian Constitution"--Buster7 (talk) 00:43, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Errors in Map and Table

• In the map of regions and its legend there is an error: there is no bilingual German/French area. There is a French language area (correctly marked in red) and a German speaking area (must be marked in blut, NOT in red/blue stripes; the legend must read "German", NOT "Bi-Lingual German Fr"). Both language areas together make up the Region of Wallonie.
• Furthermore, the table below (correctly) states that the Capital Region belongs to the French community, but it also belongs to the Flemish community. Hence, the table needs an additional line "Community: Flemish - Region: Capital (Brussels)"

Reilinger (talk) 11:25, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Venn diagram

This article deserves a simple Venn diagram to illustrate the partial overlapping of Brussels and Wallonia with two (ethno-)linguistic communities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.169.40.7 (talk) 07:52, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Province of Brabant

"Since the splitting of the Province of Brabant in 1995 (into Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant), the Brussels Region does not belong to any of the provinces."

Can this be fleshed out more and more citations provided? As a layman reading this, you'd have thought the Province of Brabant ceased to exist within the Brussels Agglomeration when it became a region in 1989, but apparently that wasn't the case. Perhaps it would help to explain the state of administration of the province between 1989 and 1995, such as which responsibilities and obligations it was empowered with between the three regions. For instance, did the province have three different councils and administrators, or were these still elected/appointed province-wide? I've seen references made to it being funded from the three different regions, which made planning difficult, but what was the actual administrative province like between those 5-6 years?--Criticalthinker (talk) 05:53, 31 July 2024 (UTC)