Wikipedia:WikiProject Mexico/Strategy

WikiProject Mexico: Strategy Noticeboard

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A convention for naming municipalities

I created the first municipality article a few months ago and named it Ensenada (municipality), however I come to the realization that I have never used "Ensenada (municipality)" in an article but I have used many times the "Municipality of Ensenada" text, so I have had to type "The town of Guadalupe is part of the [[Ensenada (municipality)|Municipality of Ensenada]]". Therefore I am proposing changing the municipio articles to the "Municipality of (name of municipio)" format and to create future articles under it. --Vizcarra 19:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

As I said in your talk page, using Municipality of blah as the article name may be a bit misleading to the reader. "Municipio" is seldom part of either the official name or the colloquial name of the municipality. Also you'd have to consider municipalities of the same on different states, you'd still have to use [[Municipality of Juárez (Chihuahua)|Municipality of Juárez]] for instance. I like your idea because it may solve a couple problems at once, but it simply is not accurate. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 10:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Couple of comments:

• Do you know that if you type [[Minatitlán (municipality)|]] the software automatically inserts "Minatitlán" after the pipe, saving you some typing?
• As a general rule, I find the Minatitlán (municipality) (with that autocomplete pipe trick) a lot more flexible for writing complex structures such as: The city of [[Minatitlán]] serves as the administrative seat for the surrounding [[Municipio (Mexico)|municipality]] of [[Minatitlán (municipality)|]]".

So, I'd prefer the parenthetical format, but it's far from something I'd start a holy war over. And a redirect from the other format would probably be useful too. Whichever is chosen as the article location, we should agree on a method for disambiguating all those municipalities that share names with others in other states -- seems that every state has its Benito Juárez and its Emiliano Zapata. –Hajor 15:27, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

• Oh, so that is what they call the "pipe trick"... For disambiguation I propose either of the following, as applicable:

1. [[XYZ (Jalisco municipality)|]]; [[ABC (Sinaloa municipality)|]]
2. [[Municipality of XYZ (Jalisco)|XYZ]]; [[Municipality of ABC (Sinaloa)|ABC]] (or using the pipe trick, whatever is more appropriate for the text).

-- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 21:39, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

University names

Why is it that we have articles named Universidad de Sonora and Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara but others named Autonomous University of Nuevo León and National Autonomous University of Mexico? Should we go with the Spanish name or the English name here? --Spangineer (háblame) 01:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi, see our vote in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mexico/Terminology. Ruiz 02:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

ISO Codes in external links

User:Vizcarra is modifying the external links of most articles adding the ISO code for Spanish at the begining of each link and removing any other reference to the lang. I find that notation quite unintuitive for the average user, and maybe this should be rised to a different level since it involves pretty much every single external link in a lang. other than English.

Personally I preffer something like:

• Wikipedia: La enciclopedia libre (in Spanish).

over:

• (es:) Wikipedia

But I would like to hear more comments. Ruiz 02:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

ISO codes are used in Commons together with text in the respective language, so if a person doesn't know the ISO code he can still read the text. Moreover, Commons is a multilanguage project. Using exclusively ISO codes in the English wikipedia does NOT satisfy this requirement. I think it is a disservice to readers to just include a code they may not understand at all. The "(in Spanish)" solution seems to be the most appropriate one here. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 10:53, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

There must be a project-wide policy page discussing this, surely? In other words, this is not something for us to decide here. Random thoughts: the "es" jpg is very small (I can barely distinguish between the es and en versions with this screen and my eyes), but it's nonetheless more pleasing than these hand-made (es:). Has anyone ever thought of using the jpg icon instead of the bullet? Thus:

(in Spanish) INEGI (Instituto Nacional de...)

It's probably doomed to failure because people will argue (correctly) that most users don't know ISO codes. Then they'll say that you shouldn't be linking to foreign language ExtLks ("this is the English Wikipedia"). And unless you flag all the English links in the same list with the en-icon, it'll look unbalanced. But, objectively, it looks kind of neat. Err... project-wide policy page? –Hajor 04:31, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

{{In Spanish}} template

Well, for lack of convention, I will start using the (in Spanish) icon again (just because I like how it looks), I was starting to use (es), because using ISO codes in text was the agreed standard. I have created a template {{In Spanish}} and if you type:

"{{In Spanish|</nowiki>url=www.mexico-tenoch.com/gobernadores/chihu/CHIHUAHUA.html|name=List of governors of Chihuahua}}"

it will look like this:

List of governors of Chihuahua (in Spanish)

Once we agree on a convention we can just modify the template and all pages will be consistent. --Vizcarra 02:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I just wanted to remind you that ISO codes in text was the agreed standard in Commons, not EN. It would be preferable if you asked for feedback in the Village Pump before you started doing this again. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 09:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it was agreed in commons is a good indication that this is the best option. And, like I've said before, if it isn't it only takes to replace the template to fix the problem. --Vizcarra 21:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Dealing with municipalities versus seats

After having such a difficult time with my students trying to write “town” pages, and consequently learning more about the “municipio”/”town” structure… I would like to suggest that we combine the articles for the municipality and its seat. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, governmentally, the municipality is an extension of the seat. The communities belonging to the municipality do not have their own independent government (nor anything like a mayor), instead they send delegates to the seat to represent the community’s interests. The seat itself does not have a mayor, either – the municipal president fulfils this function. The second reason is that 99% of the time, the municipality and the seat have the same name… logical considering the above. Also, in most cases, this will make writing about the seats and municipalities a more doable task. After all, Oaxaca state alone has 570 municipalities and the fact of the matter is that in many many cases, there will NOT be enough information to write 2 decent articles.

As for naming, (when there is a difference between seat name and municipality name), I think we should use the seat’s name. The reason for this is that the English Wikipedia targets mostly non-Mexicans and most “foreigners” have no idea was the concept of municipality is (as I didn’t, even after 4 or so years living in Mexico!) and, of course are more likely to find the seat on a map rather than a municipality.

I have set up the page for Acambay State of Mexico to roughly follow this idea, as modified the infobox for it as well. Thelmadatter (talk) 00:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I for one readily agree with this approach, for much the same reasons you have stated. In adminsitrative terms, individual localities have essentially no distinguishing presence (except maybe at a very low level), whereas municipios as historically important 2nd-tier government most definitely do. Another good reason is that most commonly available statistical data that would be an appropriate basis for an entity's article (population, area, economy, land-use, etc) is compiled at the municipal level. It can be misleading therefore to use this information on an article about some particluar township or village say, when it really refers to the municipio as a whole, ie frequently includes rural outlying settlements not just what looks to be the town/village itself. While you can get statistical data broken down to an individual locality level, these are often as not buried deep within INEGI tables, and what defines a particular locality can actually be different depending on the type of data and source (eg census vs enrollment vs land-use designations). For municipios on the other hand, these are well-defined and information on them is readily available and accessible, such as INAFED's comprehensive Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México, or the Sistema Nacional de Información Municipal(SNIM).

There would also be considerable redundancy between an article on a municipio and an article on its municipal seat, in most cases. And decent articles with unique information on other individual localidades within most municipios are unlikely to be written any time soon. I think it would be far better and much more efficient to concentrate first on fleshing out decent articles for each of the 2400+ municipios across Mexico. That is, I don't think it's worthwhile to have a whole swathe of microstubs on individual localities which say no more than "X is a village in [state]", while the article for the municipio X is a part of is un(der)-developed and could easily cover all that there's interesting to say about its constituent localidades X, Y, Z, ... There will be some exceptions where particular towns merit wider coverage, but at least there should also be the municipio article.

As for naming, either use the formal name of the municipio alone, or if needed to disambiguate then Municipio, State. Where the municipio and municipal seat share the same name, then no issue and the article can start off something like "X is a municipality and the name of its municipal seat/main settlement in the state of Y". Where the municipal seat has a different name, a redirect should be set up from that name to the municipio article (if there's not enough info at the moment to justify a separate article on the seat), or else have separate cross-linked articles for the town and municipio, if that can be done without being redundant. Redirects to the muncipio article could also be set up for the names of other localities within the municipio, presuming these too don't have sufficient independent info to justify separate articles, which they could always be turned into later. --cjllw ʘ TALK 02:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with your reasons, the most important for me is that there is no many relevant information for the communities belonging the seat in almost all the states in Mexico. About naming I am not sure about using the seat´s name, it will be the most accurate approach but most of the information refers to the municipality and people know the seat with the name of the municipality. For example, Lerma de Villada is the seat of the municipality of Lerma but we refer to it just like “Lerma”, this happens with other seats that have a similar name (but not officially the same) to the municipality (I have been working on Zinacantepec and San Miguel Zinacantepec please see this example). In your case, Acambay is the exactly the same name for the seat and the municipality but this is not the case for all. I was trying to put a standard infobox for all the municipalities in the Mexico State (changing thinks such as State of Mexico to Mexico State), while doing this, I noticed that the seat information was exactly the same as the municipality information. For an encyclopedia we must be as precise as possible. I suggest not to merge the articles, my point of view is that there must be at least one article/stub for the “municipio” (in which we can specify all the communities that it includes) and one article/stub for the seat. I think that the information you put in Acambay can be useful, if the seat has the same name as the municipality we can write a –Seat an Municipality- and put both links to it. But if they have not the same name one article could have the title – Municipality – and the other –Seat-. --Judith Soto | Talk 16:53, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

My personal point about this differences between Municipality and seat is as follow.

I gree with Judith in the idea that we have to distinguish between township that include many villages that belong to it, And seat (or "cabecera") that at the same time refers the township. For a better distinction, I think, we have to write a particular stub that features the main city in wich the political powers are within. It means, the municipal council and the others administratives jobs to the municipal service. Another Stub that looks through every village as a municipality area and at the same time to include the main town o seat. We have to detail this issues to undertand the differences. For example the TExcoco city is the seat´s name and at the same time is the MUnicipality´s name. We have to include a stud looking through this points to stablish de difference.Filiberto022 (talk) 17:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I have to disagree about putting up different stubs for these ideas. Most people go through WP only causually, and would not take the time to figure out if they are really reading about the city or the municipality (if they even have a clue as to the difference). Putting both the cabecera and the municipio on one page makes the difference fairly clear, necessary when they carry the same name as they do in many, many cases. Ive gone through the Municipalities of Oaxaca list, reorganizing the pages that exist to conform to my idea. It seems to work well. Ive started the same* with the Municipalities of Mexico State list, up to Chalco at this point. This one will take longer as the articles here are longer and there is that mess I created with my Adv A students to clean up. I did run into a problem here however... with the Ciudad López Mateos page. Almost 5 years here and I have NEVER heard Atizapán referred to as Ciudad López Mateos. Dont remember seeing that name on a map either. The article does state that the city and the municipality are for all intents and purposes, co-extensive and the city used to be (officially) called Atizapán de Zaragoza (As the municipality officially still is). My reorganization of the article, I think, makes the case pretty clear about the name but I have to wonder if an exception to using the city/town name as the title of the article is warranted in this case. Maybe a hyphenated name such as "Atizapán-Ciudad López Mateos"? There was another case where the town and municipio names were significantly different in Oaxaca Temascal or Nuevo Soyaltepec (The municipality's name is San Miguel Soyaltepec and the cabecera is known by two names) and I dealt with it this way. In cases where the municipio and town names are not significantly different "Atlacomulco/Atlcomulco de Fabela" - I dont think using the city name is a problem as most people will realize they are not far off. But the Atizapán example is troublesome, I think. *(yes, I realize I need to get a life! hee hee hee but its better than watching television and gets me reading more Spanish. :D ) Thelmadatter (talk) 12:54, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi again!, I am getting confused with this, according to your suggestion the link to the seat and the municipality will be the same in the table that lists the Municipalities of each state, and this would happen in all the mexican states. Currently there are some states that are differentiating the municipality from its seat, please take a look to Municipalities of Baja California, this is the closest example to what I think is the best for an encyclopedia.--Judith Soto | Talk 15:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Interesting... do any other states divide their municipalities into boroughs? Thelmadatter (talk) 13:59, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I see the problem... I had luck with Baja California while showing my point. I took a look to different states and what I noticed is that some do not have information but at least seems they are not mixing the information about the seat with the one about the municipality (they just have a link to the corresponding one). This seems to be the case of Municipalities of Sinaloa or Municipalities of Veracruz. Also I noticed that the distinction is clear when the seat has a completely different name and nothing to do with the name of the municipality. Some examples are Santa Clara del Cobre in the Salvador Escalante municipality in the Municipalities of Michoacán or Zihuatanejo in the José Azueta municipality in Municipalities of Guerrero. What makes noise to me are the tables of municipalities because if there is a link to a municipality and another to the municipal seat it sounds logical to me that each link must direct me to different information (I do not care if one is a large article and another is short or does not exists in this moment) especially if I am looking in a formal and worldwide encyclopedia. --Judith Soto | Talk 16:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe a good compromise would be to have the municipality links on pages like Municipalities of Mexico link to the cabecera's article's section on the municipality for example Acambay#The Municipality. In this way, we can make the differentiation clear on one page and still have a link to a municipality. I have to look into Baja's page however... with only 5 municipalities and they being big enough to warrant being divided into boroughs... It and possibly other states (Im thinking northern states with large swaths of unpopulated desert... should stay with separate pages.. Im certianly not going to monkey with it until I learn more. Here in the central and southern states... there are a LOT more munis to deal with. Any suggestions about what to do with Atizapan/Ciudad Lopez Mateos? Thelmadatter (talk) 18:29, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The big question to my eyes is whether you all intend to develop individual articles on the various towns or other settlements with the municipalities. I know that there are editors who are working to eventually expand wikipedia to include as much information on all the settlements on earthas possible, using at least one website whose Mexico page can be found here. My guess would be that where possible, placing at least the names of each settlement in the article on each municipality would be a good idea, maybe with minimal descriptions of the various settlements in those municipalities. Then, if required, individual articles on the settlements, when and if they develop, would be a lot easier. John Carter (talk) 19:11, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Holy mole John! That is going to be something ... just dealing with Mexico! If you look at the town/municipality pages I have reworked (all that have links in the Municipalities of Oaxaca and up to San Felipe de Progreso in the Municipalities of Mexico State page)... you will see that I have listed the communities that fall under the seat's municipal jurisdiction. One problem about doing every single community (while a laudable goal) is that many many communities have the exact same name... even within the same municipality! If you look at the Ocozocoautla_de_Espinosa page (a municipality in Chiapas]], you will see up to 5 communities with the same name! I put numbers after them to distinguish. But youre right about needing to list the communities as part of the muni... however, putting more info than that might be problematic for munis that have many communities and many of those have only a few people in them (See San Felipe del Progreso and Xel-Há for examples of these. I think combining them is the most expedient solution for most of the Mexican states for now, esp with the cabecera and municipio info (semi) separated. Can be separated later as sufficient information become available. but in a number of cases separation is not needed or wanted.. like in cases where the cabecera is the only town of any size at all or when the city and the municipality are co-extensive.Thelmadatter (talk) 23:45, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

How are you going to do it when you hit states like Quintana Roo which out of its 8 municipalities 5 are named different than the name of the seat? They also have a bunch of extra communities or towns within the municipality that are big enought that they even have their own wiki article. I think its going to be really hard to come to a concensus about all this because while I am sure there are very few municipalities in which the name differs from the seat they do exist and some even haver boroughs, just a thought. Alixb (talk) 23:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Quintana Roo distinguishes for its municipalities the difference between municipality and municipal seat (at least for most of them). It seems that the confussion arise when the names are the same. In this moment we have 2 options:
A) Have 2 separate articles for the municipality (which includes general information and a list of its boroughs) and the municipal seat. As an example of this case you can see Municipalities of Baja California. This is what is happening also with Quintana Roo and some of its municipalities.
B) Have just one article for the municipality and its seat (including in first place information about the seat, and then information about the municipality -with a list of its boroughs). This is what Thelmadatter is doing with Municipalities of Mexico State.
The first option is the one I preferred in order to have a clear distinction but it seems to work better for states with a small number of municipalities. The second option has a practical approach and it seems to work better for states with lot of municipalities (each one having lot of boroughs with not significant population).
I would like to have your opionion about using only one format for all the states or depending on the state using the approach that fits better to it. --Judith Soto | Talk 17:44, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi. First of all I like the fact that there is an interest to documents information on Mexico. I am a new user on Wikipedia, and after reading this discussion, I felt compelled to contribute with some suggestions. First of all I came across this article due to a suggestion made by a friend. Though I may not be taken seriously, please consider that because I do not know anybody in this forum, my opinions and suggestions are completely impartial, and do not serve the purpose to establish a right or wrong point of view for anybody in this discussion.

Due to the nature of my job, I have to pass through Acambay, every two weeks or so. I live in Queretaro, (about 2 hours north of Mexico City) to go to Toluca. By going through Acambay, I save myself from going through Mexico City, plus I save in gas and toll booths. Though it has a great scenery of the Mirror Valley (this is a valley containing many water reservoirs that give a sense of mirrors on the ground at sunset when watched form the top of Acambay) I must say that Acambay is not a main source of touristic of commercial business, and if anything, it is a truck stop for the many tired drivers, or home for many agricultural leaders of the area. But again, I have not found that it contributes significantly to the economic incomes of the State. For this reasons I understand Thelmadatter’s opinion, that it is not justified to even spend time on explaining the difference between municipalities, seats, delegations or settlements. However, you must consider two things when you right this entry for Wikipedia. The first is that even though, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that may be modified by many users, and some information may not be 100% accurate, it is an encyclopedia after all, and the information that you put in there may impact more people than what you actually expect. Every day that goes by, more children start using computers as an information source, and considering that Wikipedia is free, these children will without a doubt consult this site. Of course please consider that I used children as an example, and consider that the information you put here can and will be viewed by many users. Likewise, the second point I want you to have in mind is the fact that not only Acambay has this municipality/seat organization, but all of Mexico. Considering that I was a foreigner, if I knew that there was information that could further explain how the territories are divided, prior to a visit, I would without a doubt consult it (which I consider would have helped Thelmadatter prior to her 4 year stay in Mexico). For example, Queretaro is the name for the State, the municipality, and for the city, or at least that is what people know. The fact of the matter is that the state is Called Queretaro de Arteaga, the municipality Queretaro, and the official name of the seat is Santiago de Queretaro.

Considering these points of view I make to you the following suggestions: - Consider separating municipalities from seats, because socio-demographic and economic information will vary between the two. - Consider separating municipalities from seats, to document and explain how territories are divided in Mexico. In the end Acambay is not the only municipality/seat in Mexico. - If in the end you choose not to divide municipalities form seats, do consider putting information that specifies that the information given is either form the seat or a municipality, or do right an entry that further explains how territories are named and divided in Mexico. As a conclusion, I hope that these points of view help you take the best decision, which enrich your article and assists others. --Mr. Ed Bernes (talk) 21:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Seriously I don't understand why we are making such a big deal out of this. I think every Municipality should have its own article apart from the seat. Just look at how its done in any state in the US for its counties List of counties in Texas they all have a separate article for everything even though Texas has 254 counties. If you look at this article for example: Anderson County, Texas I think thats what we should strive for, yes it will be hard work but I think its worth it to be organized and a COMPLETE enclyclopedia. Alixb (talk) 00:19, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Alixb. Instead of trying to adapt the US-model of county -> cities (and government) we should think of the administrative division in Mexico as municipality (and government) -> cities. I have personally done it for the 5 municipalities of Baja California and a few of Sonora, namely Cajeme and its cities/towns Ciudad Obregón (seat), Cócorit, etc. The fact that some articles have included both the city and the municipality is because neither have been developed yet as to warrant separate articles. Ideally we should have articles on municipalities independently from the articles on the cities and towns in such municipalities. Even when in regards to government the seat and municipality are almost itnerchangeable, they are not in regards to everything else (population, date of foundation, GDP, etc.) --Vizcarra (talk) 02:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Work on town/municipality pages

Ive been working on already-existing pages that are listed in the municipalities of Oaxaca and municipalities of Mexico State pages... (in alphabetical order.. working on Tonatico right now) and its has been giving me some insight as I do reading and stuff to improve the pages. Town and municipal governments in Mexico are not distinct. The municipal president is the head of government of both the seat and of all the communities in the municipalities. The non-seat communities do NOT have mayors or anything of the sort. They send delegates to the seat/municipality to represent their interests. So this is very different from the town/county system in the US and even the municipality system in many other countries. Another thing is that the seat almost always absolutely dominates the municipality, in size, political importance and economic importance. If a non-seat entity grows to the point that it rivals a seat, the usual result is that the municipality splits into two. In a number of cases, the city as grown to be co-extensive or dang near co-extensive with the municipality (See Cuautitlán Izcalli or Ciudad López Mateos and in the case of Los Reyes Acaquilpan not only is the city co-extensive with the municipality of La Paz... colloquially the two names have been merged to Los Reyes-La Paz) In rural areas, the seat is almost always the community of any size at all and in the case of Oaxaca, just about every town IS a municipality because of the really mountainous terrain. For rural municipalities and seats, there is very often not enough information to justify two articles, even combining them results in a very short article. Last, but not least, is the fact that the towns/municipalities are most often referred to by the same name (either officially or unofficially) and are considered to a very large extent to be the same thing. When a distinction is made it is usually to say something like Toluca city. (as Ive seen from my students). Since city names are what usually appear on maps, I think it is best to name pages by the name of the seat, if it is somehow different from the name of the municipality. Usually the difference is minor like Jilotepec/Jilotepec de Molina Enríquez - and naming it by the usually longer city name can help in cases where there are multiple towns/municipalities of the same common name (Atizapan de Zaragoza vs Santa Maria Atizapan - both can be called Atizapan). There are some exceptions like Atizapán de Zaragoza/Ciudad López Mateos where the latter, the official city name, is almost never used... the city and its co-extensive municipality are both simply called Atizapan. The only time I can see separating city and municipality is in cases where the combined page gets too long or weildy (may be possible in the case of Toluca) but that will by far be the exception rather than the rule. I would really like to do this because it will make doing these pages as class assignments so much more manageable... not to mention the fact that there are some 2,500 municipalities in all of Mexico.Thelmadatter (talk) 16:32, 29 March 2008 (UTC)