Talk:Małopolskie

Subregions
Lesser Poland Voivodship has a terrible lot of cities, so it obviously needs to be split in subregions. How about something like this:


 * Jura Mountains &mdash; Mirow, Morsko, Ojcow, Olkusz, Oswiecim, Rabsztyn, Rudno
 * Lesser Poland Lowland &mdash; Siemiechow, Tarnow, Kraków, Bochnia, Krzeszowice, Niepolomice, Nowy Wisnicz, Tyniec, Wieliczka
 * Western Beskids &mdash; Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Maków Podhalański, Myslenice, Sucha Beskidzka, Wadowice, Zawoja
 * Eastern Beskids &mdash; Biecz, Krynica-Zdrój, Limanowa, Mszana Dolna, Muszyna, Nowy Sacz, Piwniczna-Zdrój, Żegiestów
 * Podhale &mdash; Rabka-Zdrój, Niedzica, Chocholow, Czorsztyn, Grywald, Lopuszna, Nowy Targ, Ochotnica, Sromowce Nizne, Sromowce Wyzne, Szczawnica-Zdrój
 * Tatra Mountains &mdash; Bialka Tatrzanska, Bukowina Tatrzanska, Koscielisko, Male Ciche, Murzasichle, Zakopane

Suggestions for changes or improvements are most welcome, --(WT-en) ClausHansen 18:20, 15 August 2010 (EDT)


 * Sounds great. Let's implement it. Just not sure on how we deal with the Tatra Mountains and the Vysoké Tatry article.--(WT-en) Globe-trotter 15:03, 24 November 2011 (EST)
 * Is there still something to be hashed out here, or can we remove the region discussion tag from the page? It's been quite a while now... Texugo (talk) 18:48, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Too many regions. I'd merge Jura Mountains (honestly Ojców should be covered in Kraków Go next section, it's a one day trip thing and that leaves only Oświęcim/Auschwitz) into Lesser Poland Lowland and Tatra Mountains (basically a destination) into Podhale. Jjtkk (talk) 19:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)


 * After giving it some thought I think (at least for now) three regions are enough:
 * West: Kraków, Wieliczka, Niepołomice, Oswiecim, Wadowice; destinations: Auschwitz, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Ojcowski National Park
 * East: Tarnów, Brzesko, Bochnia, Nowy Wiśnicz
 * South: Krynica-Zdrój, Limanowa, Sucha Beskidzka, Nowy Sącz, Nowy Targ, Szczawnica-Zdrój, Zakopane; destinations: Tatra Mountains
 * I think all these other small towns should be dealt with somehow on region level or as day trips from neighbouring larger towns. Jjtkk (talk) 10:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)


 * There are no regions needed atm. We barely have any content in this article, there is no point in creating additional empty regions. The destinations lists fit perfectly within the categories defined by subheadings, and if we were ever to have more blue-linked destinations, we could simply add subheadings. --PrinceGloria (talk) 15:44, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't understand, are you saying that we need no subregions below Małopolskie at all or that the current division is OK? My idea was to replace existing 6 regions with 3 (East, West, South). Jjtkk (talk) 17:16, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * We don't need any subregions. Let's do away with them. PrinceGloria (talk) 18:37, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't think we can just do away with them - there are 25 bottom-level destination articles under this region so it should be broken up. I think Jjtkk's suggestion of 3 subregions makes a lot more sense than what we currently have. Texugo (talk) 18:43, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually, the six subregions as they are make more sense to me geographically. That said, those articles are empty, and I guess the new regional ones would remain so as well - there just aren't enough users involved to keep them flush with up-to-date, original and reasonable content. If we want to aid the travellers with navigation, we can subdivide the destination list for the 20+ blue-linked destinations we have into major cities and towns or by rough regions. PrinceGloria (talk) 19:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I wholeheartedly agree with PrinceGloria. Just recently tried to use those far-from-complete articles and immediately got lost in the regions, subregions and sub-subregions. The idea of subregions is to improve navigation, but as long as we have a simple list of destinations with no descriptions whatsoever, it is much easier to peruse a list of 20+ destinations than to jump between empty subregional articles listing 5-7 destinations each. --Alexander (talk) 21:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The problem is, what you two are disagreeing with is the very way the entire hierarchy of our site has been constructed. It seems to me that if having region pages that list 25+ destinations were the condoned way of doing things, then that's what we'd have done all over the site. But that is not how we have laid out the whole site &mdash; we've pretty much always determined it's time to subdivide a given region when the number of grouped articles starts to greatly exceed about 10. If you take away our rule of thumb, you greatly complicate the issue of determining the appropriate time to subdivide. If you have paid attention to my recent activity, you'll know I've been on quite a crusade against empty region articles and overregionification in all its forms in recent weeks, but I'm not sure I would support dropping the common practice of trying to keep regions from having too many destinations/lists, at least not without hammering out the new parameters and gaining consensus that that's how we want to do it sitewide. Texugo (talk) 23:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Good to see you mention this, as I find it a common misconception that is often perpetuated and leads to creation of unnecessary regional articles. Our guideline is to avoid lists longer than 7+/-2 positions. This guideline does not automatically result in a rule that we need to create extra regional levels when a list of destinations exceeds that. The guideline is only meant to avoid long laundry lists that are hard to digest. Breaking down a list by subdividing it (within an article, not by creating new articles just to host fragments of said list) is just as good a solution.
 * A region should be created when it makes sense for the traveller and allows for better presentation of information. We don't subdivide cities into districts just because we have more than 10 restaurant listing - we rather split them into Budget, Mid-range an Splurge. We create new districts only when there is sufficient content to be presented on district level, and too much of it to be contained in one article that can be digested by a casual reader. I do not think this is "complicated" - I think this is not a clear-cut decision, but we usually reach a reasonable agreement. Discussing in more detail an taking more into account that the number of bulleted items usually leads to better results IMHO, we don't need to abuse the 7+/-2 rule to decide on regionalization.
 * I think we generally agree on that, save for some cases where an editor feels strongly about a particular region that is being discussed for elimination from the hierarchy as unnecessary. I guess we just need to sit back, re-read the guidelines and see that we may have been overinterpreting them to create unnecessary hierarchical levels. We may bring that back to the pub, but I guess for this very region, we can agree on a decision here. PrinceGloria (talk) 05:39, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

I want you to know that I'm not entirely averse to that interpretation, but I think it is a new interpretation quite different from what we have done in practice across the whole site. I do not think we should simply decide to do it here without having a broader discussion because there are too many undecided parameters. For example, I might be OK with 2-3 lists of 7+-2 items each; I would likely not be OK with 5+ such lists (taking up too much scroll space before the article actually starts) nor would I be OK with having any list with more than about 10 items each. I might be OK with grouped lists of 7+-2 blue links each; I would not necessarily support multiple lists containing lots of red links. I know that the "grouping-rather-than-subdividing" thing has been done to eliminate some intermediate-level region articles, as for Germany, but doing so for lowest-level regions is more problematic because those lists usually need to include all the cities for which we have articles, and that number tends to change over time. If we are going to start interpreting things in this way for our cities lists, I really think we need to agree on some parameters first. Texugo (talk) 11:44, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it is a lot more simple. Grouped lists of destinations are a temporary solution for those regions that nobody wants to work on. The subdivision means that you not only create new articles and update IsIn templates, but also write meaningful introductions, draw maps, etc.
 * In fact, I am writing here, because I was reading through all those subregions couple of weeks ago when I knew I was going to Krakow and I would have a couple of days to travel around. I wanted to know where to go and, of course, I ultimately failed. Therefore, it is a kind request to anyone who wants to create 3, 6 or I-don't-know-how-many subregions: put yourself into my shoes, then add one-line descriptions of each destination, draw at least one map, write introductions for every subregion and an overview in the See section of Małopolskie. If you can't do that, better leave a list of 20+ destinations in one article. It will be a lot easier to navigate. --Alexander (talk) 12:59, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * If you are saying "never subdivide unless you are willing to create maps and fill in all the articles", that is completely unacceptable. It's asking too much and it precludes any subregion article contributions made precisely because the subregion article already exists. It would also, in practice, tend to turn what you called a temporary solution into an essentially permanent, default one. Texugo (talk) 13:10, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you Alexander, yours is just the perspective I had in mind when proposing to rationalize rather than legitimize the course of action here. And this is the perspective we should put above all and not get into Wikipedia-style catch-all rulemaking. PrinceGloria (talk) 13:13, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * PS. I do not think we need to requie maps and all when a region is created. We only need to require common sense and the interest of the traveller here, as Alexander laid it out nicely.


 * Well, one thing I am saying is that one needs some knowledge and understanding of the region. If you know why you create those subregions, please, be open and write something about it instead of simply re-shuffling the content. If you don't know, why would you ever create them? And as long as regional and subregional articles are going to stay empty (this situation is kind of permanent, you know), one list of 20+ destinations makes navigation much easier. --Alexander (talk) 15:26, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Coming in late to this discussion, it's not true that having more than nine cities in a region is always a reason for further breakdown - see Geographical hierarchy: "This doesn't need to be applied stringently to the lowest level of the hierarchy; if a region has more than nine cities in it, and there's no helpful way to divide it into subregions then don't split it." We ran into a similar problem with Contra Costa County, where the county was originally split into multiple regions solely to support smaller city lists, and it was decided that doing so was dumb since that's not a useful geographic breakdown, and it isn't helpful to add layers to the hierarchy in such a case.  I don't know if this region is similar, but if the sole reason for splitting things up is because it contains more than nine cities, I'd say leave it as-is. -- Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 16:07, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your input, Ryan. I didn't find any discussion behind that case you brought up, and in any case believe that it should at the very least have the list visually grouped into rough areas. As to whether that case is comparable to this one, it's hard to say, but Małopolskie Voivodship is approximately 19 times bigger in area than Contra Costa County, and currently has 49 red+blue links versus CCC's 26. Texugo (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "leave it as-is", since in this case, "as-is" means the way this region was already divided into 6 defined and recognizeable subregions. The question at hand is whether to leave them at those 6, condense them down into 3 geographically-defined subregions as Jjtkk suggested above, or to pour everything back into this parent container. Texugo (talk) 17:37, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Wikivoyage talk:Geographical hierarchy is a general discussion on the subject, the specific case of Contra Costa County came up in a VFD discussion after it was sub-divided solely to keep the city lists smaller than nine - the decision after that was done was it isn't helpful to add levels to the region hierarchy when it is done solely to keep city lists small, and the policy page was updated to note that bottom level regions can contain more than nine cities. I can't really provide much useful input on whether this particular region should be sub-divided as I don't know the area, although 49 cities does seem like a lot. -- Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 19:12, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Whoa!

My idea above was: I'm not surprised Alexander found existing structure useless, that's why I proposed a new one, better in my opinion. Jjtkk (talk) 17:43, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * West - Kraków and around
 * East - Tarnów and around
 * South - let's say mountains
 * I don't know the region well enough, because I traveled there only for a few days. You have my full support if you can write reasonable texts, especially in the See section, so that readers understand where to go and what is important. On the other hand, if these new articles are going to be as empty as the existing ones, I see no reason to create any subregions here. Finally, another thing that I can't assess is the completeness of the subregions. Namely, can one fit everything into three articles, or will a finer splitting be necessary in the future? --Alexander (talk) 18:08, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I just did come breadcrumb cleanup. There are currently 26 bottom-level destinations (not counting the 5 Krakow district articles), plus another 23 red links, probably not all of which will get an article someday. It seems to me like a fairly reasonable amount for splitting into 3 subregions with plenty of room for growth, as far as that goes. Texugo (talk) 18:31, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Jjtkk's idea sounds reasonable. I don't like having a bunch of practically empty subdivision articles but a very long list of towns and cities isn't much better and at some point we have to split them. Another thing to do would maybe be to reduce the number of links. If there is a redlink for some town consisting of 20 houses and a convenience store and nothing really of interest to a traveler I think it is safe to remove it. In the same way if some article has very little content, say just one sight or one hotel, the information could perhaps be moved to the region's article or the article of a larger town nearby. ϒpsilon (talk) 18:33, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually, I think the current division makes a lot of sense and does reflect the natural way the region splits into geographically coherent regions that are also of similar characteristics from a tourism perspective. I'd keep the split as it is, and just work on filling in the regions and destinations with content.
 * Realistically, however, even this main article is a sorry stub of an article, and we keep on piling comments here where not much happens in the articles. Let's face it, we're far from reaching the critical mass of knowledgeable and passionate editors for this region. However we splice it, it's pure theory unless we have content therein. How about doing away with the subregions for a moment and start beefing up this very article unless it's filled with quality content to the brim and splitting just comes natural? PrinceGloria (talk) 18:40, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree. It would be much better to have real content than discussions about 26 blue + 23 red links (and, as I mentioned below, some important places are simply not covered). --Alexander (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Out of curiosity, just how long of a giant list would you be willing to keep to avoid splitting into subregions? 26 doesn't even start to seem like too many to you? 50 doesn't either? Texugo (talk) 19:03, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * First of all, I would try to add a one-line description to every destination. This will tell me which of these destinations are clearly repetitive (Oswieciem and Auschwitz being one example), or do not merit an article, etc. As long as it is a simple list, there is no difference between keeping it on one page divided into groups or placing parts of the list into different articles. Finally, I would like to re-iterate that sights and attractions are not cities that you see on the map. On one hand, UNESCO sites must be incorporated and highlighted in a travel guide in some form (and these wooden churches are unique indeed!) On the other hand, places like Chochołów likely do not need a separate article. --Alexander (talk) 19:35, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Can we work on the article a bit and then talk? It's always better to discuss actual content rather than theorize. PrinceGloria (talk) 19:36, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

UNESCO sites
Małopolskie voevodstvo has quite a few UNESCO heritage sites. While Krakow, Wieliczka, Bochnia and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska are more or less clear, I am wondering why one needs separate articles about Oświęcim and Auschwitz. But the most challenging question is how to describe multiple wooden churches in this region. So far there is an article about Dębno that has no chance to grow to a normal article, and 3 other UNESCO wooden churches (Lipnica Dolna, Sękowa, Binarowa) are not even mentioned anywhere on Wikivoyage. This is definitely one thing to consider when subregions are discussed. --Alexander (talk) 15:26, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Regions within Małopolskie
The earlier conversation went quiet after 2014. But IMO Małopolskie page is altogether messy and needs review.

Having a page for Małopolskie itself makes sense geographically, administratively and from a visitor pov, the problem is its internal organisation.

On WV-EN it’s broken into five “regions,” which don’t form part of the breadcrumb trail for their component cities. They’re poorly developed and the contents are a wash of red ink. These five are
 * Jura Mountains (NW of Krakow and straddling the adjacent province of Silesia) has six red and one outline city.
 * Western Beskids (SW of Krakow) has two red, three outline and one usable.
 * Eastern Beskids (SE of Krakow) has five red and three outline.
 * Podhale (S of Krakow) has one red and six outline.
 * Tatra Mountains (further south) has seven red and one usable.

There is then a separate list of 12 cities, four of which aren’t included anywhere on the regional lists, including Kraków.

On WV-PL there’s a different hierarchy, of 22 powiaty or counties. These are difficult to navigate if as an outsider you don’t know whether you should be looking in powiat wadowicki or in powiat proszowicki or wherever. Doesn’t look like the way to go.

I therefore propose:
 * For two red cities, Biecz and Myślenice, there is good info on WV-PL, WV-DE or Wikipedia-En. It should be a quick job to construct usable English pages for both, and this is worth doing whatever we decide about the regional structure. Any volunteers?
 * All the other red cities should simply not be mentioned, though any salient POI should migrate into the nearest city page (perhaps with a special section somewhere to draw together all those wooden churches and similar). They have scant info in German or Polish so it's not realistic to expect their development soon. But I didn't search systematically in any other language, please holler if I've missed a nugget.
 * The regional layer here is unhelpful and should be dismantled, leaving a plain-text description and grouping on Małopolskie main page of the 22 remaining cities (including the two additions above and ejecting one in Silesia). There won't be much over half-a-dozen per group, not too listy; lots of regional pages take this approach.
 * A suitable grouping might be: Krakow & surrounds, north, SW, SE and south. Plain text is very simple to amend if the groupings don’t quite work.
 * No reorganisation meanwhile of the component city pages, which may need to absorb orphan POIs.
 * However if anyone’s got the time, it doesn’t feel right that Oświęcim is a mere outline – surely a priority. Its better-known namesake Auschwitz is of usable standard so it’s a quick job to improve.

Views? Given the season, I'll make no moves on this till New Year. - GS on 13 December 2019

And further to that, I'm pinging those who participated in the earlier discussion. That's Globe-trotter,  ClausHansen, Texugo, Jjtkk, PrinceGloria, Alexander, Ryan and ϒpsilon. Please forward to anyone I've missed.

An example of the general layout I'm proposing is County Dublin. That's smaller of course but has a similar pattern of one prime city tourist destination then a sprinkling of outlying towns and attractions across three or four counties. Grahamsands (talk) 11:42, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I did not have a chance to visit the region (except Krakow) since 2014, so my knowledge of it did not improve, but on general grounds I can agree with your proposal. I personally find excessive subregions very inconvenient from reader's point of view. --Alexander (talk) 19:37, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

One in favour, no other comments, so this work has begun. The towns have been grouped in plain text roughly as proposed above; this might not be their final arrangement. There are 22 of them so that's quite a lot of blue dots, but several are obvious candidates for redirecting. I'll leave them all be for now as potential homes for other swept-in material. Still to do:
 * - construct pages for Biecz and Myślenice.
 * - ensure all relevant but potentially orphan material has found a home, including a second search of WV POL & DE.
 * - check for knock-on effects for adjacent counties and hierarchies, then redirect the redundant Małopolskie subregions.
 * - sort any other glaring priorities.  Grahamsands (talk) 14:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Getting there. Biecz is constructed, Myślenice to follow. All the "cities" need overhaul to try to get them to a usable standard; volunteers? I don't propose any merger / redirection of the scrappier examples until that's done. However there are yet more extra-hierarchical pages - I keep stumbling across further examples, eg "Beskids" - that are little more than lists of cities. They don't add anything to the regular hierarchy, so I intend to redirect these to Małopolskie (or other province) whenever discovered. One exception is Carpathian Mountains, which covers a huge area so the list of cities is especially tedious. This could reduce to a list of regions / provinces, with just a few main cities mentioned but majoring on the parks. And with that I'm now going offline, back on 15 Jan. Grahamsands (talk) 14:36, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I've now reached end of this work. Second thoughts on Myślenice, it's marginal for being a page so I just gave it a couple of lines under Rabka as somewhere you might stop en route. I redirected the redundant extra-hierarchicals except Carpathian Mountains, which is a separate and wider task to rationalise. So too is expanding (and in some cases merging / re-directing) those Małopolskie pages that have thin content - the point is that hopefully this can now be done on the same basis as any other place, without being impeded by an awkward sub-regional structure. I've adopted the term "Province" for Małopolskie and will propose on Poland / Talk doing so for the rest of the country, since a "voivodeship" sounds like something commanded by Darth Vader. Grahamsands (talk) 22:49, 16 January 2020 (UTC)