Talk:Sumatra

Drink
ok i dont get it, it says dont drink the water??? applying to what water? ocean, river, bottled water idk? --(WT-en) CoonCat89 14:55, 19 May 2009 (EDT)
 * Remark removed from Drink section, new remark in Stay Save. --(WT-en) Rein N. 16:19, 19 May 2009 (EDT)

Regions
I have been avoiding this one as I knew it would not be straightforward. Certainly, the 10 current travel regions to correspond with the provinces is too many. The clearest provincial map of Sumatra I have found is here.

I propose a division of this vast island as follows (north to south):


 * Aceh - leave as is. Although the chances of it ever being a separate nation are greatly diminished these days, this is a special adminstrative territory which very much stands alone as far as the traveler is concerned. Has a quite a lot of good content.


 * North Sumatra - leave as is. Lots of back-packer driven content and many of Sumatra's leading draws.


 * Riau and West Sumatra combined to form a new division called either Central Sumatra or, better I think, West Sumatra and Riau. Riau can't really stand alone and it has to go somewhere. West Sumatra has a lot of good content.




 * Riau Islands stays as is. This is a very different region to any of the others. The highly developed Bintan is basically an extremely naff playground for Singaporeans, while many of the others are so off-the-beaten-path as to get almost no visitors.


 * Jambi, Bengkulu, South Sumatra and Lampung combined to form one new region called Southern Sumatra. It makes geographical sense and the four existing 'regions' contain only 6 articles between them.


 * Bangka-Belitung stays as is. These lovely OtBP islands are likely to grow in popularity, and in any case, would be hard to incorporate into Southern Sumatra.

So that's 6 divisions (4 mainland and 2 sets of islands) rather than the unwieldy 10 we have at the moment. Any comments very gratefully received.

Map is not finished yet (no roads and rivers) but it shows the proposed region breakdown.

--(WT-en) Burmesedays 02:53, 16 August 2011 (EDT)


 * Is there a reason why we shouldn't go ahead and implement this? Texugo (talk) 14:49, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
 * For the regions which lack content and were proposed to be merged, Riau has 5 articles under it, West Sumatra 10, which means the potential West Sumatra and Riau contains 15 articles. Jambi (province) has 4, Bengkulu (province) 1, South Sumatra 3, and Lampung 3, which means the potential Southern Sumatra contains 11 articles. The content is likely to grow and having more regions than needed is easier than having to divide them later. Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 05:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I agree with Hanif Al Husaini. There are a few park articles that Hanif hasn't counted. Counting park articles, Jambi has 5 articles and Lampung has 4, bringing the total for Southern Sumatra to 13. Bengkulu (province) remains the "problem child" here with only 1 article, but I don't think merging it makes sense. Ground Zero (talk) 11:18, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, the Java article only splits into three regions despite having eight provinces (including Madura island and Kepulauan Seribu archipelago). We should "grow" the lower region (regencies/kabupaten) instead of over-dividing the island-level region, because apparently the Indonesian government loves to create more provinces. Veracious (talk) 12:25, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

All right, since there's no comment, i will propose a new, simplified version based on the Java's static map referring to Sumatra's old map: Veracious (talk) 09:14, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Northern Sumatra will cover Aceh and North Sumatra peovinces, and also Nias Island. Aceh is not a special adminstrative territory, even Yogyakarta Special Region (yes, a special ones) is even being part of Central Java.
 * Central Sumatra will cover Jambi, Riau and West Sumatra province and also Mentawai and Riau islands. Yes, it is a real thing.
 * Southern Sumatra will cover Bengkulu, South Sumatra and Lampung provinces and also Bangka-Belitung islands.


 * I don't know much about Sumatra, but I think Aceh is culturally distinctive enough (in addition to the implementation of Sharia Law) to warrant a separate article. -- SHB2000  (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta) 09:47, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I was going to say the same but SHB beat me to it. Vidimian (talk) 15:00, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposed Northern Sumatra merger
Wv:regions provides this advice on how to decide where to define regions:
 * "The 7 ± 2 rule. Our hierarchies work best with a moderate number of items at each level; a good target is around seven items, plus or minus two. With fewer than five items, the subdivision starts to appear inefficient and excessive; with more than nine, it becomes difficult for the reader to distinguish the individual items....
 * "Political or legal definitions. Some countries are divided into states, provinces, counties, cantons or what have you by their governments. It sometimes makes sense to use these if they're the best way to break up a region....
 * "Language or cultural definitions. Some countries have clean divisions between language or ethnic lines...."

Aceh has 11 articles linked, and North Sumatra also has 11 articles linked. If they were merged, the advice provided by wv:regions would be a good argument for them being split up again.

Why do you want to merge them? Ground Zero (talk) 11:14, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposed Central Sumatra merger
Jambi is the only region that violates the 7 ± 2 rule. I don't see the need for a merger here. The resulting 29-article region would be difficult to navigate. Ground Zero (talk) 11:22, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Jambi — 4 articles
 * Riau — 6 articles
 * West Sumatra province and Mentawi Islands — 12 articles
 * Riau islands — 7 articles
 * Likewise, aren't the Riau Islands popular weekend destinations from Singapore (to warrant a separate region article)? I think letting the region articles grow would best work in this situation. -- SHB2000  (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta) 11:31, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposed Southern Sumatra merger
This merger makes sense on the basis of number of articles, but it is also worth noting that the existing state articles have a lot of content in Understand, Get in, See, Do, Eat. Is there overlap? Or would the merged article be difficult to navigate because it is combining information for several states? Ground Zero (talk) 11:31, 14 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Bengkulu — 1 article
 * South Sumatra — 3 articles
 * Lampung provinces — 3 articles
 * Bangka-Belitung islands — 2 articles


 * @Ground Zero @SHB2000 Sorry, I think there's a minsunderstanding of my proposal.
 * I want to make/create a "top" region rather than merging already existing articles. Here's the comparison with Java island, their "top" region are Western Java, Central Java, and East Java.

Veracious (talk) 03:31, 15 August 2023 (UTC) I think I understand now. But there are only 10 region article under the Sumatra region article. Is an intermediate level needed? Wouldn't it be better to spend time expanding the current articles, and creating new Destination articles instead of creating another layer? Ground Zero (talk) 03:41, 15 August 2023 (UTC)


 * @Ground Zero Well, Sulawesi island also had 10 region article under it and has an intermediate level. It's actually a part of preparation for expanding current articles. Veracious (talk) 05:51, 15 August 2023 (UTC)


 * How is it part of that preparation? What would you want to put in the super-region articles? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:57, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Ikan Kekek The same thing comes to my mind when splitting both Central Java and East Java super-regions into smaller ones... what stuff to fill in there. Turns out there are another Wikivoyager that helped me, so i think content-filling is doable. Veracious (talk) 07:47, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * On the face of it, it's reasonable to divide Sumatra this way, so I'd be happy to see what you come up with, but does Ground Zero have a point about it maybe being more useful to work on existing articles? Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:42, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see – in that case, I still think there is a massive cultural difference in Aceh to warrant being directly categorised beneath Sumatra. -- SHB2000  (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta) 09:41, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @SHB2000 Well, for example, Northern Sulawesi page is explaining about North Sulawesi and Gorontalo provinces, both are culturally different. Majority of North Sulawesi province people is Christian, therefore, their local food (containing pork) and alcohol drink are basically haram for those in Gorontalo province that is dominated by Muslim. Veracious (talk) 10:59, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It's actually a part of preparation for expanding current articles.
 * Wv:regions advises "Importantly, we only add a level of regions when there is too much content in the existing breakdown."
 * The current articles should be expanded and destination articles created first. After that, there will be no argument about whether an intermediate level is needed.
 * We have far too much over-regionalization of countries, where enthusiastic editors have created detailed but unnecessary regional breakdowns, and then left the project or moved on to other things. I've been working to clean up Brazilian state articles that were split up into regions that weren't needed in 2013 by an editor who is no longer around. Other editors did not come along later to create the destination articles that editor imagined would be created following the regionalization. Ground Zero (talk) 12:17, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Ground Zero Hmm, that's concerning. Is there no wiki-workshop/wiki-training for Wikivoyage? Veracious (talk) 06:09, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately not :-(. -- SHB2000  (talk &#124; contribs &#124; meta) 07:58, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * We do have lots of resources available for learning about editing in Wikivoyage. Tips for new contributors and Help are the best starting points, but there are really too many policies to explain in a 10-minute video. Generally, new Wikivoyers learn by doing, and by having other editors explain things to them. Ground Zero (talk) 12:39, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Ground Zero Hmm, what i mean is actually introducing Wikivoyage to the community and teach them directly, so we don't have to "pray" someone will come here through Wikipedia or Google. But i do get that most active people in here are scattered across the globe so it's difficult to held a workshop/training event by yourself. Ok,ok, i will try expanding the lower article first, but it will be pretty slow since i also "carrying" Indonesian Wikivoyage. Veracious (talk) 05:50, 17 August 2023 (UTC)