Talk:Brussels

The article said:

as well as all major ministries of the European Administration.

What on earth is that supposed to mean? There are no 'European ministries'. Was the person who wrote this thinking of the Directorate-Generals, or maybe of the Council?

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Probably. Added the European Parliament, which also has its main seat in Brussels (even if it spends one week per month in Strasbourg for cosmetic reasons). --Herman

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I am planning a rewrite of the article of Brussels, and I think it would be best to split into Brussels City[?] and Brussels Region[?] (which consists of 19 towns of which Brussels City is one), and create a disambiguation page for Brussels. If nobody objects I will make this change one of the upcoming days. --Frederik

I'm not sure it's worth the split, or I would do it otherwise. There is no need to separate Brussels-1000 from the 18 other Brussels districts. Such a distinction would be artificial, IMO. "Brussels" forms a whole; I can think of no subject that makes sense at the "pentagon" level but not at the "region" level. Except perhaps architecture, but that is better handled in one place for the whole region. What would make sense to me, though, is a separate Brussels Region[?] article on the institutions of Brussels. This will probably be a short article; all stuff that is not related to the Brussels-Region institutions should go to the main Brussels article. -- FvdP 20:59 Sep 23, 2002 (UTC)

Sorry for my late answer. I've not yet been able to write anything for the moment (busy with school etc...). If I understand you correctly, I agree with you about the Brussels Region[?] article only containing information about the institutions. I think Brussels Region[?] should only talk about the Brussels parliament, gouvernment, etc, and it should also have a list of the 19 districts.

Fhimpe 12:07 Oct 5, 2002 (UTC)

About the article split: yes, that's what I meant. (Maybe that's also what you meant from the beginning, sorry if I misunderstood you.) The list of 19 "commons" could go in both articles. ("common" is the name they use in London for London's districts, its etymology parallels that of "commune" and "gemeente" when you look at the meaning, so why not use it ? With dutch & french translations of course.)

About being late: no problem with that. I was just wondering if you were still here; question solved.

FvdP 10:25 Oct 8, 2002 (UTC)

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The double barrelled names for some of the communities in the Brussels area can't be right. For the practical purposes of the English Wikipedia a choice should be made between the forms. Except for Brussels itself, none of these communes has an established English form that most of us would recognize. I also acknowledge that there are Belgian sensitivities over which official language should be used.

I would like to suggest a compromise. Since the form "Sint" seems strange to English ears, and an English speaking person would insert the "a" in that word anyway, we could prefer the French form for those communes that include "Sint" or "Saint" and the Flemish form for the others. Eclecticology 17:34 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

I expected some kind of reaction about this issue. The Brussels Capital Region is officially bilingual, so both names should be mentioned. The question is: should they both be in the title or not.

You are right about the Belgian sensitivities. For foreigners this may seem petty or silly, but for us it is something to be reckoned with. Etymologically speaking, the names of the municipalities have a Flemish origin, so I'd hate to see them disappear from the title (without a doubt, that already tells you I'm a Fleming). What you propose is indeed a compromise, but I'm not convinced it's for the right reason. Even if 'Sint' sounds strange to English ears, I don't think it should be changed for that reason. There are a number of towns, cities and municipalities in Flanders with 'Sint' in their names that do not have an established English form. I do not see any reason to change that part of the name in 'Saint'. It would not be correct.

I wonder if it's really that much of a problem to have double barrelled names. An alternative proposition would be to create redirect pages for those names in Dutch and in French, eg. 'Sint-Joost-ten-Node' and 'Saint-Josse-ten-Noode' would both point to 'Sint-Joost-ten-Node / Saint-Josse-ten-Noode'. In that way you could choose which form to use in other articles. Dhum Dhum 20:30 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)

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Hi. I just moved Auderghem / Oudergem to Auderghem because it was listed on Wikipedia:Subpages to be moved. I didn't realise there was this French/Dutch bilingualism. (Yeah, perhaps I should read an article before I move it.) Since the discussion here doesn't appear to have come to a concensus, might I propose to just use either the French or Dutch name for each of them, but not both? I mean, don't redirects do the job? Isn't that what they're there for? If none of the two names is more common than the other, I'd suggest we just chose one by random for each. At least that's better than having both names in the title. -- Timwi 19:55 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'd really like to have a more simple solution than the current one, but being a Fleming I do not agree to having only the French name in the title for Brussels' municipalities (and French-speaking Belgians may have the same opinion, but the other way around, if you know what I mean.) I also don't think that arbitrarily choosing either a Dutch or a French name will do the job, since there's no logic behind it. If you're not a Belgian it's probably very difficult to understand the sensibilities and emotions behind this. :-) please see User talk:FvdP. D.D. 20:02 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I'll stop doing any changes I was planning to do until we can reach a broader concencus and (hopefully) a simple solution. D.D. 20:09 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I already tried to do some of this by moving Vorst / Forest to Vorst. I then made a note of the fact that there are more of these to be done on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention (look in the list under List of Belgian municipalities). However, there was a response saying that the pages should actually be redirected to the French name; see the aforelinked page for the discussion. --bdesham 14:52 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That response (asking to move to the french name) was by me and is superseeded by the discussion I had with Dhum Dhum (D.D.) (copied below). If a choice has to be made between Vorst and Forest, I think the most rational choice is Forest -- but DhumDhum would not agree. I think having the two languages in the title is a good compromise. So the question that remains is: is there any strong argument against a '/' in the title ? I think not. --FvdP 17:07 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

FvdP, thanks for defending the compromise. You're right, I don't agree to having only the French name in the article title, just as I don't think it would be fair to have only the Dutch name. If "/" reminds too much of a subpage, what about replacing it with "-" (with a space before and after as in "Forest - Vorst") or maybe even "or" (as in "Forest or Vorst"). If I have to make a choice I'd choose "-" but that might make names like "Saint-Josse-ten-Noode - Sint-Joost-ten-Node" a bit more difficult to read. BTW, French might be the more prominent language of Brussels now, but most (if not all) of the municipalities' names have a Dutch origin/etymology. D.D. 21:10 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your thanks.

I had though of the "space-minus-space" solution. If that can prevent innocent people from thinking of moving FR/NL to FR or NL, it maybe even better than "/", but your example shows that otherwise "/" is better. In a lighter vein: I agree with your remark on etymology, but it may be used against your aim if I come to remark that (say) "Schaerbeek" is as flemish as "Schaarbeek" is so can be used instead and still please you ;-) --FvdP

Good try. In fact, "Schaerbeek" was --not "is"-- Flemish. AFAIK the spelling evolved to become "Schaarbeek". We also don't write "Vlaamsch" anymore, do we? ;-) D.D. 21:32 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I just found another article with a "/" in its title: English/British coin Penny. If it's allowed there, then why not here? D.D. 21:41 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Umm... it's not allowed there. The slash indicates a subpage, and subpages have been deprecated -- see Wikipedia:Do not use subpages. Personally, I think that titles in the form "Name / Another Name" are bad, since they are counterintuitive and hard to find -- if I want information about "Vorst", I'm going to look at Vorst and not Vorst / Forest. Why not make two articles, "Vorst" and "Forest (Belgium)", and redirect one to the other? That's certainly an intuitive solution, and -- issues of wars between NL and FR speakers aside -- they're the exact same place, just called by different names. --bdesham 18:14 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The slash indicates a subpage, and subpages have been deprecated: yes subpages have been deprecated, but the slash does indicate more things that just subpages. That's subpages that are deprecated (i.e. pages with title Subject/SubSubject), not the other uses of '/', as far as I know.

The solution about "intuitiveness" is to have the article at (say) "Forest - Vorst" and redirects to it from Vorst and Forest (Belgium) (that latter title is already not-so-intuitive for people to guess it out of the blue...) Also, Wikipedia is not only about intuitiveness but also about NPOV, and I'm afraid the only solution that is NPOV enough to satisfy both parties is to have both languages in the title. --FvdP 21:17 22 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Since there have been no additions to this discussion for 11 days, I'm planning to go ahead with my initial idea, with one small adaptation. Within the next few days I'll create and redirect Dutch and French named titles to French - Dutch named titles (using "-" instead of "/" to avoid confusion). I'll also adapt the links in the List of Belgian municipalities and Brussels article accordingly. D.D. 19:03 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks! --bdesham 19:26 3 Jul 2003 (UTC)

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(the beginning of the next discussion was copied from user talk:FvdP:)

Hi FvdP, I noticed your redirects of Vorst and Forest / Vorst. In your summary you say: "Back to Vorst/Forest for consistency, but should be the other way round (Forest/Vorst)". Why? Brussels is bilingual, so both "Vorst / Forest" and "Forest / Vorst" can be regarded as "incorrect". Being a Fleming myself I initially put the article at "Vorst / Forest" (which is not wholly correct, as I said above). The towns within the Brussels municipality/region should be given an article title which is acceptable to English, French and Dutch speakers. I don't agree with "Forest / Vorst", probably for the same reason you don't agree with "Vorst / Forest". Let's try to find a middle way :-) D.D. 20:34 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

OK for the middle way ! As you state, dutch & french are officially on equal grounds in Brussels, but the french language is clearly more prominent among the inhabitants (I don't know what that becomes if we add the workers from Flanders...) so I'd say if the choice is between Forest/Vorst and Vorst/Forest, chose the former. Actually I did the change because someone had moved the article to "Vorst (Forest)" which I can't accept for reasons you can imagine - while I can live with "Vorst / Forest". Now, the current result is an article with title "Forest / Vorst" which begins with "Vorst (in Dutch) or Forest (in French)", which is accidental but may be a good compromise, what do you think ? I had thought of dirty tricks like alternation (Forest/Vorst then Elsene/Ixelles etc) but we risk to confuse the reader there. So my best idea till now is FR/NL for the titles and NL/FR for the article's introduction, or the reverse. --FvdP 20:57 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

FR/NL for the titles and NL/FR for the introduction seems like a good idea to me too. Apart from redirecting articles like Vorst / Forest to Forest / Vorst there are some other things I was thinking of doing:

• Creating articles like Forest and Vorst which redirect to Forest / Vorst. That'll make it easier to link to the actual articles from other articles.
• Deleting links like Vorst / Forest in the List of Belgian municipalities and adding [[Forest / Vorst|Forest]] and [[Forest / Vorst|Vorst]] where they belong alphabetically.
• Changing the list of the Brussels' municipalities into a table with a Dutch and a French column. The Dutch column could contain links like [[Forest / Vorst|Vorst]] and the French column [[Forest / Vorst|Forest]]. That should make the article a bit clearer too.

What do you think? If you agree, I'll start with it. D.D. 19:52 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I agree, these look like pretty good ideas.
About the list of Belgian municipalities, what are you doing with Ghent, Ypres etc. ? I had thought to make the list contain something like:

• I
  • Ieper
• G
  • Ghent / Gent (and Gand ?)
• Y
  • Ypres

but if we want to be complete we're going to introduce names in up to four languages... --FvdP 20:04 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What I had in mind was using the English name as an article title if there is one (as in Brussels, Ghent, Ypres, ...). If there is no English equivalent I'd use the Dutch name for municipalities in Flanders, the French name for Wallonia (except for the German-speaking region), and both the Dutch and French names for the Brussels' region. Of course, within the article the name can be translated into other suiting languages. Would that be OK? (I think that's an accepted Wikipedia policy.) D.D. 19:35 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

OK. Actually my (not too important) question was about which names are to appear in the list. --FvdP