Wikipedia:WikiProject German districts

Title

WikiProject German districts

Scope

This WikiProject aims primarily to standardize district entries of Germany. The pages to be generated serve as a link between the Bundesländer and the cities and towns.

Status page

Parentage

The Bundesland articles are parentage articles, although there is no WikiProject for them yet.

Descendant Wikiprojects

No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.

Similar Wikiprojects

Similar Wikiprojects include WikiProject Swedish counties and WikiProject French departements.

Participants

• Ahoerstemeier
• Cordyph

How to title the page As the districts have no English names, we should use their German names. The district Nordfriesland is placed under Nordfriesland and not under Northern Frisia. Exception: If the district bears at least partially the same name as a town, then use the English name of that town. Example: The district Hameln-Pyrmont is placed under Hamelin-Pyrmont.

Where to find information

Most districts have their own websites. The amount of information greatly differs though. An easy way to find the website of a district is the Kreisnavigator (http://www.kreisnavigator.de/kreisnavigator/mainfra-start.htm), even though in most cases the URL can be guessed easily.

If you have more hints, tell us here:

• Thüringen Official Website (http://www.thueringen.de) Here are comprehensive descriptions of the districts, often better than the information you get on the districts' webpages.

Structure

The article should start with a good introduction, giving the name of the district, its location in the state, and the names of neighbouring districts resp. states.

The factsheet includes:

• the state and the administrative region, where the district belongs to; if there is no administrative region, that line should be dropped
• the capital
• area, population and population density; if possible, state the year, when the population was valid
• car identification (a one to three letter code)
• the official website of the district
• a map of the state with the district highlighted; map templates can be found here: Wikipedia:WikiProject German districts/Maptemplates.

The rest of the article consists of the following paragraphs:

History: Historical events related to the district, even if they occurred before the establishment of the district; some districts are succession units to historical states (e.g. Steinfurt, Schaumburg) and need a more comprehensive history section than those districts, that were artificially created.

Geography: Describe the geographical features within the district (mountains, rivers, lakes etc.)

Coat of arms: About the portions of the coat of arms and their origins, if known.

Towns and municipalities: Give a full list of cities and municipalities with their status (city or municipality).

In some states there are administrative units like Ämter, Verbundgemeinden, Samtgemeinden etc. List them as well, and link to the Amt article (example: Altenburger Land).

In any case: Sort the places by their status and then alphabetically. Take care, that you disambiguate the towns and municipalities. The preferred type of disambiguation is to add the name of the state: Halle, Saxony-Anhalt and Halle, North Rhine-Westphalia[?]. Anyhow, if there is a lot of towns and municipalities of the same name, we should use other additions: Neustadt (Holstein)[?], Neustadt (Weinstrasse)[?] and Neustadt (Waldnaab)[?]. Avoid article titles like "Neustadt an der Weinstrasse".

When applying the template below, you should change the table according to the situation in this district. For example it might make sense to have one column for the towns and two colums for the municipalities.

Miscellaneous: Anything, that does not fit in the above categories; normally this section should be dropped.

External links: Any website related to the district (not only the official website, which is already listed in the factsheet). If there is an English (or other non-German) language version, it should be mentioned here. (For this purpose it might be useful to repeat the official website's URL here.)

Template

When applying this template to a district stub or article, it should be common practice to create a temporary page to work on, with the following notice:

''This temporary page is being used to expand and convert the article [[_]] over to the new format proposed at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject German districts]]. Please feel free to add or edit anything on this page to help in the conversion process.''

Don't forget to replace the "_" with the name of the article being converted.

To notify readers/writers that a new page is being created, place the following text on the district article itself:

'''A new page based on the new [[Wikipedia:WikiProject German districts|template]] is being worked on at [[_/Temp]], please make any changes you want to make on that page.'''

_ is a district...

History

...

Geography

...

Coat of arms

Towns and municipalities

Miscellaneous

...

External links

Official website (http://www.xyzzxyxx.com) (German, English)
Touristical website for the xyz region (http://www.xyzzxyxx.com) (German, English, French)
...

Status

List the articles, which are completed, on the Status page