Talk:Rivière Qui Barre (river)

Naming Error

I made a mistake. I should have named this article Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta)

Merger proposal

I propose that Rivière Qui Barre (river) be merged into Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta) (not Rivière Qui Barre). I think that the content in the Rivière Qui Barre (river) article can needs to be transferred to the Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta) article, as that one has the correct name . Beejsterb (talk) 01:45, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Merging is between two articles that both have content. There isn't anything to merge here.

There isn't anything incorrect about Rivière Qui Barre (river), and Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta) just as aptly refers to the hamlet as it does to the river. I've taken care of guiding anyone reaching Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta) to either the hamlet article or the river article, whichever the person is looking for. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:06, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

—Largo Plazo, most Albertan articles about waterways use "river (Alberta)", and when talking about settlements with the same name, they use "river, Alberta". I made the mistake of creating Rivière Qui Barre (river) instead of Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta), so therefore Rivière Qui Barre (river) needs to become Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta), and then this article needs to be deleted.

Can you give examples of other cases? Typically, the point of a disambiguator is to disambiguate. An article might be titled Foo (Alberta) if there is also a Foo (Manitoba) or a Foo (Scotland). Here, you are trying to distinguish a river from a habitation with the same name. It may look like there's some convention that distinguishes habitations from rivers by calling the former Foo, Alberta and the latter Foo (Alberta), but the existence of such a convention would be completely opaque to the general readership and would be confusing and therefore preferable to avoid if not needed for some other reason, like the existence of a Foo (Manitoba). In a case like that, however, it would be clearer, and a big favor to the reader, to disambiguate the two river articles more precisely, as Foo (Alberta river) and Foo (Manitoba river), to distinguish both of them from a city named Foo, Alberta as well as from each other. —Largo Plazo (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

—Largo Plazo, I apologize for taking so long to get back to you. I have some examples here. First one is Sylvan Lake, Alberta, a major town located on a major lake Sylvan Lake (Alberta). Peace River, Alberta follows the same rules, same as Peace River (Canada). I cannot find any articles that follow the same format as this one, infact, I created this artcle, and I only realised my mistake after. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beejsterb (talk • contribs) 00:07, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Then somebody also named these contrary to the conventions prescribed in Wikipedia's Manual of Style. I feel rather confident that nowhere in Wikipedia's MOS is there a special rule for the naming of places in Alberta, distinct from the conventions for naming places everywhere else.

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Canada-related articles#Geography. The examples shown there that have the names of provinces in parentheses are, as I said above, for the purpose of distinguishing between geographic places or features in different provinces, or different parts of provinces, that have the same name, not to distinguish between the name of a city and the name of a river in the same province.

In the case of Rivière Qui Barre, we are distinguishing the river in Alberta from a city in Alberta, not a river in another province. The disambiguator needs to be relevant to the characteristic that distinguishes the one that's a river from the other one. Hence, Rivière Qui Barre (river) is appropriate. —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:36, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

I just did some research and found that in the case of Sylvan Lake and Peace River, the titles for the river articles are distinguishing, not the lake or river in Alberta from the like-named municipality in Alberta, but from Sylvan Lakes and Peace Rivers in other places, in addition to a meteor named "Peace River". That is the pattern they are following, though I see why you concluded as you did. They are being distinguished from:

• Sylvan Lake (Cass County, Minnesota)
• Sylvan Lake (Grant County, Minnesota)
• Sylvan Lake (New York)
• Sylvan Lake (South Dakota)
• Peace River (British Columbia electoral district)
• Peace River (Florida)
• Peace River (electoral district)
• Peace River (meteorite)
• Peace River (provincial electoral district)

Meanwhile, someone has, properly, turned Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta) into a disambiguation page that points to both Rivière Qui Barre articles. —Largo Plazo (talk) 00:58, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Beejsterb - I see what you are saying, but I put the (river) in the title hoping to change it later on, believing that I could and knowing that I was incorrect. I cannot find any other geographic location (on earth) article that lists the type of geographic location in brackets after the title. That is why I believe that it is incorrect. I believe it should be changed to follow the format of other articles, as this one does not.

See above, where I showed you and explained thoroughly the format used for other articles, in conformance with standard Wikipedia practices, and why it appears you got the mistaken impression that you had. See WP:NCDAB for the general statement, and see, again, the article on naming conventions in Canada to which I referred you earlier, which says nothing resembling what you are claiming. If you're certain that the pattern that you inferred from your observations of a limited set of articles implies that Wikipedia has a special rule for rivers in Alberta under which they're disambiguated by putting the name of the province in parenthesis because they're a river instead of because a geographic feature with the same name exists in another place other than that province, please show me where it is. —Largo Plazo (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I thought about it further, wondering how often it would be necessary to put "(river)" in parentheses anyway, given that natural disambiguation (again, see WP:NCDAB) would be the usual route. We speak of the St. Lawrence River, the Mississippi River, the Potomac River. The only cases I can think of where that wouldn't be the way we clarify, when needed, that an article is about a river, and not another thing, by a particular name is when the name already includes the word for river in another language. We don't do that a whole lot in English. We speak of the Rio Grande, as an example. We can't call that the Rio Grande River. So if we needed to disambiguate it from something else that was also called the Rio Grande, we could have Rio Grande (river).

I did come up with a couple of examples of this:

• Rio Comprido versus Rio Comprido (river)
• Rivière du Rempart and Rivière du Rempart District versus Rivière du Rempart (river)

—Largo Plazo (talk) 03:21, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Disambiguation

I have made Rivière Qui Barre (Alberta) into a disambiguation page. Biscuittin (talk) 23:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)