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Can we discuss the tweaks and qualms of each section under its own heading below? I hope this can sort discussion out nicely. Virgin territory, new tweaks, new title...
Introduction and perhaps this whole page : Could we perhaps avoid specifically mentioning other countries and regions in making statsitical comparisons? This offends some and has been the instigator of constant "revert wars" even on this page. "20th largest" or something like that should do if the need be. In fact it would be nice to avoid all "greater than" language at all, unless it is indeed an uncontested and widely-known fact. Paris is indeed the world's most visited city. "Most romantic" is something else entirely...
That aside I cleaned up and separated the "metropolitan area" population info and the GDP - they don't use the same statistical region so should not be confused, and I hope my version makes the concept of both more accessible to the uninitiated. ThePromenader 11:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
The "replacement page" is much, much too wordy. There is so much that could be said on Paris that it needs to be concise to the point of terseness. For example the "Paris and its GDP" seems to be a whole paragraph devoted to ways of defining the borders of Paris! Similarly in economy, the style is wrong. "We must look larger than to the city itself to speak of Paris' economy. If it can be considered that it is anything produced by the city, for the city, or depending on the city, its place on a map would spread well into the suburbs, and always has" This may be appropriate for a text book or original research, but it's wrong for Wikipedia. The equivalent here would be the short phrase "Paris and its surrounding suburbs" or even just "Greater Paris" or "Ile-de-France". There is just no justification for such wordiness, and precise definition of terms here. (Stevage)
When you look at New York City you can see what is missing here. That page gives you a real feel for New York, the culture, the vibe, the changes, the good and the bad etc. Why should the Paris page be reduced to mere stats and dry numbers. Why is Paris seen by Americans as such a "romantic" destination? Why do people talk about the "magic" of Paris? It may not be logical, but it bears some discussion...(Stevage)
ThePromenader, I notice you removed my reference to the dominating position that Paris exerts over the rest over France. I don't mind you tweaking/improving etc, but is there a particular reason for removing the information entirely? It's one of the major reasons that Paris is Paris - because so much of France is centralised within it. Compared to other countries, to have 1/6th of the population of the country in the capital city is huge. The national French news on TF1 (as you are obviously aware) is very Paris-centric, and all the major art galleries etc are based in Paris. Some mention of this fact seems to be appropriate, to differentiate it from capitals like Canberra in Australia (a tiny town of civil servants), Washington DC (a decent sized town with political influence but little business), Berlin (the largest city, but less than twice as big as the second) etc.
I don't think we should be hamstrung by the fact that it's difficult to express some notions in terms of hard fact. If something's true, and lots of people have said that it's true, it can be included. It doesn't need to come down to hard facts and figures. Stevage 13:14, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have changed the rather ugly image of the Eiffel Tower to a Featured Image version. Also to try and get the layout to sit better I have put this image on the left, in the third paragraph and moved the infobox up to level with the top of the article. Anyone have any comments on this? Stevage 00:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have come across a strange article, Paris districts. It has a lot of information on a few districts - notably the two Seine islands and the left/right banks. Until I transferred some information to the islands, it actually had more information on all of these topics than the individual articles! I suggest we rip up the whole page, transfer it to Left Bank etc, then turn the page itself into a brief overview. The only trouble is that Left Bank currently services Barcelona too, so will need some sort of disambiguation page. I have left word there and at Right Bank suggesting we split them up. Incidentally, the right bank page has some weird random facts and links on it...any takers for cleaning up? Stevage 22:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I think it's potentially misleading to say: "Because of its financial, business, political, and tourism activities, Paris today is one of the world's major transportation hubs." Both the road and rail networks are specifically designed to route international travellers away from Paris. If there is a rail hub, nowadays it is Lille. For air travel, Amsterdam is challenging Heathrow's dominance as the European hub. The only area where Paris could claim to be a major European hub is air cargo. But Frankfurt alone handles more than the combined cargo of all Paris airports. I'd be inclined to drop this sentence unless someone can clarify what it's intended to convey. Adrian Robson 09:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
The source mentioned by user Thb above is wrong (lists linked at the end of World's busiest airport). These lists used preliminary results. I am correcting them now using final 2004 Airport Council International figures. Charles de Gaulle Airport is number 2 in Europe behind Heathrow in terms of passenger trafic, but number one both in terms of total cargo and total plane movements. Adding all Paris airports together, all Frankfurt airports together, and all London airports togeter, Paris airports are number two in terms of passenger traffic behind the London airports, but still number one in Europe in terms of cargo. In term of plane movements I don't know. Hardouin 15:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
About the hub thing, I think what was meant was air transportation. Don't forget that Charles de Gaulle Airport ambition is to become the largest air hub in Europe, and if I am not mistaken it is already the largest hub of continental Europe, ahead of Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Behind this ambition lies the merger of Air France-KLM. For an illustration of this, check the list of victims of the May 2004 collapse at CDG Airport ( [2]): there were two Chinese guys on their way from Beijing to Mexico City, one American-Lebanese doctor on her way back from Beiruth to NYC, and one Ukrainian girl on her way from Kiev to Miami. I think that sums up nicely the hub concept. Hardouin 01:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
To begin with, I cannot accurately describe the feeling one gets to see days of a group effort at improvement completely reversed on the pretext of two trifling errors. Even these were not errors per se and easily remediable: move or remove the Oppodium; precede "englobed Paris and its closest departments" with "roughly". If this was not enough, to then label a revert "Correcting errors (grammatical and factual), trying to improve style" but in reality reverting almost the text to a de facto precedent version (of one's own writing)... and the same over two sections... I don't know what to think. I don't know what to call this. It was certainly not done with the general aim of improving the article, nor in the name of making information clear and accessible for other users. Looking over today's "work" has been extremely revealing is all I can say.
I am going to revert to the last version by Stevage and pretend this never happened. I will all the same fix the "controvertial bits" as if a comment about them really was left on the talk page, and the improvements can go forward from there. Thanks to all who are contributing, and please let's continue undaunted. We're headed in the right direction.
ThePromenader 18:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
This one's a real head-scratcher as the History of Paris page is already quite complete. Most of what's here has to go, but to where? ThePromenader 17:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have reduced the side of this section by roughly half, but think it could stand to be trimmed still further. There is already a very complete article History of Paris, so all we really need here is a quick summary to the user to explain where Paris came from. This is a preliminary cut and could stand further tweaking - please feel free! I welcome your comments. Stevage 01:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
ADDED: Actually I don't think it merits a rewrite, just to be "lightened" of a few indirect political events. I may clarify the "early growth" part a bit though. ThePromenader 08:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I also threw together a newly-subdivided transportation section from former edits - still needs work and some "porting" from this and other articles. Have a go at it here. ThePromenader 21:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to revert the change made without discussion. I think personally it looks better having the Eiffel Tower up the top, from an aesthetics point of view - the Eiffel Tower *is* Paris after all. And the Paris flag is just ugly, really. And I sort of think the infobox is less relevant for massive cities, where the info you're looking for is less likely to be "what department is Paris in" type stuff. But what do you all think? Stevage 02:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Is Paris still a major player in world fashion? What can we say about it in the cultural section? Stevage 00:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible to make the recent editions less wordy? Concise as possible. Comparisons are out (unless it be in a hit-list) for the simple reason that very few readers know anything about the city Paris was being compared to; unknown compared to unknown = non sequitur. It would also be very nice to have an "île-de-France" photo instead of the "petite couronne" image in place now as a compliment to the arrondissement map - it will be confusing to someone not already familiar with the Paris region. Only references to administrative regions should be used here. In fact, in this article, I question the importance of explaining in such detail, in the Paris page, the administration of the île-de-France region: this subject has a page of its own. ThePromenader 10:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The map is indeed great, but there is one problem that I have already explained to ThePromenader: the so-called "areas of high-density inhabitation" seem haphzard, many built-up areas have been forgotten. To draw the limit of the built-up areas, we should use the official unité urbaine of Paris that was established by INSEE in 1999, and not make up our own limits, which is original research. Here below I put two maps showing the unité urbaine of Paris. I couldn't find better quality maps, so please let me know if you find some better ones. On these maps, the built-up area (unité urbaine) of Paris and suburbs is in red, whereas the rest of the metropolitan area (aire urbaine) is in blue. The "areas of high-density inhabitation" on ThePromenader's map should be a reproduction of the red areas in the maps below. I already tried to explain this to ThePromenader a few weeks ago, but my suggestions were flatly rejected. Hardouin 01:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
File:AUParis1.jpg File:AUParis2.jpg
Hi ThePromenader, can you let us in on what you're trying to achieve with rewriting the history section? I had put a bit of work into trimming down the previous version to the bare essentials, and it looks like I may have to do it again...so I'd just like to know what the substantial improvements are here. I notice wordiness is back:
Is it not sufficient to write: "Paris was first settled by the Celtic Parisii people, on the Ile de la cité, which was a convenient crossing point."? Let's keep it tight, yeah? Stevage 01:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I have killed this section. It's just a poor way to group this material. If the info is relevant to Paris, it should appear in relevant sections, otherwise it should not be there at all. Grouping everything that's outside the borders of Paris is not very helpful to the reader. Stevage 00:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Then insert it in the relevant sections, but do not delete it altogether please.
Hardouin
01:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
The Arcueil Aqueduct is in the Petite couronne, about 2 miles from the boundary of the city of Paris. Hardouin 13:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Let's work on this again, and ignore the history section's history. Reading it now, I see there is a major focus on population expansion and walls. Unfortunately, stating every time that the city grew a bit, or that the walls were moved/rebuilt becomes very wordy and not particularly relevant. Could we not simply say "over 800 years, the continous growth of the population led to new sets of walls being built no less than six times" or whatever? We need to get this section down. Stevage 00:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
This article speaks of Paris like no other publication in existence. The "aire urbaine" statistic (explained below), has been erronously translated and applied to this article without explanation, making Paris look as a huge and sprawling metropolis comparable to North American "metropolitan area" counterparts. The use of this latter term through all points of the article is not only inaccurate but factually (no references) impossible. Below are the recurrant article misconceptions singled out and explained one by one.
The aire urbaine is a statistical tool unique to France. It measures commuting between and around a central "pole" area, in this case Paris, and the land surounding. Its inclusion criteria is very indirect as it includes communes (like counties) "that have at least 40% of its resident employed population has a job in the pole, or in a commune drawn (in the same way) by the same." [3] The result is a vast statistical area including land 45% farmland.
The metropolitan area definition and inclusion criteria is so varied from country to country that a general idea of "what it is" is vague at best - this is duly noted duly in the introduction to the metropolitan area Wiki page - and this impeaches the credibility and accuracy of any comparisons with the metropolitan area of any other countries. All the same, comparison is even quite elaborate here, and has even resulted in a "who's the biggest" revert war with the London article. There is little call to use this term in this article in the first place (see below), but if it is needed, because of its uniqueness, there is no reason why the term "aire urbaine" cannot be used, explained briefly and linked to its corresponding page.
The economy section expounds repeatedly "Paris metropolitan area GDP", but no such thing exists. All referencable publications in existence use the Île-de-France region as a limit for speaking of Paris' economy, so there is no reason why this article should not too. What's more, the GDP figures cited by the very institute that created the aire urbaine take their figures from the Île-de-France as seen here. Even in spite of an absence of support for a "metropolitan area GDP" theory, its author indicates only that the figures are "not available".
Justification for the above has been attempted by saying that the aire urbaine and Île-de-France are "almost the same". This is an "apples to pears" argument, as the first term describes an analytical statistical limit and the second an administrative region. The fact that they are similar is only coincidence, or, as their origin an purpose is completely different, should be accepted as such.
Every web site in existence using the term "Greater Paris" speaks of and refers to the Île-de-France [4]. The same for every government, industry and association, even the one this page's authour insists on citing in English and French. Still no mention of aire urbaine or metropolitan area, only " Paris region" and Île-de-France.
There is no citable reference in existence that says Paris is as large as its aire urbaine. Not even a web page. Only here. This must be embarassing for Wiki.
The above indicates real and concrete factual errors and imposition of POV throughout several sections of the article, so I trust that the tag I have placed will remain in place until this is answed to correctly and sorted out. The author of the contested misconceptions has already tried removing it once, so now that this is posted I trust this will not happen again.
THEPROMENADER 10:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
- See Aire urbaine != metropolitan area. I stress that the latter is not wrong per se, but it is inaccurate, contested, extremely doubtful, extremely speculative, and has no place in a website whose role is to re-publish information. I would like to know the source of this claim as none are cited. Present in the introduction, it only serves to reinforce its authour's "metropolitan area" POV.
- Not a whisper of the city of Paris itself and its differences with its "aggomération" suburbs, just all lumped together as a whole as "metropolitan Paris". And again comparing the incomparable (See Aire urbaine != metropolitan area) The last phrase, using only "Paris", just adds confusion, but the reader will most probably assume we speak of the same area.
So yeah. What is this really all about? I'm running out of patience here. Every time I visit this page there is yet another blow up between you two. Personally I don't see a crisis here. If some of the terms have been misapplied, they can be fixed. If statistics are in fact wrong, well, it wouldn't be the first time that Wikipedia has been in error. Could you perhaps come up with a simple, concrete, concise proposal to "fix" this article, and write it up here? Hint: It doesn't have the word "rewrite" anywhere in it. Stevage 00:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
This page is improving: Its structure is being cleaned up, redundant parts removed, all around a central "modern Paris" theme set into a language and context accessible to a wide variety of readers from all cultures.
The job is major so perhaps it would be a good idea to use talk sub-pages for major edits, that way we can keep this talk page clean and not worry about over-editing the original Paris page. To avoid all "revert" conflict I would like to suggest for any major changes, starting a topic titled with the topic needing editing: this way all proposed improvement ideas will be open to scrutiny and dialog. The same if we have any qualms with something recently changed or added: this way we can maintain dialog in eliminating any excuse for unruly reverting.
In light of the above, a revert of any previously discussed improvements without any prior warning or show of interest in the editing will be inacceptable. I ask all concerned to please allow this page to improve.
Cordially,
ThePromenader
02:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC) (aka "Josefu")
ThePromenader
17:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Can we discuss the tweaks and qualms of each section under its own heading below? I hope this can sort discussion out nicely. Virgin territory, new tweaks, new title...
I cleaned this one up a bit this morning, but I'm having problems with its second and third paragraphs - the latter is frankly incomprehensible. Do we really need to go to such comparitive lengths? Yet remove this and there's almost nothing left to the section. There's the "understandibility factor" as well. Plus I didn't find the "square area" statistics so couldn't source them - I will look later but if someone in the meantime...
I'd in fact re-title this to something like "Terrain" or "Geological Lay" so that, in addition to the city's actual spread, there could be a description of some of the city's geological features (rivers, islands, hills).
ThePromenader 09:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I understand that some people are having strong feelings about how this article page should look like. Without going into the details, here is my feedback: the Paris article is way too long and a substantial part of the information contained in this article should be moved to sub-articles.
The rationale is quite simple: think about the reader. Who is the typical reader of such an article? Probably 2 main types: 1- someone browsing Wikipedia and looking for an overview about Paris, and 2- someone looking for specific details.
The article as it is today is absolutely discouraging for the first type of reader, and most people won't read anything in this article and simply zap to another one. Period. So I guess that it misses the point of informing readers about Paris at all.
The second type of reader will most probably browse and look for the section of his/her interest and will click on the specific sub-article. The current Paris article makes it quite difficult for such a reader to quickly find information.
Information architecture is a key aspect of any readable article or website. Look for instance at the Hong Kong article. Hong Kong is a city about the size of Paris. There are literally hundreds of Wikipedia article specifically dedicated to Hong Kong topics, yet the main article itself remains readable and detailed information does not appear overwhelmingly in the main article.
A few examples about the Paris article:
I hope this can help. olivier 14:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
There are a number of "lists" on this page. I hate lists. Can we turn them into prose, and get rid of the less prominent items on the lists? In particular:
I could probably dig up the reference to the manual of style where it says that lists are totally evil under all circumstances. :) Stevage 15:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to add an education section, but I simply don't know aything on the topic. It would mention the Sorbonne, Sciences Po, and the University of Paris. ENA I gather moved to Strasbourg this year. Are there other major universities that I'm missing? Which famous people came through these universities? What is particularly remarkable about the universities in Paris? Thanks. Stevage 14:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually aires urbaines are quite used outside of INSEE. In Google you should type "aire urbaine" only, without the word Paris. The mention of plans to create a Greater Paris is quite appropriate, this gives us a sense of evolutions. We don't offer only a rigid picture of what's the situation now, but also a sense of what may happen next. That's what encyclopedias always do. About Île-de-France, at the 1999 census, there were 10,952,011 inhabitants in Île-de-France, and only 109,974 of them did not live inside the aire urbaine of Paris. In other words, 99% of the inhabitants of Île-de-France live inside the metropolitan area of Paris, so it is totally justified to say that Île-de-France is the commuting belt of Paris. Hardouin 13:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
If the admin section is going to stay this long it needs substructure. It may make Paris's multiple roles much clearer to have a City/Commune/Department/Region structure. Stevage 01:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Hardouin, would you please explain why you reverted the changes made by ThePromenader to the Administration section? I find it very discourteous to revert good-faith changes made by others without even adding a comment to explain why. Of course you're very welcome to improve work done by other people, but reverting should be saved for cases of pure vandalism, which is not the case here. Thanks. Stevage 14:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Paris' and its neighbouring departements – Hauts-de-Seine (92), Seine-Saint-Denis (93) and Val-de-Marne (94) – were a single "département", Seine, until they split up in 1968. In spite of this, the prefecture retains jurisdiction for the police and fire brigade for all four départements. Paris thus has its own traffic wardens, but no municipal police force.
The Prefecture of Police jurisdiction, which used to be the whole Seine département, is now limited to Paris proper, but for some matters (such as fire protection or rescue operations) it still covers the three départements of the petite couronne. On the other hand, the jurisdiction of the Prefecture of Paris, previously called Prefecture of the Seine (before 1968), is now strictly limited to the city of Paris.
Number 75 was once the official number of the Seine département, which encompassed the city of Paris and its nearest suburbs. In 1968, Seine was split into four new départements: the city of Paris proper (which retained the number 75) and three départements ( Hauts-de-Seine (92), Seine-Saint-Denis (93) and Val-de-Marne (94))
This part that you mention above was indeed entirely wrong, that's why I rewrote it. Paris (75) and its three neighbouring départements (92,93,94) were not a single département before 1968. The Seine département that existed before 1968 was smaller than the current 75+92+93+94. Check Seine (département) for more details. Also, there is no "the prefecture". There are TWO DISTINCT prefectures, the Prefecture of Police on the one hand, and the Prefecture of Paris on the other hand (plus also the Prefecture of Hauts-de-Seine, the Prefecture of Val-de-Marne, and the Prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis). So you see I reverted this because it was too simplified and thus very misleading. Hardouin 16:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Um - I do understand why this was put there. After all our discussions about getting rid of lists, is it really a good idea to add another one? ThePromenader 17:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I've removed the comparisons with other cities. I just couldn't see the relevance. At maximum, *maybe* the comparison with SF has a place here, but basically the links seem a bit arbitrary and to say more about how other cities define their city borders.
For comparisons, in the metropolitan area of
London, approximately 60% of people live inside
Greater London proper (2001 census), while in the
New York-Newark-Bridgeport metropolitan area, 37.8% of people live inside
New York City (2000 census). Even in the
Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County metropolitan area, 22.6% of people live inside the city of
Los Angeles proper. Paris can be more rightly compared to the
San Francisco Bay Area, where only 11% of inhabitants live inside the city of
San Francisco proper. However, unlike in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is no city inside the metropolitan area of Paris that rivals Paris, the largest city (
commune) after Paris being
Boulogne-Billancourt, with only 108,300 inhabitants in 2004.
Hardouin, I've restored the department map as I think it serves to visually explain to the user at what level Paris is being viewed. Most of the information in the map is, as you say, redundant due to the regional map, but it's more detailed, and shows clearly the shape of the Paris department and the three around it. Do you feel strongly that it should not be there, or just that it's not necessary? Stevage 02:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
As always, lots of mistakes here. The Préfecture de la Seine was not split into the Préfecture de Police and Préfecture de Paris. The Préfecture de Police already existed before 1968. This is how it goes:
For instance during the French Second Empire, Baron Haussmann was Préfet de la Seine, while Symphorien Boitelle was Préfet de Police.
So as you can see, the Préfecture de la Seine was split in four, whereas the Préfecture de Police was left untouched, although its jurisdiction was reduced to Paris proper. It is false to say that the little map shows the jurisdiction of the Préfecture of Police. The jurisdiction of the Préfecture of Police covers only the city of Paris. It extends to the Petite Couronne only in a special cases, such as the coordination of police action. And it can also extend to the Grande Couronne when the Prefect of Police acts as Prefect of the Paris defense zone. Yes, it is very complicated.
Anyway, about the little map, I put it in the first place because there was no other map available, but now that we have a larger map of Île-de-France, it is not necessary anymore. If the goal is to make the article as short as possible (as I thought that was the goal now), the map should be removed. But if you prefer to leave it, then leave it, but it defeats the purpose of tightening the article. Hardouin 13:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I think if there is a "Paris as department" section, it deserves a map - as a "each subsection gets a map" kind of illustration. When ThePromenader says it shows a jurisdiction belonging only to the Police Prefecture. does it mean that the boundaries of the department of Paris have no real significance other than for the police? If that is the case, we could well do with a shorter section here. Stevage 13:56, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but you seem to be very confused about all these prefect things. The link you pointed to above is for the "Préfet de Police", it is NOT for the "Préfet de Paris". And if you care to read the webpage you yourself asked me to read, you would find out that the jurisdiction of the Préfet de Police is Paris proper. Only in a few circumstances does that jurisdiction extends to the Petite Couronne. Hardouin 11:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I think everything I would like to say on this topic is covered at WP:Civility. Stevage 22:43, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Hardouin, I hope you don't mind what I've done to this section. I've tried to retain the comparisons with other cities, but do so in a more readable way, with slightly less precision. Footnotes give the dates of the censuses, which aren't hugely important as they're pretty close to each other. Is there any support for Paris being one of the most multicultural? As I noted in the article, Melbourne is at 38%, so 19.5% doesn't strike me as particularly high. Stevage 02:58, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
Can we discuss the tweaks and qualms of each section under its own heading below? I hope this can sort discussion out nicely. Virgin territory, new tweaks, new title...
Introduction and perhaps this whole page : Could we perhaps avoid specifically mentioning other countries and regions in making statsitical comparisons? This offends some and has been the instigator of constant "revert wars" even on this page. "20th largest" or something like that should do if the need be. In fact it would be nice to avoid all "greater than" language at all, unless it is indeed an uncontested and widely-known fact. Paris is indeed the world's most visited city. "Most romantic" is something else entirely...
That aside I cleaned up and separated the "metropolitan area" population info and the GDP - they don't use the same statistical region so should not be confused, and I hope my version makes the concept of both more accessible to the uninitiated. ThePromenader 11:50, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
The "replacement page" is much, much too wordy. There is so much that could be said on Paris that it needs to be concise to the point of terseness. For example the "Paris and its GDP" seems to be a whole paragraph devoted to ways of defining the borders of Paris! Similarly in economy, the style is wrong. "We must look larger than to the city itself to speak of Paris' economy. If it can be considered that it is anything produced by the city, for the city, or depending on the city, its place on a map would spread well into the suburbs, and always has" This may be appropriate for a text book or original research, but it's wrong for Wikipedia. The equivalent here would be the short phrase "Paris and its surrounding suburbs" or even just "Greater Paris" or "Ile-de-France". There is just no justification for such wordiness, and precise definition of terms here. (Stevage)
When you look at New York City you can see what is missing here. That page gives you a real feel for New York, the culture, the vibe, the changes, the good and the bad etc. Why should the Paris page be reduced to mere stats and dry numbers. Why is Paris seen by Americans as such a "romantic" destination? Why do people talk about the "magic" of Paris? It may not be logical, but it bears some discussion...(Stevage)
ThePromenader, I notice you removed my reference to the dominating position that Paris exerts over the rest over France. I don't mind you tweaking/improving etc, but is there a particular reason for removing the information entirely? It's one of the major reasons that Paris is Paris - because so much of France is centralised within it. Compared to other countries, to have 1/6th of the population of the country in the capital city is huge. The national French news on TF1 (as you are obviously aware) is very Paris-centric, and all the major art galleries etc are based in Paris. Some mention of this fact seems to be appropriate, to differentiate it from capitals like Canberra in Australia (a tiny town of civil servants), Washington DC (a decent sized town with political influence but little business), Berlin (the largest city, but less than twice as big as the second) etc.
I don't think we should be hamstrung by the fact that it's difficult to express some notions in terms of hard fact. If something's true, and lots of people have said that it's true, it can be included. It doesn't need to come down to hard facts and figures. Stevage 13:14, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have changed the rather ugly image of the Eiffel Tower to a Featured Image version. Also to try and get the layout to sit better I have put this image on the left, in the third paragraph and moved the infobox up to level with the top of the article. Anyone have any comments on this? Stevage 00:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have come across a strange article, Paris districts. It has a lot of information on a few districts - notably the two Seine islands and the left/right banks. Until I transferred some information to the islands, it actually had more information on all of these topics than the individual articles! I suggest we rip up the whole page, transfer it to Left Bank etc, then turn the page itself into a brief overview. The only trouble is that Left Bank currently services Barcelona too, so will need some sort of disambiguation page. I have left word there and at Right Bank suggesting we split them up. Incidentally, the right bank page has some weird random facts and links on it...any takers for cleaning up? Stevage 22:32, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I think it's potentially misleading to say: "Because of its financial, business, political, and tourism activities, Paris today is one of the world's major transportation hubs." Both the road and rail networks are specifically designed to route international travellers away from Paris. If there is a rail hub, nowadays it is Lille. For air travel, Amsterdam is challenging Heathrow's dominance as the European hub. The only area where Paris could claim to be a major European hub is air cargo. But Frankfurt alone handles more than the combined cargo of all Paris airports. I'd be inclined to drop this sentence unless someone can clarify what it's intended to convey. Adrian Robson 09:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
The source mentioned by user Thb above is wrong (lists linked at the end of World's busiest airport). These lists used preliminary results. I am correcting them now using final 2004 Airport Council International figures. Charles de Gaulle Airport is number 2 in Europe behind Heathrow in terms of passenger trafic, but number one both in terms of total cargo and total plane movements. Adding all Paris airports together, all Frankfurt airports together, and all London airports togeter, Paris airports are number two in terms of passenger traffic behind the London airports, but still number one in Europe in terms of cargo. In term of plane movements I don't know. Hardouin 15:19, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
About the hub thing, I think what was meant was air transportation. Don't forget that Charles de Gaulle Airport ambition is to become the largest air hub in Europe, and if I am not mistaken it is already the largest hub of continental Europe, ahead of Amsterdam and Frankfurt. Behind this ambition lies the merger of Air France-KLM. For an illustration of this, check the list of victims of the May 2004 collapse at CDG Airport ( [2]): there were two Chinese guys on their way from Beijing to Mexico City, one American-Lebanese doctor on her way back from Beiruth to NYC, and one Ukrainian girl on her way from Kiev to Miami. I think that sums up nicely the hub concept. Hardouin 01:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
To begin with, I cannot accurately describe the feeling one gets to see days of a group effort at improvement completely reversed on the pretext of two trifling errors. Even these were not errors per se and easily remediable: move or remove the Oppodium; precede "englobed Paris and its closest departments" with "roughly". If this was not enough, to then label a revert "Correcting errors (grammatical and factual), trying to improve style" but in reality reverting almost the text to a de facto precedent version (of one's own writing)... and the same over two sections... I don't know what to think. I don't know what to call this. It was certainly not done with the general aim of improving the article, nor in the name of making information clear and accessible for other users. Looking over today's "work" has been extremely revealing is all I can say.
I am going to revert to the last version by Stevage and pretend this never happened. I will all the same fix the "controvertial bits" as if a comment about them really was left on the talk page, and the improvements can go forward from there. Thanks to all who are contributing, and please let's continue undaunted. We're headed in the right direction.
ThePromenader 18:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
This one's a real head-scratcher as the History of Paris page is already quite complete. Most of what's here has to go, but to where? ThePromenader 17:24, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
I have reduced the side of this section by roughly half, but think it could stand to be trimmed still further. There is already a very complete article History of Paris, so all we really need here is a quick summary to the user to explain where Paris came from. This is a preliminary cut and could stand further tweaking - please feel free! I welcome your comments. Stevage 01:30, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
ADDED: Actually I don't think it merits a rewrite, just to be "lightened" of a few indirect political events. I may clarify the "early growth" part a bit though. ThePromenader 08:59, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
I also threw together a newly-subdivided transportation section from former edits - still needs work and some "porting" from this and other articles. Have a go at it here. ThePromenader 21:28, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't want to revert the change made without discussion. I think personally it looks better having the Eiffel Tower up the top, from an aesthetics point of view - the Eiffel Tower *is* Paris after all. And the Paris flag is just ugly, really. And I sort of think the infobox is less relevant for massive cities, where the info you're looking for is less likely to be "what department is Paris in" type stuff. But what do you all think? Stevage 02:52, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Is Paris still a major player in world fashion? What can we say about it in the cultural section? Stevage 00:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Would it be possible to make the recent editions less wordy? Concise as possible. Comparisons are out (unless it be in a hit-list) for the simple reason that very few readers know anything about the city Paris was being compared to; unknown compared to unknown = non sequitur. It would also be very nice to have an "île-de-France" photo instead of the "petite couronne" image in place now as a compliment to the arrondissement map - it will be confusing to someone not already familiar with the Paris region. Only references to administrative regions should be used here. In fact, in this article, I question the importance of explaining in such detail, in the Paris page, the administration of the île-de-France region: this subject has a page of its own. ThePromenader 10:15, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The map is indeed great, but there is one problem that I have already explained to ThePromenader: the so-called "areas of high-density inhabitation" seem haphzard, many built-up areas have been forgotten. To draw the limit of the built-up areas, we should use the official unité urbaine of Paris that was established by INSEE in 1999, and not make up our own limits, which is original research. Here below I put two maps showing the unité urbaine of Paris. I couldn't find better quality maps, so please let me know if you find some better ones. On these maps, the built-up area (unité urbaine) of Paris and suburbs is in red, whereas the rest of the metropolitan area (aire urbaine) is in blue. The "areas of high-density inhabitation" on ThePromenader's map should be a reproduction of the red areas in the maps below. I already tried to explain this to ThePromenader a few weeks ago, but my suggestions were flatly rejected. Hardouin 01:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
File:AUParis1.jpg File:AUParis2.jpg
Hi ThePromenader, can you let us in on what you're trying to achieve with rewriting the history section? I had put a bit of work into trimming down the previous version to the bare essentials, and it looks like I may have to do it again...so I'd just like to know what the substantial improvements are here. I notice wordiness is back:
Is it not sufficient to write: "Paris was first settled by the Celtic Parisii people, on the Ile de la cité, which was a convenient crossing point."? Let's keep it tight, yeah? Stevage 01:41, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I have killed this section. It's just a poor way to group this material. If the info is relevant to Paris, it should appear in relevant sections, otherwise it should not be there at all. Grouping everything that's outside the borders of Paris is not very helpful to the reader. Stevage 00:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Then insert it in the relevant sections, but do not delete it altogether please.
Hardouin
01:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
The Arcueil Aqueduct is in the Petite couronne, about 2 miles from the boundary of the city of Paris. Hardouin 13:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Let's work on this again, and ignore the history section's history. Reading it now, I see there is a major focus on population expansion and walls. Unfortunately, stating every time that the city grew a bit, or that the walls were moved/rebuilt becomes very wordy and not particularly relevant. Could we not simply say "over 800 years, the continous growth of the population led to new sets of walls being built no less than six times" or whatever? We need to get this section down. Stevage 00:42, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
This article speaks of Paris like no other publication in existence. The "aire urbaine" statistic (explained below), has been erronously translated and applied to this article without explanation, making Paris look as a huge and sprawling metropolis comparable to North American "metropolitan area" counterparts. The use of this latter term through all points of the article is not only inaccurate but factually (no references) impossible. Below are the recurrant article misconceptions singled out and explained one by one.
The aire urbaine is a statistical tool unique to France. It measures commuting between and around a central "pole" area, in this case Paris, and the land surounding. Its inclusion criteria is very indirect as it includes communes (like counties) "that have at least 40% of its resident employed population has a job in the pole, or in a commune drawn (in the same way) by the same." [3] The result is a vast statistical area including land 45% farmland.
The metropolitan area definition and inclusion criteria is so varied from country to country that a general idea of "what it is" is vague at best - this is duly noted duly in the introduction to the metropolitan area Wiki page - and this impeaches the credibility and accuracy of any comparisons with the metropolitan area of any other countries. All the same, comparison is even quite elaborate here, and has even resulted in a "who's the biggest" revert war with the London article. There is little call to use this term in this article in the first place (see below), but if it is needed, because of its uniqueness, there is no reason why the term "aire urbaine" cannot be used, explained briefly and linked to its corresponding page.
The economy section expounds repeatedly "Paris metropolitan area GDP", but no such thing exists. All referencable publications in existence use the Île-de-France region as a limit for speaking of Paris' economy, so there is no reason why this article should not too. What's more, the GDP figures cited by the very institute that created the aire urbaine take their figures from the Île-de-France as seen here. Even in spite of an absence of support for a "metropolitan area GDP" theory, its author indicates only that the figures are "not available".
Justification for the above has been attempted by saying that the aire urbaine and Île-de-France are "almost the same". This is an "apples to pears" argument, as the first term describes an analytical statistical limit and the second an administrative region. The fact that they are similar is only coincidence, or, as their origin an purpose is completely different, should be accepted as such.
Every web site in existence using the term "Greater Paris" speaks of and refers to the Île-de-France [4]. The same for every government, industry and association, even the one this page's authour insists on citing in English and French. Still no mention of aire urbaine or metropolitan area, only " Paris region" and Île-de-France.
There is no citable reference in existence that says Paris is as large as its aire urbaine. Not even a web page. Only here. This must be embarassing for Wiki.
The above indicates real and concrete factual errors and imposition of POV throughout several sections of the article, so I trust that the tag I have placed will remain in place until this is answed to correctly and sorted out. The author of the contested misconceptions has already tried removing it once, so now that this is posted I trust this will not happen again.
THEPROMENADER 10:00, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
- See Aire urbaine != metropolitan area. I stress that the latter is not wrong per se, but it is inaccurate, contested, extremely doubtful, extremely speculative, and has no place in a website whose role is to re-publish information. I would like to know the source of this claim as none are cited. Present in the introduction, it only serves to reinforce its authour's "metropolitan area" POV.
- Not a whisper of the city of Paris itself and its differences with its "aggomération" suburbs, just all lumped together as a whole as "metropolitan Paris". And again comparing the incomparable (See Aire urbaine != metropolitan area) The last phrase, using only "Paris", just adds confusion, but the reader will most probably assume we speak of the same area.
So yeah. What is this really all about? I'm running out of patience here. Every time I visit this page there is yet another blow up between you two. Personally I don't see a crisis here. If some of the terms have been misapplied, they can be fixed. If statistics are in fact wrong, well, it wouldn't be the first time that Wikipedia has been in error. Could you perhaps come up with a simple, concrete, concise proposal to "fix" this article, and write it up here? Hint: It doesn't have the word "rewrite" anywhere in it. Stevage 00:03, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
This page is improving: Its structure is being cleaned up, redundant parts removed, all around a central "modern Paris" theme set into a language and context accessible to a wide variety of readers from all cultures.
The job is major so perhaps it would be a good idea to use talk sub-pages for major edits, that way we can keep this talk page clean and not worry about over-editing the original Paris page. To avoid all "revert" conflict I would like to suggest for any major changes, starting a topic titled with the topic needing editing: this way all proposed improvement ideas will be open to scrutiny and dialog. The same if we have any qualms with something recently changed or added: this way we can maintain dialog in eliminating any excuse for unruly reverting.
In light of the above, a revert of any previously discussed improvements without any prior warning or show of interest in the editing will be inacceptable. I ask all concerned to please allow this page to improve.
Cordially,
ThePromenader
02:16, 28 November 2005 (UTC) (aka "Josefu")
ThePromenader
17:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
Can we discuss the tweaks and qualms of each section under its own heading below? I hope this can sort discussion out nicely. Virgin territory, new tweaks, new title...
I cleaned this one up a bit this morning, but I'm having problems with its second and third paragraphs - the latter is frankly incomprehensible. Do we really need to go to such comparitive lengths? Yet remove this and there's almost nothing left to the section. There's the "understandibility factor" as well. Plus I didn't find the "square area" statistics so couldn't source them - I will look later but if someone in the meantime...
I'd in fact re-title this to something like "Terrain" or "Geological Lay" so that, in addition to the city's actual spread, there could be a description of some of the city's geological features (rivers, islands, hills).
ThePromenader 09:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I understand that some people are having strong feelings about how this article page should look like. Without going into the details, here is my feedback: the Paris article is way too long and a substantial part of the information contained in this article should be moved to sub-articles.
The rationale is quite simple: think about the reader. Who is the typical reader of such an article? Probably 2 main types: 1- someone browsing Wikipedia and looking for an overview about Paris, and 2- someone looking for specific details.
The article as it is today is absolutely discouraging for the first type of reader, and most people won't read anything in this article and simply zap to another one. Period. So I guess that it misses the point of informing readers about Paris at all.
The second type of reader will most probably browse and look for the section of his/her interest and will click on the specific sub-article. The current Paris article makes it quite difficult for such a reader to quickly find information.
Information architecture is a key aspect of any readable article or website. Look for instance at the Hong Kong article. Hong Kong is a city about the size of Paris. There are literally hundreds of Wikipedia article specifically dedicated to Hong Kong topics, yet the main article itself remains readable and detailed information does not appear overwhelmingly in the main article.
A few examples about the Paris article:
I hope this can help. olivier 14:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
There are a number of "lists" on this page. I hate lists. Can we turn them into prose, and get rid of the less prominent items on the lists? In particular:
I could probably dig up the reference to the manual of style where it says that lists are totally evil under all circumstances. :) Stevage 15:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to add an education section, but I simply don't know aything on the topic. It would mention the Sorbonne, Sciences Po, and the University of Paris. ENA I gather moved to Strasbourg this year. Are there other major universities that I'm missing? Which famous people came through these universities? What is particularly remarkable about the universities in Paris? Thanks. Stevage 14:44, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually aires urbaines are quite used outside of INSEE. In Google you should type "aire urbaine" only, without the word Paris. The mention of plans to create a Greater Paris is quite appropriate, this gives us a sense of evolutions. We don't offer only a rigid picture of what's the situation now, but also a sense of what may happen next. That's what encyclopedias always do. About Île-de-France, at the 1999 census, there were 10,952,011 inhabitants in Île-de-France, and only 109,974 of them did not live inside the aire urbaine of Paris. In other words, 99% of the inhabitants of Île-de-France live inside the metropolitan area of Paris, so it is totally justified to say that Île-de-France is the commuting belt of Paris. Hardouin 13:31, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
If the admin section is going to stay this long it needs substructure. It may make Paris's multiple roles much clearer to have a City/Commune/Department/Region structure. Stevage 01:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Hardouin, would you please explain why you reverted the changes made by ThePromenader to the Administration section? I find it very discourteous to revert good-faith changes made by others without even adding a comment to explain why. Of course you're very welcome to improve work done by other people, but reverting should be saved for cases of pure vandalism, which is not the case here. Thanks. Stevage 14:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Paris' and its neighbouring departements – Hauts-de-Seine (92), Seine-Saint-Denis (93) and Val-de-Marne (94) – were a single "département", Seine, until they split up in 1968. In spite of this, the prefecture retains jurisdiction for the police and fire brigade for all four départements. Paris thus has its own traffic wardens, but no municipal police force.
The Prefecture of Police jurisdiction, which used to be the whole Seine département, is now limited to Paris proper, but for some matters (such as fire protection or rescue operations) it still covers the three départements of the petite couronne. On the other hand, the jurisdiction of the Prefecture of Paris, previously called Prefecture of the Seine (before 1968), is now strictly limited to the city of Paris.
Number 75 was once the official number of the Seine département, which encompassed the city of Paris and its nearest suburbs. In 1968, Seine was split into four new départements: the city of Paris proper (which retained the number 75) and three départements ( Hauts-de-Seine (92), Seine-Saint-Denis (93) and Val-de-Marne (94))
This part that you mention above was indeed entirely wrong, that's why I rewrote it. Paris (75) and its three neighbouring départements (92,93,94) were not a single département before 1968. The Seine département that existed before 1968 was smaller than the current 75+92+93+94. Check Seine (département) for more details. Also, there is no "the prefecture". There are TWO DISTINCT prefectures, the Prefecture of Police on the one hand, and the Prefecture of Paris on the other hand (plus also the Prefecture of Hauts-de-Seine, the Prefecture of Val-de-Marne, and the Prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis). So you see I reverted this because it was too simplified and thus very misleading. Hardouin 16:09, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Um - I do understand why this was put there. After all our discussions about getting rid of lists, is it really a good idea to add another one? ThePromenader 17:04, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
I've removed the comparisons with other cities. I just couldn't see the relevance. At maximum, *maybe* the comparison with SF has a place here, but basically the links seem a bit arbitrary and to say more about how other cities define their city borders.
For comparisons, in the metropolitan area of
London, approximately 60% of people live inside
Greater London proper (2001 census), while in the
New York-Newark-Bridgeport metropolitan area, 37.8% of people live inside
New York City (2000 census). Even in the
Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County metropolitan area, 22.6% of people live inside the city of
Los Angeles proper. Paris can be more rightly compared to the
San Francisco Bay Area, where only 11% of inhabitants live inside the city of
San Francisco proper. However, unlike in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is no city inside the metropolitan area of Paris that rivals Paris, the largest city (
commune) after Paris being
Boulogne-Billancourt, with only 108,300 inhabitants in 2004.
Hardouin, I've restored the department map as I think it serves to visually explain to the user at what level Paris is being viewed. Most of the information in the map is, as you say, redundant due to the regional map, but it's more detailed, and shows clearly the shape of the Paris department and the three around it. Do you feel strongly that it should not be there, or just that it's not necessary? Stevage 02:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
As always, lots of mistakes here. The Préfecture de la Seine was not split into the Préfecture de Police and Préfecture de Paris. The Préfecture de Police already existed before 1968. This is how it goes:
For instance during the French Second Empire, Baron Haussmann was Préfet de la Seine, while Symphorien Boitelle was Préfet de Police.
So as you can see, the Préfecture de la Seine was split in four, whereas the Préfecture de Police was left untouched, although its jurisdiction was reduced to Paris proper. It is false to say that the little map shows the jurisdiction of the Préfecture of Police. The jurisdiction of the Préfecture of Police covers only the city of Paris. It extends to the Petite Couronne only in a special cases, such as the coordination of police action. And it can also extend to the Grande Couronne when the Prefect of Police acts as Prefect of the Paris defense zone. Yes, it is very complicated.
Anyway, about the little map, I put it in the first place because there was no other map available, but now that we have a larger map of Île-de-France, it is not necessary anymore. If the goal is to make the article as short as possible (as I thought that was the goal now), the map should be removed. But if you prefer to leave it, then leave it, but it defeats the purpose of tightening the article. Hardouin 13:00, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, I think if there is a "Paris as department" section, it deserves a map - as a "each subsection gets a map" kind of illustration. When ThePromenader says it shows a jurisdiction belonging only to the Police Prefecture. does it mean that the boundaries of the department of Paris have no real significance other than for the police? If that is the case, we could well do with a shorter section here. Stevage 13:56, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but you seem to be very confused about all these prefect things. The link you pointed to above is for the "Préfet de Police", it is NOT for the "Préfet de Paris". And if you care to read the webpage you yourself asked me to read, you would find out that the jurisdiction of the Préfet de Police is Paris proper. Only in a few circumstances does that jurisdiction extends to the Petite Couronne. Hardouin 11:56, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
I think everything I would like to say on this topic is covered at WP:Civility. Stevage 22:43, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
Hardouin, I hope you don't mind what I've done to this section. I've tried to retain the comparisons with other cities, but do so in a more readable way, with slightly less precision. Footnotes give the dates of the censuses, which aren't hugely important as they're pretty close to each other. Is there any support for Paris being one of the most multicultural? As I noted in the article, Melbourne is at 38%, so 19.5% doesn't strike me as particularly high. Stevage 02:58, 19 December 2005 (UTC)