Wikipedia talk:WikiProject World Heritage Sites

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Rating of importance

What are the criteria for importance ratings? I was very surprised to see Machu Picchu given only "mid" importance (behind Potala Palace, Terracotta Army, Suzhou, and Great Barrier Reef Marine Park — all with "top" or "high"). Rather odd, don't you think? Stevage 11:24, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it is. My own personal approach would probably be that any main article on each World Heritage Site would count as Top, and subsidiary articles, like specific locations within the site, their histories, etc., would be the ones that would get the lower importance ratings. Does that make sense to the rest of you? John Carter (talk) 14:11, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, now that I've looked into it a little more, that definition doesn't make all that much sense. The official defs are:

Top

Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopaedia

High

Subject contributes a depth of knowledge

Mid

Subject fills in more minor details

Low

Subject is peripheral knowledge, possibly trivial

Whereas what you're proposing is essentially "Top=Very central to the concept, others=less central". IMHO, an article on Machu Picchu is more "must-have for a print encyclopaedia" than even the definition of World Heritage Site. Unfortunately "must-have" doesn't tell us how many articles there could be, but at a guess, 20-50 could be "must-have". Stevage 15:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

The thing to remember is that the importance rating is to determine what is of "top"-importance to this particular WikiProject. What you are basically talking about is for like the [{WP:1.0]] guidelines, which are more universal. For this particular project, though, I would tend to think that the sites themselves are probably all more or less of equal importance, so their central articles are probably all, more or less, of the same importance. John Carter (talk) 15:27, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Peer review: Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos

I would like to bring the article on the World Heritage site Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos up to featured article quality and am looking for comments and suggestions on how to improve it. I'd be happy about all kinds of feedback. Thanks. bamse (talk) 15:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Obtaining information on World Heritage Sites

For Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos and possibly other articles on World Heritage Sites, I am looking for general information about the site. Specifically I am interested in:

1. Who backed the nomination?
2. Who is responsible for the maintenance and preservation of the site?
3. What properties are inscribed (besides the six churches)?

Does anybody know a good place to obtain this kind of information? I already emailed UNESCO but have not obtained any reply (not even an automatic reply) so far. Maybe I used the wrong (wh-info@unesco.org) email address? I also noticed that for some sites UNESCO offers on their website the much more extensive "Nomination File" in addition to the short "Advisory Body evaluation". Is it possible to obtain a "Nomination File" for the Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos? bamse (talk) 12:32, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

WHS Infobox alterations

Could I invite anyone interested in the style of WHS Infoboxes to the chat here. Cheers, Ranger Steve (talk) 23:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Bounty

I've put a $50 bounty on Blenheim Palace for delivery to FA by 11 July 2010, if anyone here is interested.--Labattblueboy (talk) 02:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Criteria templates

On several occasions, when looking at infoboxes or lists of World Heritage Sites, I have been frustrated by the need to keep checking the list of the criteria on a different tab of my browser. I have now been thinking that {{Abbr}} might make things a little easier. In a manner similar to {{R-phrase}}, we might create a template which would display the criterion numeral and would allow the reader to hover over it and see the criterion itself. For example:

i, iv

or

viii, x

(The exact phrasing of the criteria, of course, is subject to change.) I imagine that this template, if there would be agreement for its creation and use, would accept the criterion's numeral as a parameter. I don't expect that any accessibility issues would arise from its use, so long as there would be a nearby link to the page listing the criteria (as is the case now). Thoughts? Waltham, The Duke of 06:37, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox World Heritage Site gives altogether the wrong information

This infobox has now succeeded in crowding out other types of infobox in the lead of nearly all relevant articles, but gives completely the wrong type of information for the general reader, with neither the date of the site, its location within a country, nor any description of what the site consists of being compulsory. Instead the box gives a range of bureaucratic file references to the UNESCO process that are of no interest to anyone but bureaucrats. This information should not be displayed but hidden in a show/hide bar, and the template should only display the basic information that general readers would expect. The articles covered by this template include, by definition, the world's most important architectural & heritage sites, and the current form of template lets the project down badly - see Giza Necropolis for a typical example. Please comment at Template talk:Infobox World Heritage Site#Gives altogether the wrong information. Johnbod (talk) 19:05, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Galápagos Islands

Please see Talk:Galápagos Islands#World Heritage List where I ask what should be done due to recent removal from the List of World Heritage in Danger. Johnuniq (talk) 01:07, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

List of World Heritage Sites in Danger

I started to expand the List of World Heritage Sites in Danger. The basic design and entries are stolen from List of World Heritage Sites in Africa. I added a "Reason" column and modified the "Year" column which now refers to the year of listing as endangered site (not the year of listing as WH site). Before continuing, I would like to get some feedback, especially on the choice of columns and their order ("Should the reasons move further to the left? ...") Also any other comments/suggestions are very welcome. bamse (talk) 10:13, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Done with the table. Some (any) feedback would be nice. bamse (talk) 01:09, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

World Heritage Sites articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the World Heritage Sites articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:50, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Kaziranga National Park

I have nominated Kaziranga National Park for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 01:15, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Pompeii Discussion re 3D Models

Could interested parties please have a look at the Pompeii discussion page under "3D Models of Pompeii" and make comment. Pmolsen (talk) 19:23, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

List of countries by UNESCO World Heritage Sites density

I just stumbled across this orphaned article and am thinking about taking it to AfD. As the author says on the article's talk page, it's basically original research, and in any case I don't think density of World Heritage Sites in a country is a particularly useful measure. Any thoughts? Nev1 (talk) 13:14, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Strong support (to take it to AfD). Pretty pointless list to me and OR. bamse (talk) 18:54, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't as much OR, rather a simple WP:CALC trying to provide more meaningful stats than the map and graph in Table of World Heritage Sites by country. However I agree that it was incomplete and not very convincing regarding the chosen measure. I think a dot map like this would be best to reflect WHS density. Elekhh (talk) 00:45, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Lists of World Heritage Sites

There is some disagreement (see for instance this discussion) on how to organize the lists of World Heritage Sites. There are currently 911 sites which means that listing them in one article is out of question. Basically there are two opinions on how to divide the world for the purpose of these lists:

1. Do it the same way as UNESCO. This means 5 regions: Africa, Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America, Latin America and the Caribbean.
2. Use a continent-based division.

The main argument pro "1" is that UNESCO is the designating body for World Heritage Sites and that we should therefore follow their division. The main argument pro "2" is that a continent-based division is more meaningful to the general reader who is not familiar with UNESCO's definition of "Arab States" and would not expect to find North America joined with Europe. I am looking for more opinions on this issue in order to reach a consensus for one of the two options. bamse (talk) 11:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you want comments here or at Talk:List of World Heritage Sites in Africa? Nev1 (talk) 14:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Here. Since it concerns all "regions" and not only Africa, I think that this is a better place than Talk:List of World Heritage Sites in Africa. Also the RFC links to here as far as I understand. bamse (talk) 10:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I've voiced these sentiments elsewhere, but I'm in favor of option 1. These sites are defined by UNESCO, and so we should organize them by UNESCO's standards. Besides, I think that it is useful and meaningful for us to understand UNESCO's organization of the sites in the first place. It's an interesting artifact of the time period UNESCO was created in. I also think that we could easily explain the idiosyncrasies of UNESCO's system in the introduction of any particular article. Thanks for getting this discussion together, by the way. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 06:27, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I am at the moment still undecided which of the two options to favour. As far as I understand, the UNESCO regions are not limited to World Heritage Sites, but to all UNESCO activities, correct? If this is true, I'd tend to "2" since UNESCO's division is apparently not aimed at World Heritage Sites. Its division should be discussed in the UNESCO article, but not in all related articles, such as World Heritage Lists. bamse (talk) 09:56, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand your reasoning, but I still think it's important to recognize that the World Heritage Site system is a creation of UNESCO, and thus is always going to be subject to the vagaries (and politics) of that organization. This might sound a little paradoxical, but in order to keep ourselves OUT of those politics, I think we should represent UNESCO's taxonomy as accurately as possible. This might be easier to explain with an example. The status of Jerusalem as a world heritage site is always going to be a sticky issue for anyone who tries to maintain these pages. People with strong opinions about Middle Eastern politics have time and again switched its state party to Israel, to Jordan, or simply deleted it. We've mostly put this ping pong battle to rest by listing Jerusalem as UNESCO does (without any state party) and added a note to explain its special situation. Simply reflecting UNESCO's decisions has helped to keep these pages apolitical (or at least as apolitical as they can be). That's why I'm still behind option 1. It gives us a clear-cut taxonomy that allows the pages to focus on the individual sites. This is particularly useful vis-a-vis continents, because there's no universal rule of what belongs to a particular continent and what doesn't anyway (see here). Splitting things up by the "generally accepted" definitions of continents will see another ping pong battle over the status of, for instance, Inaccessible Island. Still, I'm happy to see this debate happen and this issue resolved. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 21:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

As we follow UNESCO's lead when we divide sites up by country (eg: List of World Heritage Sites in Asia and Australasia#Jerusalem (1)) it's consistent to follow their lead regarding regions. The upside is also that we as editors don't have to engage in wrangles over what is and is not in Europe, for example. Nev1 (talk) 22:27, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I see arguments for both, which means is a hard decision, and also that neither is totally wrong. I find that organising natural sites by continents, which correspond to ecozones, would make more sense. By cultural sites I find more acceptable to use UNESCO's definitions although there are some really counter-intuitive classifications, such as Israel. But considering that natural sites represent less than 25% of all sites, probably is safer and easier to reflect the UNESCO's bizarre system. Using a simple map like this one in articles, lists and categories can be very helpful to avoid confusion. --Elekhh (talk) 00:05, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I would oppose option 1. UNESCO may very well create the list, but that does not mean that the structure of wikipedia articles must fit groupings used by UNESCO even when they're counterintuitive. We're here to write encyclopaedia articles; readability is more important than mimicry of non-content conventions used by sources. bobrayner (talk) 04:40, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Continents are only intuitive because we all learned about them in primary school (though different schools teach different continents), but they are culturally-constructed and do not reflect geographic reality. Creating our own continent-based system for the sites will only engender a whole new set of debates about countries that don't fit nicely into it. Where would the Russian sites go? Are the Ural mountains a legitimate border of Europe? How about Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Cyprus? How about Turkey, for that matter? We can expect that particular debate to get heated. And would we create a North America list and a South America list? Or a North America list and a Latin America list? Or just an Americas list? And if we jettison UNESCO's definitions, what happens to Jerusalem? These are arguments that we wouldn't need to get involved in if we use UNESCO's categories.Chouji Ochiai (talk) 03:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

• I see no reason to keep Europe & North America together, which will surely produce a very long list, but "Arab States" may be useful. Some sort of hybrid may be best. Johnbod (talk) 05:14, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

• Yes; I'd be happy with some kind of hybrid, bearing in mind the length of lists &c. The main reason for splitting it up in the first place is to make the list more manageable. bobrayner (talk) 17:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Did I say maps? As per the Americas article. When you see a list of geographic locations, a natural question is "where is it?". I believe maps should be standard across all the World Heritage List articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.76.159.191 (talk) 10:47, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

You're not helping your point by shouting. Chouji Ochiai (talk) 05:00, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

The current African list page is obnoxious in my opinion, as someone who was actually trying to use it. I favor the Asia article personally. Organizing sites by country first makes so much more sense than the Africa list, which lists them in alphabetical order according to the arbitrary name designated by UNESCO.

Category renaming discussion

Apologies -I did not realise this WikiProject existed when i nominated a category relating to it for renaming, otherwise I would have brought it here first. The discussion, here, relates to Category:World Heritage Sites in Asia and Australasia, which more correctly lists sites in Asia and Oceania, and should probably bee renamed to match. Either that or the articles for places in neither Asia nor Australasia should be removed from it and put into a separate (very small) category. Please add your 2 cents'-worth at the discussion linked above, and again apologies! Grutness...wha? 12:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

State party vs country

Discussion regarding the renaming of the state party field in the infobox here. --Elekhh (talk) 04:27, 4 February 2011 (UTC)