Talk:Sirnea

Merger proposal

I propose that "Sirnea" (odd, that omission of the diacritic) be merged into Fundata, for a number of reasons.

• We don't, as a matter of consensus and convenience, have separate articles on Romanian villages. (Indeed, "Sirnea" is currently the only exception to the rule.) We mention their existence in the parent commune (or city/town) articles, we record all that is relevant about them in said articles, and we make them accessible through redirects, hatnotes or disambiguation pages, as appropriate. Among the reasons:
  • Villages lack administrative powers, which are handled at the commune level. In fact, they are informal subdivisions of communes, with at best a couple of thousand, or in the case of "Sirnea" a couple hundred, inhabitants. We often consider quarters of larger cities to be independently notable, but there is nothing saying we must have articles on informal quarters of communes — that is a very low level of notability indeed. Mention and make them accessible, yes, but there is no justification for separate articles.
  • As a practical matter, it makes far more sense to organize things as [[Parent commune]] with sections on villages A, B, and C than to do [[Village A]], [[Village B]], [[Village C]], [[Commune A]].
    • For one, [[Commune A]] would be destined to remain a shell article forever: aside from "Commune A contains villages A, B and C", there wouldn't be much to say about it.
    • For another, [[Village A]], etc. would for the most part be destined to remain permanent stubs: even if expanded to their fullest potential, the 10,000 or so articles could never be comprehensive enough to reach FA status (which commune articles can).
    • Finally, when there are several closely related entities, about none of which there is very much to say, it makes things far easier for the reader to group all the information under one article (the parent commune), rather than splitting up into 3, 5, 15 stubs and expecting readers to know how the information in one stub relates to those in the others.
• Fundata is not unduly large and can handle a few lines of text on "Sirnea". The text needs thorough rewriting all around, but size is not an issue here. Especially once we remove the parts that have been made up, like:
  • "The important Battle of Călugăreni, fought between armies of Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire, took place near Sirnea in 1595." Sure, if by "near" one means "200 km away".
  • "During the Second World War it was transferred back to Hungary, but returned to Romania in 1945." Not at all: southern Transylvania has never left Romania since 1918.

So let's be done with this little experiment, fold back in, and work to improve the content at Fundata. - Biruitorul ^Talk 17:57, 23 May 2012 (UTC)