Wikipedia:WikiProject French departments

This WikiProject is an attempt to formulate a template for the French départements. Reason is the lack of structure for most of the départements articles, which usually contain some loosely organised phrases. This WikiProject tries to suggest a structure for départements articles which would make them more structured, while also giving them a common look and feel.

---

Title: WikiProject French departements

Scope: This WikiProject aims to structure all French départements articles and sub-articles.

Participants:

• User:Olivier
• Tarquin

Disambiguation

The following departements will need disambiguation:

• Cher - done
• Var - done

• Calvados
• Dordogne
• Gironde
• Loire
• Meuse
• Rhone
• Vienne

• (and maybe others)

Any thoughts on how to do this? Eg:

• Cher (departement)
• Cher (France)

I would tend to favor:

• Cher (French departement)

since "departement" alone is not very explicit for most readers.

I prefer Cher (departement) - when people already have to use pipes, keeping them short is a good thing. That it's not very explicit does not matter much - information should go into the article's text, not into its title. The title is only important when someone needs to create a link to the page. Andre Engels

Fine. - Olivier

---

Structure

The article should start with a good introduction, giving name of the department, location in France (south, north..., région), bordering sea, rivers, mountains and the like. Also, add a few facts about the departement, the things that it is known for, if applicable.

Next, there is a table with quick facts about the departement. A template for the table can be found at the bottom of this page. The contents are as follows:

• The prefecture (capital)
• The sous-prefectures
• Land area: The area of the departement in sq km (and sq miles), in that order.
• Inhabitants: The number of inhabitants; also include a year for this estimate.
• Population density: The number of inhabitants per sq km and sq mile (please use the numbers used in the two previous entries).

The rest of the article should consists of a few short paragraphs. These paragraphs should give an outline of the history/politics/etc. of the departement and, if necessary, a link to a full article on them.

Departement name

Préfecture	Xxxxx
Sous-préfectures	Xxxxx
Area  - Total  - % water	xx,xxx km² xx%
Population  - Total (Year)  - Density	xxx,xxx xxx/km²