Talk:Northern France

What is northern France

@Bruhpedia: Yes, I suspect many of the hyperlinks should just be removed. "Northern France" doesn't mean much more than "not Southern France". If it has a clearer sense, that probably depends on the time period. In the Middle Ages, it is broad, but I do get the sense that in contemporary usage it is narrow. I think the dab page is a good way of catching such links and checking them in the future. Srnec (talk) 01:41, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

@Srnec: "Northern France" doesn't mean much more than "not Southern France" is exactly what {{dabprimary}} is about. WP:DABCONGEO is pretty clear that differences in scope should be explained. Not having a clear boundary does not make the term ambiguous. So this page cannot be a disambiguation page IMHO. We're building a encyclopedia for readers, having a disambiguation for catching links is only convenient for editors. LittleWink (talk) 01:42, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Not only. It is convenient for readers because the links can thereby be fixed. And they need to be fixed because they are all wrong: there is no page on northern France that they can point to. This was formerly a redirect. It was briefly an article without citations. By all means, if you can find the requisite sources you can (re-)create the article. But what is the point of telling readers that "an article needs to be written"? Srnec (talk) 00:23, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

@Bruhpedia:: "So hopefully someone sees the page and writes it." Like you? You tried that and got reverted. As I see it, it's just another tag that will stay around for years. Does anybody have any sources to bring to bear that would define Northern France other than as I have (i.e., not southern)? Srnec (talk) 03:39, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Googling "nord de la France" didn't turn up anything except broad descriptions, therefore I believe the disambiguation is the right thing to do. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 09:36, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I posed the question over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France#Northern France, where I didn't get an awful lot of response, but I did get one elaborate reply which amounted to "no, there's really no such thing as Northern France in a general sense". And for what it's worth, that's what I was already thinking, too. So yeah, I think we'll have to accept that this will stay a disambiguation page, and "solve" the links on a case-by-case basis; linking to Hauts-de-France or another specific region where clearly intended and removing the link or changing it to "northern France" where it's used in a general sense. Lennart97 (talk) 21:54, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Agree with above.

Note: this section lacked a title, which can be problematic since I think the archive bots require one. So I added "What is northern France". If that's not optimal, feel free to change it. Adding @Lennart97, Srnec, and Bruhpedia:. Cheers, Mathglot (talk) 22:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, in any case, it turns out that "Northern France" really is just Nord. Very specific cultural meaning, insofar as it has any at all. I just didn't know enough about France at the time. Bruhpedia (talk) 10:10, 3 March 2023 (UTC)