Talk:Corsica

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The political part of this article seems non-neutral. The negative trend does not apply to the whole corsican population. And positive events should be also mentioned.

I removed the notice that this article's neutrality is disputed, because I could find no evidence that it is now, or has ever been, disputed. If someone wants to add the notice back and make suggestions for change here at talk, wonderful... it does no good to slap "unneutral" tags all over Wikipedia. Tuf-Kat 05:13, Sep 21, 2003 (UTC)

This article seems biased. It focuses on violence and does not makes mention of positive facts. On my view, a more positive trend is needed.


That's because when you hear Corsica mentioned in the news anywhere, it's about the violence. Feel free to add other details if you know about Corsica.

Contents

[edit] Location map

Can someone add place names on the land masses in the Location map. The location map doesn't inform where Corsica is actually located. Jay 06:20, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've modified Image:Corse map.png by adding names to it and saved it as Image:Corse map with placenames.png. Replaced the link in the article as well. Jay 20:35, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
Any idea why User:Hottentot removed this image from the article (6 Sep 2005) and replaced it with the original one without names ? I've added it back as it was tagged as an orphan image for deletion. Jay 17:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colomb is Corse???

How about the legende that Christopher Columbus is born in Corsica? Corsica was a Genoa island in this age.

I've read before that he was actually Catalonian but had been some sort of rebel against Spain and so he pretended to be Genoan. I believe that they found a good deal of evidence to support the Catalonian theory, but if you could find a link or two dealing with him being from Corsica, I think it would be worth mention in the article as a possibility, but I don't believe it should be stated as 100% fact until proved so.Gorovich 22:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Are you kidding? Catalonian? Where did you read it? Colomb is without any doubt Genoan. <unsigned>

Genoan he may have been, but Corsica was ruled by Genoa at the time. There is a claim that he was born in the Corsican port of Calvi, but Corsicans do not take this as absolute truth. Guide books, e.g. Michelin, are careful to have a question mark somewhere in the story! Emeraude 16:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Seeing Corsica

I was once visiting a Finnish man living in Colomars, southern France. He said he had been told that it was possible to see Corsica from Colomars, and asked me if it was true. I did some calculations, based on the distance between Colomars and Corsica, the highest points in both places, and the radius of the Earth. I do not remember the exact figures but I think the result was that it is indeed possible. I did not try it out, however. — JIP | Talk 04:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)


it is possible to see Corsica from mainland of France, even from the coast (level 0). Even if it is rare, I've experienced it myself, I saw Corsica from Cannes (French Riviera). This should physically be impossible, but in some specific climatic conditions it is possible to see Corsican montains due to optical deformations (I would not be able to explain more precicely, but it is true)

[edit] "Territorial Collectivity logo" instead of "Région logo"

Is it important the infobox reads "Territorial Collectivity logo" instead of "Région logo" ? If not, we could just use the standard infobox for French regions (Template:Infobox French Région) instead of a specific table. -- User:Docu

It's not just about the logo, it's about the head of the collectivité territoriale of Corsica, who is not a "regional president", but a "President of the Executive Council". Hardouin 11:12, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
That information could easily be noted in the footnotes section. This helps as standardize the infobox. -- User:Docu

Corse is not a région properly speaking, so no need to use the standardized French régions infobox. Hardouin 22:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

yeah, "strictly speaking", as the article notes, it's not, but until we defined one for all the other entities, we may as well use it. -- User:Docu
As there is still no template available to adapt even more closely to this region and other entities, I restored the template. -- User:Docu
Please stop reverting this. The status of Corsica as a collectivité territoriale is simply unique in the French Republic, and their is no need for a standard infobox for something that is unique. Hardouin 10:34, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
It's in the nature of infoboxes to be standardized. If you really think it's worth it, why not add an optional feature, instead of undoing others work? -- User:Docu

[edit] Politics section- a comment.

The sub-section entitled 'Politics' in this article seems to relate almost nothing except borderline POV information concerning the indepence movements in Corsica in recent years. That information probably merits its own section instead.

I wrote a PhD Thesis on Corsica which was published under the following title:

Regionalism and Ethnic Nationalism in France: A Case-Study of Corsica, European University Institute: Florence, Italy, 1989.

It is an analysis of regionalist movements in Corsica, but placed in the context of the emergence of similar movements elsewhere in France, from 1945 until 1982.

Finally, it would be useful to add a bibliography of works on Corsica in various languages: French, English, German, Italian (?).

[edit] languagee

Should there noit be a section on the corsican language?

Yes, there should be.

[edit] Page protection

Why is this page protected???? I wanted to add some info...:(--83.45.174.215 10:30, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The page is protected because you have repeatedly added a commercial spam link to this page and to the Calvi page, using an unregistered account with a floating IP address. If you decide to stop adding commercial material to Wikipedia the page will be unprotected. All the link-spamming came from the same Netherlands based provider as the one you are using now. olivier 11:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Olivier that comment was added by me, Burgas00. I have no intention on adding any commercial link. But is a link to a commercial page reason enough to protect the whole article? Its no big deal... u can erase it untill the person gives up.--Burgas00 15:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you were not the one adding the commercial link. In any case, several articles about places in the south of France are currently the targets of VERY persistent spammers. In fact, it is not just about erasing the spams. In some cases, the only contributions during several days are only spam/delete/spam/delete/spam ... until the deleters give up. This process is disturbing for many people, as legitimate editors end up spending a big part of their editing time removing these links. I did not place a total block on this article, but just a "mild" one, in which case only recent and anonymous users are blocked from editing. In my opinion, it is a lesser harm. But the harm was done by the spammers in the first place. olivier 17:16, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italian featured article

Hi! Corsica is now an italian featured article (see here), please, put the template on the article.
I noticed that the page is blocked from a lot of days, I suppose that the vandalism risk is past (sorry for my horrible english...) --piero tasso 15:48, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The History Is Poorly Wrote and Makes An abrupt end mid sentence, some other parts also dont make sense.

[edit] History Section

The History section could definitely be fleshed out, since it ends with Napoleon - 200-odd years ago. 71.156.15.166 22:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what's up with the Pirate head flag?

So does anyone know why the Corsican flag features an African-looking pirate head? Was it a base for Barbary pirates? I was wondering about the pirate connection anyway...the Arabic word for pirate, قرصان, qursan, derived from latin/italian corsair, even sounds kind of related to Corse/Corsica. Anyone know anything about this stuff? jackbrown

Etymology of 'corsair' is nothing to do with Corsica but comes from the Letter of Marque, called Lettre de Course in French. The moor's head on the flag comes from the Kings of Aragon who were given the island by the pope, and chose the moor's head symbol. Corsica would not likely have been a base for Barbary pirates, since I think it would have been Genoese(sp?) at that point but was most probably attacked by them at some point. --Cammacleay (talk) 12:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Corsica is a good Latin word used by the Romans so it is much before the barbary pirates. Corsair is not related, coming from Latin cursus meaning at root a pursuer. The etymology of Corsica is not clear but I suppose there are theories which I have not yet investigated. These ancient names often go back to now unknown languages but whether that is the case here I do not yet know, may never know. For the Corsican language see under Corsican language. No, no, no, one must not call it Italian. Autonym Corsu. And you are right it is not official but I believe the officials are not discouraging it but are even trying to preserve it. It is heavily dialecticized (did I spell that right?) The more serious and less laughable issue is the "pirate-head" which happens to be a symbol of a Corsican independence movement. This is something like putting a confederate flag on American national articles. The symbol stems from a single incident of a takeover of a building by some Algerian nationalists back in the days of Algerian revolution. The takeover got nowhere and I can't say I have heard very much about Corsican indepedence, much less, say, than Quebec independence. In fact I hereby propose that we take out that inappropriate head and stop provoking our good allies the venerable nation of France, whose gift to us stands yet in New York Harbor. What do you think? Unless I hear an uproar to the contrary at some point not too long from now I will clean out the image and give a little more left buffer space to the box as well as add a width parameter. Au revoir.Dave (talk) 04:07, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Woops! I will not be taking out the pirate head as it turns out to be more official than I thought. That just goes to show you that anyone can be an ass, especially on Wikipedia. Hey everybody, I was wrong! Hyuk hyuk hyuk! I'm not wrong about the language and the name though and the box could use some buffer space. The article does need a clean-up. I am going to do some trying carefully not to be wrong again, as we all should.Dave (talk) 04:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Questionable Photopgraph

I'm no scientist, but the picture at the bottom seems kind of suspicious, having sailed from Nice to Corsica, and knowning that you certainly can't see Corsica from Nice. This is the equivalent of being able to see Paris from the English Channel -- they're simlpy too far apart. I'm not sure what the thing about refraction is, and so perhaps it is possible, but Corsica is really quite far from Nice -- can anyone give some illumination here? At best, the picture is simply misleading about the size and distance of Corsica from the mainland.


it may be surprising, but yes, despite of its distance from Cote-d'Azur, Corsica may be visible from the coast in special climatic situations. I've myself experienced it.

[edit] Clean Up

The article needs some cleaning up. i.e. The bit about the Battle of Méloria: this article gave the year 1282 while the linked article on the war stated 1284 (the correct date). There were a few slip-ups like that that I edited.

[edit] Is this a stub?

When I found this article, it had {corse-geo-stub} at the top of it. I moved the stub notice to the bottom, but I'm not sure it belongs here. Isn't this article long enough that it doesn't qualify as a stub? If no one disagrees, I'll remove the stub notice shortly. Terraxos 22:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not - It's a start class article. Check this out: Template:Grading_scheme. That said, it's not much beyond that, lacking the "key element" of any meaningful discussion of demographics and lacking other elements of the history section that leave that section lopsided, giving far too little detail about any modern history outside of the Napoleonic era. MrZaiustalk 14:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] are you joking?

"Italian is sometimes the official language statewide." is this supposed to be funny? there's only one official language in france it is french. Paris By Night 03:21, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The person meant corsican, not italian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.18.117.3 (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox title

Corsican is recognized as a regional language of France, alonside several other regional languages such as Alsatian, Breton, Tahitian, etc., but it is not an official language. In France there is only one official language, French, as per article 2 of the constitution ([1]). Even in far-away French Polynesia only French is the official language. The Corsican territorial council is free to translate their website in whatever language they wish, including Corsican, but it doesn't make Corsican an official language. The Alsace regional council website is translated in English and German for example ([2]), but that doesn't make English and German official languages of Alsace. So there's no justification to have the infobox title in Corsican, unless somehow we want to suggest that Corsica is officially bilingual French-Corsican (same as, say, the Spanish Basque Country, which is officially bilingual Spanish-Basque), which is not the case, Corsisa is not officially bilingual.

As for the English title, French region infoboxes only have their title in French and not English (check for example Aquitaine, Bretagne, etc.). If someone disagrees with this, the proper thing to do would be to suggest a change for all the French region infoboxes (not just Corsica), and if a majority of editors agree then we can change them all. Godefroy 18:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Back link

"please keep this link: Dmoz page holds a Wikipedia back link"

Is that anything like back talk or back flow or back scratch? What do you mean back link and what has that got to do with us? The site lists Wikipedia as a source. We list it, it lists us. A little ridiculous don't you think? No, what has the fact that their link refers to Wikipedia got to do with this article? Are we going vanish if we don't refer to them? My objection is this - the "open directory" does not have Wikipedia's policy against commercialism and is 95% a commercial site. This is a clever way to get some advertising back on Wikipedia. You are in effect saying "don't delete reference to our advertising site". So what I would like to hear right now are some justifications and the opinions of others. If I don't get them I am going to delete the link as advertising.Dave (talk) 04:32, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Forget this comment too. DMOZ has a Wikipedia article. I don't like DMOZ for the reasons I stated but if it merits a Wikipedia article then I suppose it should stay. I'm trying to sort out these links; for example, prehistoire-corse seems to have two sets of sites, one with header and one without. On the one with the header you can navigate but on the other no. Well this is hardly worth discussing. Forget it.Dave (talk) 08:46, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Breathtaking coastline syndrome

The section on economy looked a bit familiar so I did a search on "island's pleasant climate, beautiful mountains and breathtaking coastlines" and sure enough what do you think I found? At least 2 or 3 sites with the whole phrase, a dozen or so with half the phrase and more with "breathtaking coastline" than I care to bother to count. Moreover I see that much of the article has either been lifted from another travel site or vice versa. This is why we need notes. I'm not going to clutter up the article with templates but as I work through here I will be fixing it and if you see any fixes you can make be sure and do so. I note from the discussion commercialism has been a problem before.Dave (talk) 20:18, 27 April 2008 (UTC)