# Talk:States and federal territories of Malaysia

human development index (hdi) values should be included in the table comparing the different states and federal districts for all the states and districts  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.14.50.201 (talk) 05:30, 31 August 2007 (UTC) 

I don't speak Malay though I lived in KL to the age of three, so I am guessing that negeri-negeri and wilayah-wilayah persekutuan are plural - if so I would have thought that negeri and wilayah persekutuan are more helpful to English readers and more natural in Malay when written with 13 and 3. --Henrygb 00:07, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the malay words are plural. However, it looks okay to me to use states (negeri) and federal territories (wilayah persekutuan) in this article. For what it's worth, I'm a malay working in KL for last 21 years. -- sabre23t 03:44, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I note that the CIA's Malaysia Administrative Divisions map on this article shows the name of the states to be "Melaka" and "Pulau Pinang". However currently wikipedia has those names redirected to Malacca and Penang. Shouldn't we have it the other way around? -- sabre23t 03:23, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My view is that Malacca and Penang are the names used by most English speakers around the world. This links to the two pages seem to confirm this, though this may be confusing cause and effect. The waterway between Malacca and Sumatra is usually called the Straits of Malacca.  The Pulau Pinang state government seems to use http://www.penang.gov.my as its URL.  But this is clearly a sensitive subject in Wikipedia, so I don't think that there is a definitive answer. In fact it doesn't matter too much so long as the redirects are set up and the initial line enables the casual visitor to know they are in the correct place.  --Henrygb 17:29, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
TQ Henrygb for your view. I earlier had half a mind to revert the 161.142.10.27 edit on Malaysia#States. I left it alone, created a #redirect and posted here. I think I'll leave a comment on Talk:Malaysia about this. -- sabre23t 09:22, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

06:58, 4 April 2008 125.238.73.147 (Talk) (9,456 bytes) (I have made Alor Star into Alor Setar because Malaysia isn't i control by the other country anymore.)  <- My god, what are you rambling about --Bukhrin (talk) 07:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The image Image:Flag of Putrajaya.png is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here.  In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page.  Please check

That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
That this article is linked to from the image description page.
This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --07:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

The article title is "States of Malaysia", so one would expect to see some brief facts about the states in Malaysia such as area, population, etc. However, there is currently a section "Elections" in the article, which is basically a summary of the Malaysian general election, 2008 and Permatang Pauh by-election, 2008. IMO, should we want a section about elections in the article, it should cover about the electoral system in the states in general, for example: how is the state assembly elected, how a party can gain control of the state government, each state sends two representatives to the Dewan Negara etc. It should not be a retelling of the 2008 elections; Malaysian general election, 2008 has served the purpose. I think the article U.S. state is a good reference on how this article should look like. --Joshua Say "hi" to me!What I've done? 19:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

It's already 3 months since I posted this. I am going to be bold and remove the offending section myself. --Joshua Say "hi" to me!What I've done? 05:46, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Support. -- Zafri (talk) 11:45, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

All 4 tables have been merged into a single sortable format --Anggerik (talk) 09:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Nice one, Anggerik. - Zafri (talk) 13:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

This constitution amendment has changed the status of states within the federation of Malaysia. The name "Malaya" added in the Federal Constitution. Kititto (talk) 02:08, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Information on the constitutional amendment was added back in December, within the section dedicated to Sabah and Sarawak. CMD (talk) 22:03, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
The amendment change on overall Malaysia, not only Sabah and Sarawak. Kititto (talk) 02:38, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
Any change to Sabah and Sarawak will change overall Malaysia, wouldn't it? CMD (talk) 10:13, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

With the implementation of WP:VECTOR2022, the table of states, as well as the table of federal territories to a lesser extent, simply does not fit within the constrained vertical space. The Federal territory table needs at least one column removed, possibly 2, while the State table will need significant reduction. An easy start might be to remove any columns from the State table that do not appear in the Federal territories table, that is to say, Largest city and Royal capital. In most cases the capital is the largest city anyway, where it is not that does not seem crucial to list here. Royal capital is not applicable to all states, and in some cases suggests a distinction that isn't there, for example Anak Bukit is part of Alor Setar. In addition to these, removing the Region column should be easy enough, and that is already covered in the map, and further clarifications needed could be added to the prose. Lastly, the Abbreviation column could be removed. It's pretty easy to work backwards from the ones used, and other abbreviations do exist (eg). Best, CMD (talk) 08:58, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Losing "abbreviation" and, to a lesser degree, royal capital seems regrettable. One might come to the page and do a ctrl-f search for the abbreviation. Largest city and region are no loss.
(Why has a skin been introduced that breaks established tables?) Furius (talk) 17:40, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
(and doesn't the amount of horizontal space taken up by the table depend on the user's display settings and screen size?) Furius (talk) 17:41, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't know how standard the abbreviations are, as I linked I found different ones on a government site when looking into it. I don't think the horizontal space scales that much with screen size in the new skin based on user settings as it's deliberately fixed. It's easy to see if you zoom out within a browser. CMD (talk) 01:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Interesting write-up, CMD  Article is a great deal more in-depth now.
I came across Federalism in Malaysia and wonder if portions about federal-state dynamics should be in that article instead (and summarising the corresponding paras already here as sort of introductory to that article on federalism). hundenvonPG (talk) 08:28, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks (let me know if you have high-quality sources on the Federal territories). I forgot about that Federalism in Malaysia article. That topic is, in principle, Federal-state dynamics. However, it looks like its specific content was created due to the changes in politics in 2008, and never really updated. If there was a need for a split, that title is where the content would go. However, this article is currently 8009 words, which is not where I'd start splitting it up. The content on that article seems to be topics I've covered here already using more recent sources, so I'd actually merge the content currently there to 2008 Malaysian general election. Then maybe if this article gets even longer, a split becomes more attractive. CMD (talk) 08:40, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
I agree this article doesn't need to be split, but it seems unsatisfactory to have two articles on essentially the same topic, one good and the other outdated. Might the two articles be merged? Furius (talk) 19:50, 21 March 2025 (UTC)
If there are no objections I'm happy to merge that article to the 2008 election article and here, and redirect it to the Federal-state relations section here. This would not preclude later splits, if that later becomes advantageous. CMD (talk) 01:44, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
I support that, of course Furius (talk) 09:18, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
Merge sounds fine. That article about federalism could be folded into the aftermath portion of the 2008 election article. hundenvonPG (talk) 04:30, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Welcome. Perhaps this list of recommendations from Bersih could be helpful. They're a proponent of the reinstatement of local elections; in the case of the federal territories (FT), there isn't an additional level of governance like the states do, thus FT residents only get to vote for their MPs.
Local elections for the FTs have been raised for quite some time, but there are those in the current government who either opposed or viewed it as less of a priority. hundenvonPG (talk) 04:23, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
I've added a couple of ELs to Local government in Malaysia and Elections in Malaysia that touch on the local election topic. I'm not sure exactly how the topic might best be distributed between those pages, perhaps it might need its own article, covering the 1951-1965 elections, 1974 legislation, and subsequent proposals (eg) to reintroduce them. CMD (talk) 07:45, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Copied the relevant text from that page into the aftermath portion of the 2008 election article as suggested above. CMD (talk) 06:40, 27 March 2025 (UTC)