Talk:List of sovereign states/Archive 2

message: Why is this a list of sovereign states and not a list of countries and territories? If we had a single comprehensive list we could just note next to each area its degree of autonomy. I don't see why readers should have to go to another page entirely to find the Cook Islands or Greenland, merely because of some diplomatic technicality.
I recognise that there's going to be some debate around the fringes, and I don't think micronations should be on the list, or areas under the temporary control of warlords. But I don't see the harm in erring on the liberal side in general.
Frankly the way this page and its related pages are structured seems blatantly POV to me. To adopt a neutral point of view we shouldn't be deliniating between different degrees of sovereignty. We should mention the issues (concisely), link to the territory's main article, and let people make their own distinctions.
Has this been discussed somewhere else? I'd really like to understand the arguments that led to the status quo.
Ben Arnold 02:45, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem would be how to select what entities can be in wand which entities don't belong to the list. Personally I would like to have an integrated list with all de jure and de facto sovereign states as wll as the dependent territories. I agree we would have to exclude micronations (like Sealand) and areas under the temporary control of warlords. I will make an effort to include the dependent territories in the new layout. Electionworld 08:06, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This sounds good to me. I suggest bold text for de jure countries, bold, italicised text for dependent territories and italicised text for de facto countries. Micronations and integral territories (Hawaii, Réunion et al) should be excluded. - Randwicked 05:28, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Why sovereign states?

message: :The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 
See the debate above on this talk page. When we create a list of countries page, it is possible to list of countries, independent and dependent, in one list with avoiding discussions on a the question of an entity is a sovereign state. 
When this move is agreed, the content of Talk:List of sovereign states/new layout would be the new content of List of countries.
*  the reasons for move copied from WP:RM 
::Add #Support or #Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation and sign your vote with ~~~~ 
===Support===
#Support, see above Electionworld 21:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Requested move

message: #Support, see above Electionworld 21:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Support

message: #Jiang 21:34, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Oppose

message: I oppose the move because the distinctions are already made in the intro and the criteria is clearly spelled out. Adding entities that are obviously not sovereign states just makes this article less useful. Are we to delete the footnotes too? The article is fine as it stands.--Jiang 03:34, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Discussion

message: I've reformatted about a part of this page to avoid problems with table sizing and more importantly, to reduce code bloating. I'm out of time for now, so if anybody wishes to continue, please go ahead. What i've done is basically removed the table formatting and used semicolons for headings. I've also removed the redundant bolding and replaced short dashes with em dashes for clarity.
If there is a good reason for this page to use tables, please feel free to explain and revert. Zocky 04:29, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Cantus finished the rest. Thanks. Zocky 08:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reformatting 

message: I'd propose to remove the Holy See from the list and just keeping Vatican City, because a) the Holy See is NOT a state (just the Vatican City is) b) mentioning both the Holy See followed by the Vatican City (the latter in brackets) gives the wrong impression that those two are synonyms. Gugganij 08:18, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of Holy See 

message: This list is great.  It needs some references to pass through Wikipedia:Featured list candidates, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:03, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:FLC]]

message: I'm going to be a little insistent in dropping the footnote on Taiwan saying that this lists includes de-facto states for several reasons.  First, the List_of_Countries lists the Republic of China on Taiwan as one of the 193 de-jure soveriegn states.  Second, the List_of_sovereign_states lists Republic of China (Taiwan) as one of the 193 countries on the list.  While the United States does not officially recognize Taiwan as a state, it made the unusual move of placing Taiwan in the "Other" section of its list of soveriegn states rather than placing it under the list of areas of depedency and special sovereignty.  Also, the About.com geography page considers there to be 193 countries .  Viewpoints on whether or not the Republic of China is a de-facto soveriegn state or a de-jure one would be best left as a footnote under Political status of Taiwan rather than list_of_unrecognized_countries.  Emotions can run extremely high on this issue of using the terms de-facto or de-jure because most people in Taiwan regard the Republic of China to be a de-jure state even if they are leaning toward Taiwan independence or reunification with Mainland China.  There are already a few generations of children in Taiwan who are brought up to believe that the Republic of China is a soveriegn state at this point.  Also most people in the world have heard of Taiwan and probably think it to be a country; they probably have not heard of many other areas in the world that are considered to be so-called de-facto states.  Taiwan's passport is recognized and accepted by all countries in the world except for China; there are gangs who try to steal Taiwan passports and sell them in China because Taiwan gets better visa treatment than China does.  While many Made-in-China globes would suggest that Taiwan is part of China (as well as the Spartys), most western atlases give Taiwan and China different colors on the political map.
:I agree with the above reasoning and add the following.  To call the ROC de facto independent (and thus not de jure independent), is complete POV.  Only from the point of view of the PRC and those nations over which the PRC exerts influence can we say that the ROC is not de jure independent.
:The only issue people really talk about is the ROC's recognition by other countries.  De jure means by law.  Now if we think this through, note that recognition, actually had to do with _de facto_ independence, not _de jure_ independence.  Think about this.  Is an act of larceny illegal based on how many people think it is so?  The law exists before the act and judges whether the act is so or not.  In the same way, the legality of Taiwan's government is legal or illegal regardless of recognition by other countries, and as it is a democratically elected government, it's hard to see it as illegal.
:Even the very idea of a separation between "de facto" and "de jure" is on shaky ground.  As the many political realist scholars will tell you that there is no international law besides that which is enforced by power--in this case since China can't invade Taiwan at this point, Taiwan is independent.
:The reality is that there's no good principle here that can really separate between "de facto" and "de jure".  We should just put specific footnotes about each situation.  For the ROC, putting a footnote that goes to political status of Taiwan will be the best explanation of the situation.--DownUnder555 18:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Republic of China (Taiwan) 

message: Now that this list has a full set of flags and as there is a Gallery of sovereign state flags the List of sovereign state flags is almost redundant. So I propose that the last information from the List of sovereign state flags which is not in this article, is moved across and that that page is made a redirect. This is a similar merge to that which was made earlier this year for List of flags of UN members that was merged into United Nations member states and made a redirect.
To do:
* Copy from List of sovereign state flags the Flag of links for each country into this article. --Done
* Copy over the categories. --Done moved catagories to Gallert of sovereign state flags
* Maybe copy over the  and . --Done
* Move the talk page Talk:List of sovereign state flags into an archive. --Done
* Add links to this talk page for the Talk:List of sovereign state flags archives. --Done 
* Remove the mergefrom template from this article page
* Make the two pages List of sovereign state flags and Talk:List of sovereign state flags into redirects. --Done
--Philip Baird Shearer 12:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not like the results, since now it became a list of flags of. It became to dominant. I would prefer the addition after the state name in brackets, like (Flag). Electionworld 15:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I can fully understand your POV on this. Perphase we need a table or an additional line instead. User:Renata3 is planning to break out the National coat of arms into a coat of arms of soverign states and persumbly one for nations which are not soverign. Perhapse that list could be incorporated into this one as well the extra line could contain: Flag and Coat of arms. I'm open to suggestions. Philip Baird Shearer 09:50, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mergefrom List of sovereign state flags 

message: To all the folks who are editing Taiwan / ROC / et al. entries.  Would you please take care to make sure that if Taiwan is going to be in a seperate entry under 'T' that it is written as 'Taiwan' with a note on the full name somewhere.  I just cleaned up the Taiwan entry from 'Republic of China (Taiwan) - Republic of China (frequently known as Taiwan)'.  This was not in keeping with the format of the other entries (short name followed by official full name) and needlessly duplicated the info.  Whereever you want the entry -- fine - but make sure it is formatted in keeping with the other entries and the ordering is maintained.  Also -- be careful with the footname to 'political status in taiwan' - moving around the entry might mess up that footnote. novacatz 06:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keeping Formatting