Talk:ISO 3166-1

message: We are currently having a rel. stable page here that has no flags for Taiwan, Western Sahara (argument: no UN member states), but we do have flags for the BES islands (NL flag), Hong Kong and Macao (own flags). Is there a reasoning behind that that I am missing? or should for consistency all countries that are not UN members have no flags?  L.tak (talk) 13:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is they recognise Taiwan as "TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA", and I don't think that the Chinese province has its own flag. Hong Kong and Macau, the BES islands, Aland, etc., do have flags. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as far as the BES islands, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, are concerned, I am wondering which flag you are referring to? The sovereign country flag? </br>::Another way of looking at TW: I agree that TW here is Taiwan, Province of China here; but it seems that it is ROC that is administring the ISOxxx-2 entity. Wouldn't it be arguable that we choose the administring entity as the one from which we choose the flag (Curacao uses Curacao's flag, not because the Kingdom of the Netherlands so demanded, but out of their choice) L.tak (talk) 14:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

text: Another point is the palestinian territories, which is currently represented by the palestinain authority flag, which also does not sound as an entity requiring a noflag? L.tak (talk) 15:04, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm referring to the official flag of the area (official as defined by the controlling power acknowledged by the ISO). Curacao has an official flag (being whatever its legal status is) which is used in Curacao, and has legal status there in the eyes of the Dutch government. Svalbard, as a counterpoint, has no flag, so I the Norwegian flag is used. While I do see the argument for administering entity, I feel that this list, since it is completely defined by the ISO, should follow their POV (although I wouldn't go so far as to put the PRC flag on Taiwan). Palestine is "PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED", so while I'm amused by that political statement, I think it should also be noflagged. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, seems like a defendable standpoint to me. Flagging TW with a PRC-flag seems to be taking it  a bit too far indeed ;-)... Will change the Palestinian entry... L.tak (talk) 15:51, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  It must be added the flag of  for Republic of China (Taiwan), no matter political recognition by the UN. 1. It is truth that Republic of China is not recognized by the UN, but this article is not relevant with United Nation. 2. ISO does not belong to UN, and ISO defines itself as a non-governmental organization. 3. Adding country flag is to make readers more visually know the countries or places. This is what wikipedia is for. Otherwise in ISO website in Switzerland, it does not offer any nation flag. Due to this reason, should we remove all nation flags! 4. It is truth that the name of TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA is used in ISO website, and it should not be changed until official changes. But it is strongly recommend that adding a footnote to explain the real status of Taiwan or link into relevant reference. It is bad to left flagicon blank without any explanation. 5. To conclude, Adding the flag for Republic of China (Taiwan) is necessary and suitable for this article Consistency. The name of TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA will not change. Adding a footnote to explain the real status of Taiwan, such as good example in zh-edition of it.David30930 (talk) 21:54, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

text: Personally, I think we should just remove all the decorative flags. But as long as it doesn't cause an increase in the number of nationalist editors who want to change the names away from those used by ISO 3166-1 (or a dramatic increase in the number of nationalist editors screwing around with the flags), I don't care that much. Anomie⚔ 16:23, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, GeoNames GeoTree shows the subject flags, apparently without complaint in their forums or elsewhere. They use WP as a source for their territory and country subdivision flags (probably including those at issue), too :) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 14:47, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Err, good for them? Anomie⚔ 16:32, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

text: Not quite. I think they are useful. Yes, I don't know them all, but it makes it a lot easier to identify countries and have an idea of what's in. Non-text icons can be called cruft (why not) or decorative (why not), but I go for: visual identification. The fact that in some locations that has strong political connotations, does not mean we shouldn't use them at those places where it's not.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by L.tak (talk • contribs) 07:20, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not up to us, though, to decide where the supposed "political connotations" should prevent showing the flag. That's taking a side in a political dispute. It's sad that has been allowed to result in losing them all, instead of showing them all. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 07:31, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

text: Thanks Alan, those spurious bits came from Microsoft Word's find+replace function and it being very early in the morning :)  I have to say that usually I would argue in favour of keeping flags, indeed during a discussion about flags on Wikipedia I tried to advocate a "flags for everything" policy. HOWEVER, we can't have the push-me/pull-me repetition going on with this article. The amount of reverting and re-reverting was far too much for an article which hasn't got flags as its central focus. Removing the flags seems to be the logical solution. doktorb wordsdeeds 08:07, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: My statement (+ reversion as I missed the consensus on this change; procedurally I would have done this differently) was merely one of disappointment. I am not planning on having much discussions on it (there are much, much more interesting discussions then to focus attention on). Its a pity... L.tak (talk) 08:50, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it is a pity. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 13:53, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: ISO still considers the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as "legitimate" despite having been almost entirely erased by Taliban, so remove all flags?--Jusjih (talk) 03:39, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  flags (a reversion of an IP edit to Taiwan made me look into it) 

message: This Wikipedia page is about the standard ISO 3166-1 and, consequently, must adhere to that standard. The relevant ISO 3166 page clearly states that the full name of the country is "the Kingdom of Eswatini", that the English short name is "Eswatini" and that the Swazi short name is "eSwatini". Misha Wolf (talk) 11:13, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  eSwatini vs Eswatini 

message: I would like to ask what we will do when ISO 3166 renames Macedonia. Removing it from the sortable table of disputes will be neater, but "erasing the history". Keeping it in the table is possible by marking it a settled dispute, though making the table longer.--Jusjih (talk) 22:16, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: ISO 3166-1 finally updated it's item for North Macedonia.  I did remove it from the disputed table but put information about the dispute in a note attached to the North Macedonia item so it isn't truly erased.  That seems to be a middle path and keeps the dispute table from being cluttered with resolved disputes. DRMcCreedy (talk) 01:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Personally I don't see much point in having a footnote to perpetuate the naming dispute now that it has been settled. Anomie⚔ 18:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no objection to it being removed. DRMcCreedy (talk) 20:31, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  North Macedonia and any disputes settled in the future 

message: The markup you deleted doesn't , . Its purpose is to automate generating country tables. If you don't know what something is needed for, why not ask instead of rushing to undo? (especially since the change is not visible) Guarapiranga (talk) 12:44, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps instead of adding kilobytes of  to the article in some hacky attempt to automate generating country tables, you should generate the tables directly from the dataset used for Template:ISO 3166 code or something else that doesn't involve cluttering articles with complex extraneous markup? Anomie⚔ 14:14, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: And who's going to maintain that, ? The point is to make data used across WP consistent with the article in which it is actively curated. Guarapiranga (talk) 20:07, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Markup 

message: The countries are in disarray, , that's why I changed it. My mistake was to use cscew instead of cscw. Now, are you going to fix it, or shall I? Guarapiranga (talk) 14:03, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: As I've said in earlier discussions on this page, my personal opinion is that we should remove all the decorative flags in the first place. But if we are going to change around the template used to display flags here, we will need to make sure we don't re-surface earlier problems with flags that were discussed on this talk page. Given your track record here so far, I'd strongly recommend against you doing it. I don't have time right now (it's time for me to go to work), so you will likely have to be patient. Anomie⚔ 14:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  After a little testing, this seems like it could use a bit more discussion. It seems to be a choice between widespread minor pixel misalignment and majorly resizing a few that aren't near the standard size.CurrentProposed NamibiaNamibia NauruNauru NepalNepal NetherlandsNetherlands New CaledoniaNew Caledonia New ZealandNew Zealand NicaraguaNicaragua NigerNiger NigeriaNigeria NiueNiue Norfolk IslandNorfolk Island North MacedoniaNorth Macedonia Northern Mariana IslandsNorthern Mariana Islands NorwayNorway Or we could finally just get rid of the decorations. Anomie⚔ 12:14, 25 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: The one throwing everything off on that sample you selected is New Caledonia, . No flag is supposed to be that wide—in fact they're two—and that's been discussed at template talk:country data New Caledonia. Guarapiranga (talk) 09:50, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Nepal is also displayed significantly smaller. Anomie⚔ 12:01, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, bc their flag is taller and narrower than everyone else's. That's precisely what  and  are for. Doesn't the proposed column look better than the current one to you? It does to me. Guarapiranga (talk) 03:23, 27 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table alignment 

message: It says that each entry includes:
:Independent (# denotes the country is considered a sovereign state) and then in the table underneath the end column is green if independent and red if not.
:I don't know what # refers to, is that meant to be a number? Does anyone know where it says that independent  = sovereign state? Because its a bit confusing, if we take Palestine for example, it is included in List of Sovereign States but ISO says it is not independent? Does anyone know where to find the definition of what ISO means when it says independent/not independent?Selfstudier (talk) 19:03, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed the "#" comment because it's clearly not used in the article.  I'm not sure how ISO makes the determination.  It might be at https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:3166:-1:ed-2:v1:en but that part of the table of contents is only available if you pay them money. DRMcCreedy (talk) 19:25, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  You cannot access the complete ISO list without buying it. You may, however, browse the countries in the ISO website to find the information about the countries, including the ISO classification of independence. It can be accessed from several places, among them from here, and you may be interested in these two: Palestine and Vatican State. Their definition of independence will probably be found somewhere behind their pay wall. --T*U (talk) 20:18, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I am not going to pay over $ to find out what they mean. I did find several sources claiming that what it means in the case of Palestine is that it is occupied and that therefore they are prevented from exercising full (ie de facto) sovereignty (even though they are de jure sovereign). However without a clear definition from the horse rather than a third party, then thisparameter  is pretty much useless as a criterion for anything.Selfstudier (talk) 20:43, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Right.  At this point it just reflects the Yes/No value of the ISO 3166 "Independent" field.  I'm curious what ISO's definition/determination is but I'd bet being vague enough to cover Antarctica, Bouvet Island, Greenland, Hong Kong, and Palestine renders it pretty useless. DRMcCreedy (talk) 21:22, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not sure what you mean by being "being vague enough to cover". The standard is supposed to give codes "for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest". It covers all the areas you mention, but none of them are coded as "Independent". I do not see how this is "pretty useless". --T*U (talk) 21:37, 18 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I just meant that I doubt there is a precise definition that would cover all of these use cases of "not independent" geographical areas.  If ISO has one, I think it should definitely be added to the article.  The "independent" field is part of the standard so I understand why it's part of the article, even if I don't understand ISO's definition. DRMcCreedy (talk) 22:09, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

text: Why is Palestine not an independent country while the Holy See (another UN observer state) is considered to be independent? Why are the Cook Islands and Niue also considered to be not independent? If so, why are they still listed on the list of sovereign states? 2001:8003:9008:1301:F0D6:2B9B:76:77AE (talk) 02:41, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: For the ISO designation you would have to ask the ISO. For Wikipedia's List of sovereign states, the criteria is present on that page. CMD (talk) 04:24, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Independence? 

message: has been reverted once before about the change to "common names" (such as adding or taking away labels from country names). This could enter a to-and-fro editing debacle so it will need to be discussed here before going to page protection and elsewhere. doktorb wordsdeeds 21:32, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: The name column was previously discussed here.  Multiple editors have reverted 188.3.166.104's changes.  At this point they're disruptive. DRMcCreedy (talk) 23:44, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  IP editor ("common names") 

message: I don't have strong views about the edits of 27 October 2020 except for the description of ISO 3166-1 as an "internal standard". I don't know what the editor meant by this but it doesn't make sense.
Reviewing these edits, I've noticed a pre-existing problem with this paragraph. It used to say:
: ISO 3166-1 is part of the ISO 3166 standard [...]. The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes. It defines three sets of country codes:
It now says:
: It is the first part of the ISO 3166 standard [...], titled Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes.
Both the previous wording and the new wording make it unclear what is called Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes. Is it ISO 3166 or is it ISO 3166-1?
Well we know that it is the latter, but both wordings are confusing.
Any suggestions?
Thanks. Misha Wolf (talk) 13:00, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: My suggestion would be:   It removes the inaccurate "internal" description and clarifies what's being named. DRMcCreedy (talk) 17:40, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Great! Will you make the edit? Thanks. Misha Wolf (talk) 17:46, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. DRMcCreedy (talk) 18:28, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks. Misha Wolf (talk) 18:45, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with the lede paragraph 

message: Given that this Talk page had become extremely long and had sections on it dating back to 2003 that had either been resolved long ago or were no longer relevant, I followed the H:ARC manual process and created a new Talk:ISO 3166-1/Archive 1 page. I moved older discussions to that page, trying to keep discussions here that were either new, unresolved, or seemed very important to continue to have on this main Talk page. If you think any sections I moved to Talk:ISO 3166-1/Archive 1 should remain on this page, they can be easily copied/pasted back to this page. There are probably a couple more conversations on this page that could be archived, as it is still quite long, but I have not been active enough on this page to know which should be archived. The archive page is also searchable from the box at the top of the page. Hopefully this will make it easier for people to find new discussions on this Talk page. - Dyork (talk) 02:46, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Archive 1 page created for this Talk page 

message: Why is Palestine not independent? The country is a United Nations observer state. Even though a lot of its land is occupied by Israel, it has nevertheless been universally recognised as an independent country by the international community. 139.130.131.82 (talk) 08:01, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: You'd have to ask the ISO or UN. This article reports the designation in ISO 3166, which I believe follows the designation by the UN. But it probably comes down to politics and the fact that Israel still controls much of its territory. Also recognition is not "universal". Anomie⚔ 11:45, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a section up the page "Independence" about this. Its paywalled at ISO and no-one really knows what it means, WP is not using it for anything afaik, so I'd just forget about it.Selfstudier (talk) 12:17, 28 May 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: See also Template:Editnotices/Page/ISO 3166-1. Neither may Taiwan nor Western Sahara be considered independent in ISO 3166 due to sovereignty disputes.--Jusjih (talk) 02:20, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This datapoint isn't used anywhere and may or may not relate solely to sovereignty disputes. We do make use of data about the latter, freely available in secondary sources.Selfstudier (talk) 09:56, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

text:  It is not quite universally recognised, but other than the 42 Western countries, almost all the other countries in the world recognised the State of Palestine, so it is "almost" universally recognised as an independent country. Furthermore, the Cook Islands and Niue are also almost universally recognised as independent countries (apart from New Zealand, Australia and maybe a few more countries). 2001:8003:9008:1301:F0D6:2B9B:76:77AE (talk) 03:09, 5 October 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi. As noted earlier, this article on Wikipedia is about the ISO 3166 country codes maintained by ISO. Editors at Wikipedia don't have anything to do with how ISO sets those country codes. This article is simply reporting on the country codes established by ISO. We use the list of 3166-1 country codes from ISO. If you believe they are wrong, that is not something we can fix here at Wikipedia. You will need to bring it up with ISO, typically through your government delegation to ISO. - Dyork (talk) 00:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Palestine 

message: Any notes on what is going to be Bougainville's ISO 3166-1 code, as the next new country to be formed on planned and peaceful means in the near future? 2804:14D:8084:A496:51E6:4393:607D:C9D0 (talk) 22:57, 18 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bougainville