Talk:List of sovereign states and dependent territories by continent

message: In the Oceania section, the entry for Palmyra Atoll should be deleted, because Palmyra Atoll is not a dependent territory.  Palmyra Atoll is an incorporated territory of the United States and, as such, is considered to be an integral part of the United States rather than a dependent territory.  In the North America section, the United States is correctly defined as consisting of 50 states, one federal district, and one incorporated territory, which is Palmyra Atoll.  Palmyra Atoll became an incorporated territory in its own right in 1959, when it was separated from the incorporated Territory of Hawaii at the time that Hawaii became a U.S. state.Atelerixia (talk) 04:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Palmyra Atoll is functionally handled very similarly to the other non-inhabited dependent areas of the US, being administered by the US Department of the Interior and being part of the wider Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. It is after all also grouped into the United States Minor Outlying Islands by the ISO. Yes, the fact that it is a fully incorporated territory of the US is not in dispute. However, the two concepts are not the same, having dependency and incorporated status. With the concept of being "incorporated" being a legal term and the concept of "dependent" area/territory being a conceptual one. Even parts of the US government itself consider Palmyra Atoll to be a "dependent area", specifically the CIA (see here:  under the section 'government', and listed/formatted in the same manner as all other world factbook dependent areas in  and ). Despite all this, the article clearly states within its criteria that the list includes "Other territories often regarded as separate geographical territories even though they are integral parts of their mother countries (such as the overseas departments of France)." which I interpret to include Palmyra Atoll regardless of the incorporated/dependent area issue. - Wiz9999 (talk) 03:55, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Since incorporated means "part of," a territory cannot be both incorporated into and dependent on a governing state. Why is Palmyra included, but not the Hawaiian islands? The fact it is a territory should not matter, since Canada, Australia and Pakistan all have incorporated territories that are not provinces or states. D.C. is also not a state of the U.S., but is excluded from the list. TFD (talk) 13:57, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Palmyra Atoll 

message: According to the article, Taiwan is an "Observer in one UN specialized agency under the name Chinese Taipei". Which agency does this refer to? I was only able to find that Taiwan was formerly an observer in the World Health Organisation under that name, but have not been since 2016. Kidburla (talk) 13:13, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: The World Trade Organization. 144.130.162.86 (talk) 11:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taiwan - UN observer of one specialized agency 

message: The flag sizes used to be bigger prior to a major change in 2018. This change was ostensibly made to merge other articles into this one as per a talk page discussion. I have looked at the relevant discussion and I can't see anything about changed flag sizes. Was it intentional to change the flag sizes or was this a mistake during the merge? Personally I think they looked better with the old flag size in prior versions of the page. Kidburla (talk) 18:18, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Flag sizes 

message: Since most Wikipedia sovereign states lists include the two Russian-recoginzed 'other states', this list should also include Donetsk and Luhansk.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.197.134.44 (talk) 21:42, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Donetsk and Luhansk 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
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Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 11:56, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion