Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Archive 5

message: I propose that Historical States DO NOT go under the modern Country, but get their own level. They should have their own administrative unit hierarchy, and not try to link to the modern states, except horizontally. Perhaps there should even be a formal first level split (Current Countries and Historical states).
WikiProject Geography 
*WikiProject Current Countries 
**WikiProject Chinese provinces 
**WikiProject Finnish provinces 
**WikiProject French départements 
**WikiProject French régions 
**WikiProject German districts 
**WikiProject Japanese prefectures 
**Wikiproject Japanese districts and municipalites 
**WikiProject Mexican states 
**Wikiproject Latin America countries 
**WikiProject Philippine LGUs 
**WikiProject Swedish counties 
**WikiProject Swedish provinces 
**WikiProject Swedish provinces in Finland 
*WikiProject Historical States
**WikiProject historical provinces in Finland 
**WikiProject Prussian provinces
***WikiProject Prussian districts
****WikiProject Prussian counties
*****WikiProject Prussian civil registration districts (descendants would be the City articles, no sense in repeating the history)
*WikiProject Cities 
**WikiProject London 
**WikiProject Toronto 
**WikiProject Chinese Cities 
As to the issue of duplication, especially history, the Historical States articles would be more detailed within the applicable timeframe and the Current Country articles would be more an overview with a link to the historical page(s), if there a relationship (ie, border changes didn't affect the relationship between historical and current). With Current Countries like France, Belgium, etc., there may not be a need for separate Historical States. Germany, Austria, Russia and Finnland would, however. Bwood 21:45, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that historical entities should not be given the template prescribed by this wikiproject. We should look at historical states on the whole, while we look at existing states as they are now (e.g. by listing the current leader, area, etc.) Go ahead and start Wikipedia:WikiProject Historical States and will discuss there. --Jiang 05:58, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

text: I'll work out a rough template and start the project. - Bwood 01:20, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical countries / states 

message: I made a page that lists all of the different country footers floating around: Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Templates/Navboxes.  I actually included every footer on the page so that they're easy to compare. -- Walt Pohl 22:43, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footers page 

message: I have seen that Wikipedia uses the CIA world fact book extensively, but apparently the Library of congress has an extensive reasource, also freely available that we are not exploiting: "country studies" — Miguel 23:48, 2004 Mar 29 (UTC)
:I completely agree with Miguel. I discovered this source about a month ago, and linked to the site in Chile. It is a *very* extensive resource. Worth a look. --Cantus 00:04, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: See Library of Congress Country Studies. --Shallot 22:34, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: What is the current policy on the location of articles on states? I cannot find it here. Spawned by Talk:East_Germany#Name_of_country, I propose the following:
*Place an article on a state at its proper (English) name, with a redirect from any colloquial terms for it.
*If no official English name exists, use the common translation of its official name (as per the CIA Factbook).
Examples:
*France: official name is Republique de France, English French Republic. Article at French Republic with a redirect from France.
*North Korea: official name is Democratic People's Republic of Korea, so article goes there. Redirect from North Korea.
*Egypt: official name is Arab Republic of Egypt, so article goes there and Egypt is a redirect.
The reasoning behind this is that many common terms are inherently POV: for example both mainland China and Taiwan claim to be the legitimate Chinese government, and by putting one at 'China' the implication is that the other is illegitimate (note: EXAMPLE, I know China is actually about neither state).
Thoughts? — Jor (Talk) 22:07, 30 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We go by Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). What if a link to the common name refers to a historical predecessor state of the current one? Being redirected to a article on the current state might create false implications. China, Macedonia, and [Ireland]] are exceptions to the rule, but why change all of the articles to accomodate these exceptions? --Jiang 00:35, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Location of articles on states 

message: I'm sure this has been discussed before, but why are country articles largely divided into as many as 8 sections (Military of, geography of, etc)? Yes, merging them would lead to long articles, but this is not a bad thing - articles can be broken down into sections for ease of editing, and, as is often cited, Wikipedia is not paper. And most encyclopedias I can think of have long country articles instead of 8 or 9 short country articles. It's particularly jarring on something like Serbia where the list of articles includes a wealth of articles that don't exist - something that shouldn't happen in a see also section. 
Can we consider combining the country articles into larger single articles? Snowspinner 15:08, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the subpages for Serbia don't exist because it's presently a subnational entity and someone was overenthusiastic when adding those links. I'll go get rid of them now. --Shallot 17:50, 20 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Multi-part articles

message: I see that some countries have stated languages as "official languages" although they haven't formally no language. (Perhaps simply entered them and forgot removing official.) Perhaps, as an intresting info, we could state the domestic or traditional language in the country if they don't have offical ones. Or is it someone that don't like this? (For the case of Sweden there are six languages that can be native used in courts, authorities, etc., spoken since pre-historic times, before the nation's birth.) I don't think this is bad information. CIA fact book usually state domestic languages.
(Personally, before I got aware of this I didn't belive that Jiddish and Romany was spoken in Sweden and could be native in general courts!) // Rogper 00:08, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Just label these languages de facto, as is done at UK. --Jiang 21:42, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Languages 

message: As well as categories by continent and country categories we have some cross country ones. eg I made :Category:Public holidays by country. There is also :Category:Militaries which seems to be listing militaries by country. We probably need a X by country category which they could all be part of. Secretlondon 05:33, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Categories

message: There's a large pile of unclaimed country categories in :Category:Orphaned categories. I'd welcome anyone who'd like to weed these out.  Please spread the word to other relevant geographically oriented WikiProjects if you could.  You don't need to delete them there if you don't feel like it -- adding a parent category is enough.  Thanks.  --ssd 06:49, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Orphaned Categories

message: I think we should move the links to Foreign relations of ... from the Miscellaneous section to the Politics section. It's not perfect, but better than the misc section. --Shallot 14:33, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Placement of link to the foreign relations articles 

message: The economy sections of most countries need to be guided by some sort of a common theme that allows a reader to find something out about the country's economy at a glance. Currently a great deal of countries have Economy sections that simply talk about the last five or six years of economic development without really giving a big picture overview. Specifically, a reader would want to know the GDP (total and per capita), the major industries, a tiny bit of history, perhaps some comparison with other nations. Part of the reason could be that this article is wishy-washy about what to include in the Economy section, instead of coming out and defining the facts that should be covered. --Ilya 07:57, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say it should also hint at the major trade partners, and the main economic impediments, if any. For European countries, comparison with other countries could usually be limited to the comparison with the EU average. --Shallot 20:32, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Economy Sections

message: I was wondering whether there was going to be a set format, mainly a naming convention, for a template for country-specific infoboxes. For example, Croatia uses Template:Croatia Table. There started to be discussion about it at Template_talk:Croatia_Table, but I couldn't find any follow-up discussion.
I propose the following:
Template: Infobox
(It's been days since I first started writing this post, so I can't remember if there was anything else I wanted to add. So, just post your opinions on what I have here....) GPHemsley 11:15, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Do those  above stand for variable substitution or actual invocation of Template:country, as it is rendered? --Joy [shallot] 11:50, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Variable substitution. For example, Template:Cayman Islands Infobox. GPHemsley 12:07, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

text: Actually (and this is probably what I left out above), the theory was to have the specific country template to contain  will all the information. So, Template:Cayman Islands Infobox would contain only  or whatever the variables are. So, essentially, you take up the least amount of room—and you make the use of the template uniform. GPHemsley 21:16, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Country-Specific Infobox Templates 

message: This is what I see (Safari, Mac OS X 10.3)  (except for the links which should NOT be underlined, but because of some bug in Wikipedia I can't remove them; this has been ongoing for the last couple of days). --Cantus 23:27, Oct 2, 2004 (UTC)
This is what I see (IE 6.0). The beige background and underlining are due to my own settings, but no cells appear. Yes, Cantus's version looks nice on his browser but given that so many people use IE... --Jiang 23:55, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: What browser is Jiang using?

message: No.  It appears correctly on my computer but it doesn't on others, and the pages are ultimately designed for non-Wikipediaholics.  Juppiter 01:25, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Support Cantus layout Yes or No and Why

message: ... it needs to be split off from the lead section. Peripheral or even tangential information regarding how a country is named isn't really lead section material, it can be summed up nicely in a "Name" section just below the ToC.
I've done that, or seen it done and maintained it (don't recall in all instances), in Slovakia, Belarus, and just now in Ukraine. It seems reasonable, as no one has really complained in the past cases. I therefore propose that we explicate this possibility on the project page. --Joy [shallot] 21:07, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  when name etymology gets unwieldy...