![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
For current issues regarding the WikiProject Countries, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries.
This project has a consistent standard for country-specific article names (History of_, Culture of_, etc.). Should it be expanded into a Wikipedia-wide guideline? See the discussion and proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics). - Pioneer-12
I have copied this discussion (without amendment) from my talk page. I'll add a few comments at the end.
You might find the following earlier discussion I had with SimonP interesting:
Though, let's not call what he's doing vandalism. It is ill-advised and most probably against WikiRules, but it would be easier to handle him, if we kept it low-key. It's good to have someone helping in the discussion, though. Thanks.
Also, you uploaded the photo of Shagari? Please accept WikiThanks for that, too. I recently started Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board for reasons similar to what you say about smaller countries on your user page. It would be great to work with you on these issues. — iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:38, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
The prevailing view at wikiproject countries is that the commonwealth footer is not among those deemed notable enough for inclusion. There was debate over what specifically is notable (e.g. whether nato should be included), but people are not bringing up the case that the commonwealth is notable. We can have more than one footer, but this usually means geographical and EU (or like organizations), not Non-aligned Movement, OECD, APEC, etc. The user who added all these commonwealth footers was a clueless newbie whom I've never dealt with who took absolutely no part on the wikiproject countries discussion. In the abcense of consensus to make a change, it should not be made. This means the commonwealth footer should not be added. In my opinion it is a marginal organization existing for purely symbolic reasons and is not up to the level of the EU for us to consider the relationship among member countries to be close to warrant cross-linking. If you have a different opinion, then please express it at the wikiproject countries talk page. -- Jia ng
A few additional comments:
Importance of the organization needs to be taken into account, but that's not the only consideration. We need to look at how invdividual members of an organization relate to each other. After all, we're trying to justify cross linking here, as opposed to linking to another page ( Commonwealth of Nations or category:commonwealth coutries). If it's just an important organization without cohesiveness, a mention somethere in the article and a categories tag will be all that is needed. I don't think the bonds among members is strong enough to justify this cross-linking.-- Jia ng 00:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I have looked to Google to try to get some rough idea of how important the Commonwealth is to various countries. I searched for several countries and looked at what percentage of the hits also mention the Commonwealth. This includes both Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries so that the noise can be filtered out. The exact numbers were generated from 100*(results for: COUNTRY commonwealth -"commonwealth of independent states" -Virginia -Massachusetts)/(results for:COUNTRY). These admittedly very rough numbers show that the importance of the Commonwealth is highly variable, and that it is not surprising that this debate has a person from Nigeria and one from New Zealand on one side and a person from Canada on the other.
Country | Nigeria | New Zealand |
Ethiopia | Kenya | Mali | Fiji | Angola | Pakistan | Indonesia | Ireland | India | Brazil | Thailand | Canada | Japan |
% | 4.67 | 3.99 | 3.11 | 2.53 | 2.21 | 1.85 | 1.54 | 1.46 | 1.25 | 1.13 | 1.11 | 0.96 | 0.86 | 0.78 | 0.67 |
I have made Template:Military and implemented it in all countries with a military beginning letters A,F,Z (i.e. Military of Armenia). For anyone interested, please help out. Try to find national colors for the table. I plan to do this for all other data from the factbook. This should eventually be somehow automated since the data is updated each year and adding them in is tedious. -- Jiang 12:36, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)
I noticed a recent trend to take the infoboxes out of country articles and place them in the Template namespace (see e.g. Japan, Germany, Italy). I condsider this a Bad Thing because:
Can anyone clue me in as to why this is being done? Was this ever discussed anywhere? -- uriber 19:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
(and sorry for posting in the misc. section. I wasn't sure if this is a policy, a technical issue, a suggestion (to undo these changes), or something else). -- uriber 19:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So it seems like most people are against this. I did not see the "[edit]" link until JS pointed it out, and it seems like it's only there on some of the templates, and not always at the same place - so it's easily missed. User:Evil Monkey's comment confirms that the templates make editing more difficult. Doing so on purpose violates the spirit of Wikipedia (even if it happens to be a convinent way to baffle anonymous editors). I'll start re-merging the infoboxes into the articles on countries I come across. You're welcome to join. -- uriber 19:54, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I just want to add my opinion here. I agree with having the country tables in a separate page. This makes editing the country articles (as another user here pointed out) less alienating for newbies, and removes the clutter that these tables add to a separate page. Plus these tables can be easily edited by clicking the edit link at the bottom. — Cantus… ☎ 01:41, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
I moved the infobox in the Croatia article out back in June 2004, because I am pretty sure it scares a lot of users to see the table syntax. I haven't heard any good reasons against doing it. Let's look at Uribers argumentation.
Instead of changing back and forth we should discuss this issue and come to a conclusion. Maybe I will convince some of the points for making templates out of frightening big tables, maybe you will convince me, why this is a bad thing, so let's see your counterarguments. (Shall we move this discussion somewhere? The Village Pump is a rather lively place for such a discussion) -- denny vrandečić (hp) (talk) 13:42, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)
There is another possibility: The layout should be in the template. The data should be in the article, along the lines of
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#person_template. And it will be machine readable (easily parseable)!
I'm seeing various almost-revert-wars going on with various countries (Sweden and Netherlands come to mind). To my mind, using a 'template' which will only be used the once is not the purpose of a template which should, surely, be something created for *multiple* use. Leave the data where it is appropriate and editable - on the country page. However ... one option could be to make a /infobox' subpage to the country article and place the infobox in there so that it can still be linked-in as a template but not kept away in the template space. Might solve the arguments? -- Vamp: Willow 01:11, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I think that using a template works well and removes most of the formatting from the article, making it harder for new or less experienced users to screw up the table. But at the same time these templates should be using parameters editable from the article to make updating data fast and simple. People shouldn't ever have to edit the templates themselves unless a new type of data or formatting changes are needed. All data which may change from year to year should be parameterized. — Mike 02:05, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
When the infobox at Iceland was first moved to the template I was not really sure what to think about that, it seemed to make editing and watching harder. Then I added the template to my watchlist as well as the article and it was not painful at all! This huge issue that had been causing me sleep deprivation for several days vanished. Now I like the template solution and in my mind it makes the ARTICLE easier to edit and that is the real issue here. The infobox contains only standard information that either does not change at all or requires only annual updates, it is far more important to make the article itself easier to edit and removing all this scary table code from the top is a way to do that. It is both less intimidating for newbies and it trims down the size of the article thus making it faster to load, save & preview. I don't know why the original purpose of the templates should matter now, they can also be used for this purpose and why shouldn't they? This needs to be resolved soon to put an end to this very childish edit war. -- Biekko 13:21, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If these are to be kept, we should keep them as Templates. Subpages in the article namespace are not activated, and don't work the same as subpages elsewhere, and are generally bad form. -- Netoholic @ 14:33, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
This is a complete misuse of the template system (which is for transcluding content across more than one article or page). The argument against using template variables is invalid since you also can have variables for table headings (such as headofstate=). This system is flexible enough so that all the scary wikitable syntax could be on a template page while all the data could be in the article itself (where it should be). Template:Infobox Countries test already has this. This should be applied to a dozen or so articles in order to work out any still-present bugs, and then applied to all other articles in this WikiProject. -- mav 16:23, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't like these either. In the best case, it should be a different page in the article namespace, and that should be included or even better linked. This is an abuse of templates which are meant to be reused in other pages. Dori | Talk 23:07, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
Template:Infobox Country seems to work just fine. -- mav 06:17, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Actually I also see it is as an improvement, and I just used it on Croatia, and it looks nice. It's still a lot of strange looking code, but much better than before. The point I miss is still: why not exporting complex syntaxes out of articles in order to hide them from beginning users? Advanced users will easily be able to edit them anyway, so it's not like hiding it intentionally in order to keep sections unchangeable. It's just for the convenience of users. And the other point: if we had overview articles of the states of a contintent (for example), that would reuse the tables - everything would be fine? -- denny vrandečić (hp) (talk) 13:44, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)
Looks good, and standardization should be a big help. Jayjg | (Talk);;</sup> 22:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
On the Wikipedia:Country infobox vote page I suggested that the Template:Infobox Country could be a good way of implementing country specific template pages, and I've just tried it on Indonesia (I immediately reverted it; see: [1]). I had trouble with multiple times zones and no Daylight saving time; also, Indonesia has a National Ideology: Pancasila Indonesia... which didn't fit in. I also got a footnote tag when I had no footnotes... I like the idea of off loading the infoboxes from the main articles and if the country infobox can be made a little more flexible, I could support its use instead of hard coded tables. Whatever/however, it seems best to move the infoboxes off-page. — Davenbelle 02:57, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
Created New Zealand version using the template, which can be seen at Template:New Zealand infobox. Works well though a couple of niggles:
Other than that I'm surprisingly pleased with how it appears. Evil Monkey → Talk 05:45, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
I just proposed that as Solution D) over on the vote page; a common template (or a few; see Mike, above) would bring a common look to the boxes and allow planet-wide changes by editing the common template, and nesting the templates gets all but a single line off the actual country pages. — Davenbelle 09:30, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC))
I created a North Korea infobox (at
User:Evil Monkey/North Korea infobox). I picked this because I knew it would test the template. I ran into some issues with the leaders. North Korea has a complicated leadership structure with four different leaders that just don't fit nicely into one field. You have:
Secondly if there is no GDP data that part just falls apart with all the template syntax there for everyone to see. I'm not sure if its possible but it would be nice if the template recognised when certain fields aren't being used and didn't render them. Evil Monkey → Talk 21:26, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
Someone has changed fontsize=+1 to big+big for countryname in the box, and started implementing this change.
This is a pity. It doesn't look good. On my screen the lower third of "European Union" is hidden behind the drawn box at the Template:European Union table. This may of course be blamed on errors in the browser, but as I use WindowsXP ("professional"), I'm convinced that a lot of readers use older and much older soft ware. Furthermore, the size of the heading for the box is bigger than the size for the title of the page. That's not really good. / Tuomas 03:32, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
There's a discussion on standardization of country names in titles (at least for categories) on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion which may be of interest. -- Beland 02:27, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The remark on Template talk:Infobox Country about why kings are included under "Politics" helped me put the finger on what I always felt was wrong with our country articles. What one expects under politics is discussion of current political issues in the country, not its form of government. And indeed, all Encarta, Britannica and the CIA factbook keep this information under "Government", not "Politics". Current political issues are usually at the end of "History" sections, since they mostly deal with politics in the past anyway.
We should either rename the section "Government" and move the info on current issues into "History", or preferably have separate "History", "Government" and "Politics" sections. Zocky 18:21, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I see it has already been done in the model, but I do not agree, since in many country government is only about the government and it doesn't include the legislature. Politics is a much more neutral wordm which I would prefer. Gangulf 22:18, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
See also how Politics of Ukraine and Government of Ukraine turned out... I don't like it. -- Joy [shallot]
So far, more or less everybody agrees on this. Should we take action? Zocky 01:21, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Is anyone interested in a collaboration of the week for different countries, that is, a different country each week? Maurreen 08:56, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Netoholic, I'm waiting a sound argument on why you reverted the order change I made to the Country table. What's wrong with it, etc. Provide sound arguments, please, or you will be reverted again. — Cantus… ☎ 03:26, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
It makes no sense to put the country's Independence and National anthem between the Time zone and Internet TLD. Are we going to require a poll to make this change? This is ridiculous. Nothing can be changed anymore without an idiotic poll. This is common sense! I'm not even talking about the "capitol" and Largest city here. — Cantus… ☎ 04:13, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
Current template Native name(s) |
Netoholic's Native name(s) |
Cantus's (rev. 3) Native name(s) |
Eddi's (rev.) Native name(s) |
Davenbelle's Native name(s) |
Compromise Native name(s) |
My proposed order: (moved into the table)
Please look at the current ordering and tell me if it makes sense to list the Sovereignty events and the National anthem at the end of the table between the Time Zone and the Internet TLD?
Now a question to you, Neto: Why do you oppose this particular ordering? — Cantus… ☎ 04:26, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
Seems like we all agree that Area and downwards are correct. I think that language and anthem should be first, near the national motto and native name, since these are generally "language/spoken" qualities. It feels right to me. Following those two is the government information (anthem near government). Next is the capitol (seat of government) and the largest city, then the Area and Population (which feel right to link closely with the largest city). Basically, this makes every field link somewhat closely to its predecessor. -- Netoholic @ 20:15, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
I am fine with either your current version or mine. So long as those two city fields are right next to each other. Cantus? Anyone else? -- Netoholic @ 22:12, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
Not that the question where to put Language in the box is that very important, but as I see it, languages are connected to
nations, which in a way is biasing and taking a nation-centered view for granted, but given that this is fairly common among the expected readership, maybe it's best to give the customer what the customer is the most interested in and put the languages on top (i.e. follow Netoholic's proposal).
--
Ruhrjung 16:24, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I added the current template to the table for comparison, and included the native name, flag, coat of arms, and location map for completeness. (Cantus and Netoholic, please see if your proposals are represented correctly.) I further differentiated the colour codes – language, anthem, capital, cities, government, sovereignty, and religion. Finally I changed back to my original proposal, placing the capital and largest city next to the location map. Now your two proposals actually differ less than mine, except regarding the juxtaposition of the capital and cities. -- Eddi (Talk) 16:10, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The reason I list the largest cities separated from the capital is because I'm putting together everything that's official to the state at the top, then everything that is not, in order of importance. Seems logical to me. — Cantus… ☎ 04:09, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Eddi - Ruhrjung and Zocky seem to both be leaning towards my suggested order (at least in keeping languages and anthem near the top). Do you have any major objection? -- Netoholic @ 17:01, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)
My two cents; I think that Cantus' version is better than the others in terms of order of fields. I would like to see the 'official' part of language pushed to the right column for countries where there is an official language and the word omitted from countries that have no official policy on language; same with 'state' religion (which I would prefer be omitted entirely). I also feel that national mottos and coats of arms should be omitted; what's next? National Flowers? Largest city should also be omitted, maybe with a right-column note for some countries. Oh, TLD should be last, too. — Davenbelle 18:35, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Getting the fields that are passed from the country pages as parameters is something that had better be sorted out before too many more instances of the template are invoked. As more articles are converted to use the parameterized template, the harder it gets to change them; ask Cantus. Deferring discussion will only serve to cement the current implementation in place. — Davenbelle 04:51, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
It's been quiet here for a couple of days (or is it just the weekend?), so I thought I'd suggest a compromise. It seems like the majority wants the following:
Does this look like a solution? It is quite similar to all of the suggestions, but not identical to any of them, so everyone would give and take. -- Eddi (Talk) 02:12, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Switching the TLD and calling code in the compromise, the "difference count" becomes Current:3, Netoholic:2, Cantus:3, Eddi:3, and Davenbelle:2. If nothing better is proposed at this time, I suggest we implement the order of the compromise. -- Eddi (Talk) 20:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Can you please explain why you have implemented your own suggestion and paid no respect to the other suggestions? Thank you. -- Eddi (Talk) 20:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think I've made a few attempts during the years to shorten down the history section of that article and move the more detailed content to
History of Germany and other articles. My main reason to do so was (and is) that I hold the guideline on this point to be reasonable. However, this task is not very fun - it's much more fun to do the opposite - which has turned out to be one of the basic flaws of Wikipedia. ;-(
--
Ruhrjung 16:18, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I propose that the ISBN book identifier is added to each country as part of Infobox Country, as a part of it is specific for a country where the monograph was issued. See also: Wikipedia:Book sources and Numerical List of Group Identifiers by Country. -- Eleassar777 09:58, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
How do the holidays fit in? In Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Status, India is listed as not having a holiday table. But there is a holiday page in the ==See also== section. There are only three national holidays in India. The rest are determined by each state. = Nichalp ( talk · contribs)= 18:23, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
The template Template:MicrostatesE ("European Microstates") isn't used and thus its usefulness is doubtful. After reading some earlier discussion I guess some people here would like to delete it. It might be an interesting addition to the articles, but there is a similar category already. I'm not aware of any large-scale co-operation between the microstates. If others don't want to apply this template, I'll list it on Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion after a while (that is, if somebody doesn't list it before me). Wipe 16:25, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Update: it's now
there for voting.
Wipe
03:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Update 2: it was deleted with about 4 votes to delete, 1 to keep.
Wipe
23:50, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the facts tables include info on religions and ethnic groups? These are included in other reference sites, such as Infoplease (which does a spectacular job), and I think they are vitally important pieces of information.
I know the facts table is pretty large how it is. Perhaps a small infobox could be put in the demographics section? Some country articles do this already, but the formatting is inconsistent. See Romania, Estonia, Hungary, etc. - Pioneer-12 01:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Surely there should be a WikiProject Geography, for issues that transcend countries, cities, etc.?
What made me discover its absence is wanting to find a place to ask the following question:
"Surely the Category:North American national football teams belongs under Category:Personal life (under Entertainment-->Sports), not Category:North America, which is where it is now?"
-- Mwanner 18:03, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
SimonP has gone over the entire Commonwealth of Nations country articles deleting the box for the Commonwealth and others, leaving only the 'Countries in Continent' box. This has been met with significant resistance, not least in several entries on his talk page. Is it the policy of this WikiProject to delete multiple boxes - even if they make articles more useful? TreveX talk 02:48, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Could we add "Cuisine of X" to the miscellaneous section? And also can we formulate a convention as to whether it is "X-ish cuisine" or "Cuisine of X" (as those on British cuisine seem to think their way is the only right name)? -- Dmcdevit 03:08, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
from Talk:Canada:
I don't think that adding "Commonwealth of Nations" and "Commonwealth Realm" tempaltes is a good idea. this article is already too long. If we add templates for every major international organization to which Canada belongs, we would really be in trouble: UN, G7/G8, NORAD, Organization of American States, La Francophonie, OECD, NATO, APEC, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, we would quikly be swamped. Comments? Kevintoronto 21:15, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I disagree that these are different.
It may be that the solution is to create a link from the main page to a page entitled "Canada's membership in international organizations", which would be a repository for the numerous templates that could apply, as well as room for text about Canada's role in the various orgs. Kevintoronto 21:57, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
But my point is that they're not really relevant. I'm sorry to be harsh about it, but the Commonwealth is nice talk shop that has little real impact on anything. Once in a while it does some good work by putting pressure on a rogue government, but the UN does that every day. And often, TPLACs like Zimbabwe just ignore the Commonwealth. Oh, the Games are nice, too, but notice how its usually the B-list cities that bid for them, not the ones that can compete for the Olympics?
And the tie to the monarchy is real, but not very relevant in Canada's political structure. When was the last time that Her Majesty had any role in a political issue in Canada? Oh, right, it was never. To the extent that the Crown exerts any influence, it is done by the Governor-General, who is usually someone of whom Her Majesty has never heard until the Canadian Prime Minister informs her whom she is to appoint as G-G.
Finally, the article is not about other countries who might be a C.R. or a member of the C of N. It is about Canada. Your argument about the templates being helpful to people who want to know who are the other CRs or C of N members applies equally to the alphabet soup of other international organizations to which Canada belongs. Therefore, it is an argument for loading this article up with a dozen different templates. If people want to find out who else is a C.R. or a member of the C of N, they can follow the links that are helpfully provided to those articles. Kevintoronto 22:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yuo haven't added any new arguments. These templates duplicate links that already exist in the article to the Queen and the Commonwealth. There is not room for links to all of teh international organizations to which Canada belongs. The Commonwealth is not more important than most of them, and is arguably less important. I think that the proposal made at Template talk:Commonwealth of Nations is a sound one: put the templates for all international orgs on a page entitled "Foreign relations of Canada". Most importantly, you have reached you limit for the Wikipedia:Three revert rule (3RR). This is clearly a contentious change, and I am not the only one who thinks so, so this issue should be decided here before the change is made again. Please do not revert again or action will have to be taken. Kevintoronto 12:42, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:Astrotrain
[Astrotrain] Please stop adding the commonwealth realms template. No one else considers it useful. - SimonP 22:00, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:Jtdirl and
User talk:SimonP
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:Astrotrain
[Astrotrain] please stop adding the extra templates to the country articles. Many of them had four or even five footers. If links to all these countries were actually useful it would take far less room to simply have a link to every single country on one template.
Also note that recently the Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes guidelines were rewritten (not be me) to specifically discourage these sorts of templates after this mailing list discussion. Note speciafically the warning that "multiple boxes are generally considered a blight." - SimonP 16:35, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:TreveX
In regard to you changes to Uganda, multiple boxes may generally be considered a blight but I think they are important for country pages dealing with that kind of information. The benefits for this kind of situation may outweigh the disadvantages. Is this official Wikipedia policy? TreveX talk 23:31, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:Astrotrain
I figure people here might be interested in looking at {{ Mediterranean}} that was added to a bunch of country pages. Also Template talk:Mediterranean. -- Joy [shallot] 17:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Any interest in including ISO (three letter codes) and IOC (Olympic Games) country codes? I have them handy as a side effect of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Flag_Template. ( SEWilco 04:00, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC))
User:Jensboot re-added {{ NATO}} to a bunch of country articles. -- Joy [shallot] 11:43, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Even though we have eliminated the international organization footers, the geographic footers are is some cases still a blight. For countries that are in multiple continents and regions I suggest replacing the general templates with a specific ones listing all the countries that share a continent or region. This gives the exact same ease of linking, but is vastly smaller. For instance see Turkey where I replaced {{ Europe}}, {{ Asia}}, {{ Southwest Asia}}, {{ Middle East}}, and {{ Mediterranean}} with {{ Turkey footer}} - SimonP 19:41, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I've never been involved in any of the debating or edit warring about footer templates; but I notice something disturbing about the policy suggestions given here. In the United Kingdom, a certain segment of the populace feels strong emotional ties to the Commonwealth of Nations; while another segment of the country thinks the first segment is a bunch of reactionary stick-in-the-muds who need to wake up and smell the European Union. In short, there are "Euroskeptics" and "Europhiles"; and the former tend to think of Britain's association with Europe as an "accident of geography" while the latter tend to think of its relationship with the Commonwealth as an "accident of history."
Of course I'm oversimplifying; and being American I'm obviously not associated myself with either of these groups — I'm just trying to point out that they exist. Now it appears that, whatever the wishes of the frequent editors of the UK article may be, the standard suggestions given here on this project page would lead to a UK article including template boxes for BOTH Europe AND the European Union BUT NEITHER the Commonwealth of Nations NOR the Commonwealth Realms where Elizabeth is queen. This seems dangerous to me, as it would seem to give the page a Europhile POV. Now of course if people take the trouble to read the text of the article they'll find links to every relevant page, including all four of these; but the infoboxes are much more eye-catching and visual prominence can be a part of POV. I quite realize that too many footer templates can clutter up a page, so there's certainly no easy solution. And I realize that this subject has been debated ad infinitum; but it seems to me that this very important issue has been overlooked so far. Doops | talk 21:56, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Well. This project does appear to have stalled. We added infoboxes to all countries and converted all soverign countries to use the template, but a lot of colonies' articles are still dreadful - look at British Virgin Islands for example. Lots of sub-articles about Politics of X are still basically copy-and-pastes from the CIA world factbook, which is also appalling, and generally don't get updated.
I've started tagging articles that still have to be reformatted away from CIA style {{CIA}} - which adds them to Category:CIA World Factbook cleanup - as you can see there are a great deal. Suggest we concentrate on main pages for countries and Politics of X first. Morwen - Talk 11:25, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
An edit war has broken out on Malaysia between a couple of users (see Talk:Malaysia). The bottom line is that one user wants to call Malaysia a "middle-income country" while another wants to call Malaysia a "upper-middle-income country". The difference is that the person who is promoting the upper-middle-income country term is following the World Bank definition (which divides into 4 categories - low-income, low-middle-income, upper-middle-income and high-income) while the other is saying that Malaysia belongs in the middle-income category because it falls roughly halfway in the list of nations by GDP per capita. It's a matter of classification - if four categories are used like the World Bank site, Malaysia definitely belongs in the upper-middle-income category while if countries are classified into three categories of low-income, middle-income and high-income, Malaysia fits in the middle-income group. Can we get some consensus on this and apply it to all countries thereafter? Alex.tan 01:25, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
The article on Brunei is nominated to be improved on WP:IDRIVE. You can vote for it there, if you would like to see it improved. The nominations History of the Balkans and Culture of Italy may also be of interest to you. -- Fenice 08:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Would anyone mind coming up with a list of government types with me that we can use as the definitive list in articles, barring extraordinary situations? I can suggest the following (at least):
I'm sure others are possible, but I think the list should be kept nice and short so that a familiar format is in all country articles. As always, please continue to implement the Infobox Country template on those articles which have not yet converted over--it is by far superior.-- naryathegreat | (talk) 00:26, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
See this: List of countries by system of government. I'm not sure if all the entries there are correct. I don't believe that Bhutan is an absolute monarchy as they have a PM. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:37, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
Over at Uganda we're getting occasional additions to a section entitled 'Tourism'. This section includes a Uganda link to wikitravel along with several companies offering tours etc. These links may contain useful information but they are nevertheless commercial. Are there any hard and fast rules regarding links to comanies from country pages? Perhaps they should be deleted - we already have a link to the Uganda tourist board website? Would appreciate some advice. TreveX talk 17:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
For current issues regarding the WikiProject Countries, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries.
This project has a consistent standard for country-specific article names (History of_, Culture of_, etc.). Should it be expanded into a Wikipedia-wide guideline? See the discussion and proposal at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics). - Pioneer-12
I have copied this discussion (without amendment) from my talk page. I'll add a few comments at the end.
You might find the following earlier discussion I had with SimonP interesting:
Though, let's not call what he's doing vandalism. It is ill-advised and most probably against WikiRules, but it would be easier to handle him, if we kept it low-key. It's good to have someone helping in the discussion, though. Thanks.
Also, you uploaded the photo of Shagari? Please accept WikiThanks for that, too. I recently started Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board for reasons similar to what you say about smaller countries on your user page. It would be great to work with you on these issues. — iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 02:38, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
The prevailing view at wikiproject countries is that the commonwealth footer is not among those deemed notable enough for inclusion. There was debate over what specifically is notable (e.g. whether nato should be included), but people are not bringing up the case that the commonwealth is notable. We can have more than one footer, but this usually means geographical and EU (or like organizations), not Non-aligned Movement, OECD, APEC, etc. The user who added all these commonwealth footers was a clueless newbie whom I've never dealt with who took absolutely no part on the wikiproject countries discussion. In the abcense of consensus to make a change, it should not be made. This means the commonwealth footer should not be added. In my opinion it is a marginal organization existing for purely symbolic reasons and is not up to the level of the EU for us to consider the relationship among member countries to be close to warrant cross-linking. If you have a different opinion, then please express it at the wikiproject countries talk page. -- Jia ng
A few additional comments:
Importance of the organization needs to be taken into account, but that's not the only consideration. We need to look at how invdividual members of an organization relate to each other. After all, we're trying to justify cross linking here, as opposed to linking to another page ( Commonwealth of Nations or category:commonwealth coutries). If it's just an important organization without cohesiveness, a mention somethere in the article and a categories tag will be all that is needed. I don't think the bonds among members is strong enough to justify this cross-linking.-- Jia ng 00:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I have looked to Google to try to get some rough idea of how important the Commonwealth is to various countries. I searched for several countries and looked at what percentage of the hits also mention the Commonwealth. This includes both Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth countries so that the noise can be filtered out. The exact numbers were generated from 100*(results for: COUNTRY commonwealth -"commonwealth of independent states" -Virginia -Massachusetts)/(results for:COUNTRY). These admittedly very rough numbers show that the importance of the Commonwealth is highly variable, and that it is not surprising that this debate has a person from Nigeria and one from New Zealand on one side and a person from Canada on the other.
Country | Nigeria | New Zealand |
Ethiopia | Kenya | Mali | Fiji | Angola | Pakistan | Indonesia | Ireland | India | Brazil | Thailand | Canada | Japan |
% | 4.67 | 3.99 | 3.11 | 2.53 | 2.21 | 1.85 | 1.54 | 1.46 | 1.25 | 1.13 | 1.11 | 0.96 | 0.86 | 0.78 | 0.67 |
I have made Template:Military and implemented it in all countries with a military beginning letters A,F,Z (i.e. Military of Armenia). For anyone interested, please help out. Try to find national colors for the table. I plan to do this for all other data from the factbook. This should eventually be somehow automated since the data is updated each year and adding them in is tedious. -- Jiang 12:36, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)
I noticed a recent trend to take the infoboxes out of country articles and place them in the Template namespace (see e.g. Japan, Germany, Italy). I condsider this a Bad Thing because:
Can anyone clue me in as to why this is being done? Was this ever discussed anywhere? -- uriber 19:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
(and sorry for posting in the misc. section. I wasn't sure if this is a policy, a technical issue, a suggestion (to undo these changes), or something else). -- uriber 19:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So it seems like most people are against this. I did not see the "[edit]" link until JS pointed it out, and it seems like it's only there on some of the templates, and not always at the same place - so it's easily missed. User:Evil Monkey's comment confirms that the templates make editing more difficult. Doing so on purpose violates the spirit of Wikipedia (even if it happens to be a convinent way to baffle anonymous editors). I'll start re-merging the infoboxes into the articles on countries I come across. You're welcome to join. -- uriber 19:54, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I just want to add my opinion here. I agree with having the country tables in a separate page. This makes editing the country articles (as another user here pointed out) less alienating for newbies, and removes the clutter that these tables add to a separate page. Plus these tables can be easily edited by clicking the edit link at the bottom. — Cantus… ☎ 01:41, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
I moved the infobox in the Croatia article out back in June 2004, because I am pretty sure it scares a lot of users to see the table syntax. I haven't heard any good reasons against doing it. Let's look at Uribers argumentation.
Instead of changing back and forth we should discuss this issue and come to a conclusion. Maybe I will convince some of the points for making templates out of frightening big tables, maybe you will convince me, why this is a bad thing, so let's see your counterarguments. (Shall we move this discussion somewhere? The Village Pump is a rather lively place for such a discussion) -- denny vrandečić (hp) (talk) 13:42, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)
There is another possibility: The layout should be in the template. The data should be in the article, along the lines of
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#person_template. And it will be machine readable (easily parseable)!
I'm seeing various almost-revert-wars going on with various countries (Sweden and Netherlands come to mind). To my mind, using a 'template' which will only be used the once is not the purpose of a template which should, surely, be something created for *multiple* use. Leave the data where it is appropriate and editable - on the country page. However ... one option could be to make a /infobox' subpage to the country article and place the infobox in there so that it can still be linked-in as a template but not kept away in the template space. Might solve the arguments? -- Vamp: Willow 01:11, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I think that using a template works well and removes most of the formatting from the article, making it harder for new or less experienced users to screw up the table. But at the same time these templates should be using parameters editable from the article to make updating data fast and simple. People shouldn't ever have to edit the templates themselves unless a new type of data or formatting changes are needed. All data which may change from year to year should be parameterized. — Mike 02:05, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
When the infobox at Iceland was first moved to the template I was not really sure what to think about that, it seemed to make editing and watching harder. Then I added the template to my watchlist as well as the article and it was not painful at all! This huge issue that had been causing me sleep deprivation for several days vanished. Now I like the template solution and in my mind it makes the ARTICLE easier to edit and that is the real issue here. The infobox contains only standard information that either does not change at all or requires only annual updates, it is far more important to make the article itself easier to edit and removing all this scary table code from the top is a way to do that. It is both less intimidating for newbies and it trims down the size of the article thus making it faster to load, save & preview. I don't know why the original purpose of the templates should matter now, they can also be used for this purpose and why shouldn't they? This needs to be resolved soon to put an end to this very childish edit war. -- Biekko 13:21, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
If these are to be kept, we should keep them as Templates. Subpages in the article namespace are not activated, and don't work the same as subpages elsewhere, and are generally bad form. -- Netoholic @ 14:33, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
This is a complete misuse of the template system (which is for transcluding content across more than one article or page). The argument against using template variables is invalid since you also can have variables for table headings (such as headofstate=). This system is flexible enough so that all the scary wikitable syntax could be on a template page while all the data could be in the article itself (where it should be). Template:Infobox Countries test already has this. This should be applied to a dozen or so articles in order to work out any still-present bugs, and then applied to all other articles in this WikiProject. -- mav 16:23, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't like these either. In the best case, it should be a different page in the article namespace, and that should be included or even better linked. This is an abuse of templates which are meant to be reused in other pages. Dori | Talk 23:07, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
Template:Infobox Country seems to work just fine. -- mav 06:17, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Actually I also see it is as an improvement, and I just used it on Croatia, and it looks nice. It's still a lot of strange looking code, but much better than before. The point I miss is still: why not exporting complex syntaxes out of articles in order to hide them from beginning users? Advanced users will easily be able to edit them anyway, so it's not like hiding it intentionally in order to keep sections unchangeable. It's just for the convenience of users. And the other point: if we had overview articles of the states of a contintent (for example), that would reuse the tables - everything would be fine? -- denny vrandečić (hp) (talk) 13:44, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)
Looks good, and standardization should be a big help. Jayjg | (Talk);;</sup> 22:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
On the Wikipedia:Country infobox vote page I suggested that the Template:Infobox Country could be a good way of implementing country specific template pages, and I've just tried it on Indonesia (I immediately reverted it; see: [1]). I had trouble with multiple times zones and no Daylight saving time; also, Indonesia has a National Ideology: Pancasila Indonesia... which didn't fit in. I also got a footnote tag when I had no footnotes... I like the idea of off loading the infoboxes from the main articles and if the country infobox can be made a little more flexible, I could support its use instead of hard coded tables. Whatever/however, it seems best to move the infoboxes off-page. — Davenbelle 02:57, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
Created New Zealand version using the template, which can be seen at Template:New Zealand infobox. Works well though a couple of niggles:
Other than that I'm surprisingly pleased with how it appears. Evil Monkey → Talk 05:45, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
I just proposed that as Solution D) over on the vote page; a common template (or a few; see Mike, above) would bring a common look to the boxes and allow planet-wide changes by editing the common template, and nesting the templates gets all but a single line off the actual country pages. — Davenbelle 09:30, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC))
I created a North Korea infobox (at
User:Evil Monkey/North Korea infobox). I picked this because I knew it would test the template. I ran into some issues with the leaders. North Korea has a complicated leadership structure with four different leaders that just don't fit nicely into one field. You have:
Secondly if there is no GDP data that part just falls apart with all the template syntax there for everyone to see. I'm not sure if its possible but it would be nice if the template recognised when certain fields aren't being used and didn't render them. Evil Monkey → Talk 21:26, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
Someone has changed fontsize=+1 to big+big for countryname in the box, and started implementing this change.
This is a pity. It doesn't look good. On my screen the lower third of "European Union" is hidden behind the drawn box at the Template:European Union table. This may of course be blamed on errors in the browser, but as I use WindowsXP ("professional"), I'm convinced that a lot of readers use older and much older soft ware. Furthermore, the size of the heading for the box is bigger than the size for the title of the page. That's not really good. / Tuomas 03:32, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
There's a discussion on standardization of country names in titles (at least for categories) on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion which may be of interest. -- Beland 02:27, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The remark on Template talk:Infobox Country about why kings are included under "Politics" helped me put the finger on what I always felt was wrong with our country articles. What one expects under politics is discussion of current political issues in the country, not its form of government. And indeed, all Encarta, Britannica and the CIA factbook keep this information under "Government", not "Politics". Current political issues are usually at the end of "History" sections, since they mostly deal with politics in the past anyway.
We should either rename the section "Government" and move the info on current issues into "History", or preferably have separate "History", "Government" and "Politics" sections. Zocky 18:21, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I see it has already been done in the model, but I do not agree, since in many country government is only about the government and it doesn't include the legislature. Politics is a much more neutral wordm which I would prefer. Gangulf 22:18, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
See also how Politics of Ukraine and Government of Ukraine turned out... I don't like it. -- Joy [shallot]
So far, more or less everybody agrees on this. Should we take action? Zocky 01:21, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
Is anyone interested in a collaboration of the week for different countries, that is, a different country each week? Maurreen 08:56, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Netoholic, I'm waiting a sound argument on why you reverted the order change I made to the Country table. What's wrong with it, etc. Provide sound arguments, please, or you will be reverted again. — Cantus… ☎ 03:26, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
It makes no sense to put the country's Independence and National anthem between the Time zone and Internet TLD. Are we going to require a poll to make this change? This is ridiculous. Nothing can be changed anymore without an idiotic poll. This is common sense! I'm not even talking about the "capitol" and Largest city here. — Cantus… ☎ 04:13, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
Current template Native name(s) |
Netoholic's Native name(s) |
Cantus's (rev. 3) Native name(s) |
Eddi's (rev.) Native name(s) |
Davenbelle's Native name(s) |
Compromise Native name(s) |
My proposed order: (moved into the table)
Please look at the current ordering and tell me if it makes sense to list the Sovereignty events and the National anthem at the end of the table between the Time Zone and the Internet TLD?
Now a question to you, Neto: Why do you oppose this particular ordering? — Cantus… ☎ 04:26, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
Seems like we all agree that Area and downwards are correct. I think that language and anthem should be first, near the national motto and native name, since these are generally "language/spoken" qualities. It feels right to me. Following those two is the government information (anthem near government). Next is the capitol (seat of government) and the largest city, then the Area and Population (which feel right to link closely with the largest city). Basically, this makes every field link somewhat closely to its predecessor. -- Netoholic @ 20:15, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
I am fine with either your current version or mine. So long as those two city fields are right next to each other. Cantus? Anyone else? -- Netoholic @ 22:12, 2005 Feb 7 (UTC)
Not that the question where to put Language in the box is that very important, but as I see it, languages are connected to
nations, which in a way is biasing and taking a nation-centered view for granted, but given that this is fairly common among the expected readership, maybe it's best to give the customer what the customer is the most interested in and put the languages on top (i.e. follow Netoholic's proposal).
--
Ruhrjung 16:24, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I added the current template to the table for comparison, and included the native name, flag, coat of arms, and location map for completeness. (Cantus and Netoholic, please see if your proposals are represented correctly.) I further differentiated the colour codes – language, anthem, capital, cities, government, sovereignty, and religion. Finally I changed back to my original proposal, placing the capital and largest city next to the location map. Now your two proposals actually differ less than mine, except regarding the juxtaposition of the capital and cities. -- Eddi (Talk) 16:10, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
The reason I list the largest cities separated from the capital is because I'm putting together everything that's official to the state at the top, then everything that is not, in order of importance. Seems logical to me. — Cantus… ☎ 04:09, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Eddi - Ruhrjung and Zocky seem to both be leaning towards my suggested order (at least in keeping languages and anthem near the top). Do you have any major objection? -- Netoholic @ 17:01, 2005 Feb 10 (UTC)
My two cents; I think that Cantus' version is better than the others in terms of order of fields. I would like to see the 'official' part of language pushed to the right column for countries where there is an official language and the word omitted from countries that have no official policy on language; same with 'state' religion (which I would prefer be omitted entirely). I also feel that national mottos and coats of arms should be omitted; what's next? National Flowers? Largest city should also be omitted, maybe with a right-column note for some countries. Oh, TLD should be last, too. — Davenbelle 18:35, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)
Getting the fields that are passed from the country pages as parameters is something that had better be sorted out before too many more instances of the template are invoked. As more articles are converted to use the parameterized template, the harder it gets to change them; ask Cantus. Deferring discussion will only serve to cement the current implementation in place. — Davenbelle 04:51, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)
It's been quiet here for a couple of days (or is it just the weekend?), so I thought I'd suggest a compromise. It seems like the majority wants the following:
Does this look like a solution? It is quite similar to all of the suggestions, but not identical to any of them, so everyone would give and take. -- Eddi (Talk) 02:12, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Switching the TLD and calling code in the compromise, the "difference count" becomes Current:3, Netoholic:2, Cantus:3, Eddi:3, and Davenbelle:2. If nothing better is proposed at this time, I suggest we implement the order of the compromise. -- Eddi (Talk) 20:07, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Can you please explain why you have implemented your own suggestion and paid no respect to the other suggestions? Thank you. -- Eddi (Talk) 20:46, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think I've made a few attempts during the years to shorten down the history section of that article and move the more detailed content to
History of Germany and other articles. My main reason to do so was (and is) that I hold the guideline on this point to be reasonable. However, this task is not very fun - it's much more fun to do the opposite - which has turned out to be one of the basic flaws of Wikipedia. ;-(
--
Ruhrjung 16:18, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I propose that the ISBN book identifier is added to each country as part of Infobox Country, as a part of it is specific for a country where the monograph was issued. See also: Wikipedia:Book sources and Numerical List of Group Identifiers by Country. -- Eleassar777 09:58, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
How do the holidays fit in? In Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Status, India is listed as not having a holiday table. But there is a holiday page in the ==See also== section. There are only three national holidays in India. The rest are determined by each state. = Nichalp ( talk · contribs)= 18:23, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
The template Template:MicrostatesE ("European Microstates") isn't used and thus its usefulness is doubtful. After reading some earlier discussion I guess some people here would like to delete it. It might be an interesting addition to the articles, but there is a similar category already. I'm not aware of any large-scale co-operation between the microstates. If others don't want to apply this template, I'll list it on Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion after a while (that is, if somebody doesn't list it before me). Wipe 16:25, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Update: it's now
there for voting.
Wipe
03:28, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
Update 2: it was deleted with about 4 votes to delete, 1 to keep.
Wipe
23:50, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
Shouldn't the facts tables include info on religions and ethnic groups? These are included in other reference sites, such as Infoplease (which does a spectacular job), and I think they are vitally important pieces of information.
I know the facts table is pretty large how it is. Perhaps a small infobox could be put in the demographics section? Some country articles do this already, but the formatting is inconsistent. See Romania, Estonia, Hungary, etc. - Pioneer-12 01:23, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Surely there should be a WikiProject Geography, for issues that transcend countries, cities, etc.?
What made me discover its absence is wanting to find a place to ask the following question:
"Surely the Category:North American national football teams belongs under Category:Personal life (under Entertainment-->Sports), not Category:North America, which is where it is now?"
-- Mwanner 18:03, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)
SimonP has gone over the entire Commonwealth of Nations country articles deleting the box for the Commonwealth and others, leaving only the 'Countries in Continent' box. This has been met with significant resistance, not least in several entries on his talk page. Is it the policy of this WikiProject to delete multiple boxes - even if they make articles more useful? TreveX talk 02:48, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Could we add "Cuisine of X" to the miscellaneous section? And also can we formulate a convention as to whether it is "X-ish cuisine" or "Cuisine of X" (as those on British cuisine seem to think their way is the only right name)? -- Dmcdevit 03:08, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
from Talk:Canada:
I don't think that adding "Commonwealth of Nations" and "Commonwealth Realm" tempaltes is a good idea. this article is already too long. If we add templates for every major international organization to which Canada belongs, we would really be in trouble: UN, G7/G8, NORAD, Organization of American States, La Francophonie, OECD, NATO, APEC, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, we would quikly be swamped. Comments? Kevintoronto 21:15, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I disagree that these are different.
It may be that the solution is to create a link from the main page to a page entitled "Canada's membership in international organizations", which would be a repository for the numerous templates that could apply, as well as room for text about Canada's role in the various orgs. Kevintoronto 21:57, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
But my point is that they're not really relevant. I'm sorry to be harsh about it, but the Commonwealth is nice talk shop that has little real impact on anything. Once in a while it does some good work by putting pressure on a rogue government, but the UN does that every day. And often, TPLACs like Zimbabwe just ignore the Commonwealth. Oh, the Games are nice, too, but notice how its usually the B-list cities that bid for them, not the ones that can compete for the Olympics?
And the tie to the monarchy is real, but not very relevant in Canada's political structure. When was the last time that Her Majesty had any role in a political issue in Canada? Oh, right, it was never. To the extent that the Crown exerts any influence, it is done by the Governor-General, who is usually someone of whom Her Majesty has never heard until the Canadian Prime Minister informs her whom she is to appoint as G-G.
Finally, the article is not about other countries who might be a C.R. or a member of the C of N. It is about Canada. Your argument about the templates being helpful to people who want to know who are the other CRs or C of N members applies equally to the alphabet soup of other international organizations to which Canada belongs. Therefore, it is an argument for loading this article up with a dozen different templates. If people want to find out who else is a C.R. or a member of the C of N, they can follow the links that are helpfully provided to those articles. Kevintoronto 22:11, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yuo haven't added any new arguments. These templates duplicate links that already exist in the article to the Queen and the Commonwealth. There is not room for links to all of teh international organizations to which Canada belongs. The Commonwealth is not more important than most of them, and is arguably less important. I think that the proposal made at Template talk:Commonwealth of Nations is a sound one: put the templates for all international orgs on a page entitled "Foreign relations of Canada". Most importantly, you have reached you limit for the Wikipedia:Three revert rule (3RR). This is clearly a contentious change, and I am not the only one who thinks so, so this issue should be decided here before the change is made again. Please do not revert again or action will have to be taken. Kevintoronto 12:42, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:Astrotrain
[Astrotrain] Please stop adding the commonwealth realms template. No one else considers it useful. - SimonP 22:00, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:Jtdirl and
User talk:SimonP
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:Astrotrain
[Astrotrain] please stop adding the extra templates to the country articles. Many of them had four or even five footers. If links to all these countries were actually useful it would take far less room to simply have a link to every single country on one template.
Also note that recently the Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes guidelines were rewritten (not be me) to specifically discourage these sorts of templates after this mailing list discussion. Note speciafically the warning that "multiple boxes are generally considered a blight." - SimonP 16:35, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:TreveX
In regard to you changes to Uganda, multiple boxes may generally be considered a blight but I think they are important for country pages dealing with that kind of information. The benefits for this kind of situation may outweigh the disadvantages. Is this official Wikipedia policy? TreveX talk 23:31, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
from
User talk:SimonP and
User talk:Astrotrain
I figure people here might be interested in looking at {{ Mediterranean}} that was added to a bunch of country pages. Also Template talk:Mediterranean. -- Joy [shallot] 17:18, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Any interest in including ISO (three letter codes) and IOC (Olympic Games) country codes? I have them handy as a side effect of Wikipedia:WikiProject_Flag_Template. ( SEWilco 04:00, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC))
User:Jensboot re-added {{ NATO}} to a bunch of country articles. -- Joy [shallot] 11:43, 13 July 2005 (UTC)
Even though we have eliminated the international organization footers, the geographic footers are is some cases still a blight. For countries that are in multiple continents and regions I suggest replacing the general templates with a specific ones listing all the countries that share a continent or region. This gives the exact same ease of linking, but is vastly smaller. For instance see Turkey where I replaced {{ Europe}}, {{ Asia}}, {{ Southwest Asia}}, {{ Middle East}}, and {{ Mediterranean}} with {{ Turkey footer}} - SimonP 19:41, July 16, 2005 (UTC)
Hi. I've never been involved in any of the debating or edit warring about footer templates; but I notice something disturbing about the policy suggestions given here. In the United Kingdom, a certain segment of the populace feels strong emotional ties to the Commonwealth of Nations; while another segment of the country thinks the first segment is a bunch of reactionary stick-in-the-muds who need to wake up and smell the European Union. In short, there are "Euroskeptics" and "Europhiles"; and the former tend to think of Britain's association with Europe as an "accident of geography" while the latter tend to think of its relationship with the Commonwealth as an "accident of history."
Of course I'm oversimplifying; and being American I'm obviously not associated myself with either of these groups — I'm just trying to point out that they exist. Now it appears that, whatever the wishes of the frequent editors of the UK article may be, the standard suggestions given here on this project page would lead to a UK article including template boxes for BOTH Europe AND the European Union BUT NEITHER the Commonwealth of Nations NOR the Commonwealth Realms where Elizabeth is queen. This seems dangerous to me, as it would seem to give the page a Europhile POV. Now of course if people take the trouble to read the text of the article they'll find links to every relevant page, including all four of these; but the infoboxes are much more eye-catching and visual prominence can be a part of POV. I quite realize that too many footer templates can clutter up a page, so there's certainly no easy solution. And I realize that this subject has been debated ad infinitum; but it seems to me that this very important issue has been overlooked so far. Doops | talk 21:56, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Well. This project does appear to have stalled. We added infoboxes to all countries and converted all soverign countries to use the template, but a lot of colonies' articles are still dreadful - look at British Virgin Islands for example. Lots of sub-articles about Politics of X are still basically copy-and-pastes from the CIA world factbook, which is also appalling, and generally don't get updated.
I've started tagging articles that still have to be reformatted away from CIA style {{CIA}} - which adds them to Category:CIA World Factbook cleanup - as you can see there are a great deal. Suggest we concentrate on main pages for countries and Politics of X first. Morwen - Talk 11:25, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
An edit war has broken out on Malaysia between a couple of users (see Talk:Malaysia). The bottom line is that one user wants to call Malaysia a "middle-income country" while another wants to call Malaysia a "upper-middle-income country". The difference is that the person who is promoting the upper-middle-income country term is following the World Bank definition (which divides into 4 categories - low-income, low-middle-income, upper-middle-income and high-income) while the other is saying that Malaysia belongs in the middle-income category because it falls roughly halfway in the list of nations by GDP per capita. It's a matter of classification - if four categories are used like the World Bank site, Malaysia definitely belongs in the upper-middle-income category while if countries are classified into three categories of low-income, middle-income and high-income, Malaysia fits in the middle-income group. Can we get some consensus on this and apply it to all countries thereafter? Alex.tan 01:25, July 29, 2005 (UTC)
The article on Brunei is nominated to be improved on WP:IDRIVE. You can vote for it there, if you would like to see it improved. The nominations History of the Balkans and Culture of Italy may also be of interest to you. -- Fenice 08:25, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Would anyone mind coming up with a list of government types with me that we can use as the definitive list in articles, barring extraordinary situations? I can suggest the following (at least):
I'm sure others are possible, but I think the list should be kept nice and short so that a familiar format is in all country articles. As always, please continue to implement the Infobox Country template on those articles which have not yet converted over--it is by far superior.-- naryathegreat | (talk) 00:26, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
See this: List of countries by system of government. I'm not sure if all the entries there are correct. I don't believe that Bhutan is an absolute monarchy as they have a PM. =Nichalp «Talk»= 06:37, August 13, 2005 (UTC)
Over at Uganda we're getting occasional additions to a section entitled 'Tourism'. This section includes a Uganda link to wikitravel along with several companies offering tours etc. These links may contain useful information but they are nevertheless commercial. Are there any hard and fast rules regarding links to comanies from country pages? Perhaps they should be deleted - we already have a link to the Uganda tourist board website? Would appreciate some advice. TreveX talk 17:10, 18 August 2005 (UTC)