Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Archive 14

I fixed a SYNTH problem in the tables at List of counties of Kenya by GDP and at List of Swedish counties by GDP, but the same problem appears to exist in at least another dozen hundred two hundred articles that I am aware of, and I'd like assistance in fixing them. All of these articles contain a table of demographic data broken down by county or region, along with a column labeled, "Equivalent country" or "Comparable country", where the GDP (or HDI) of a given region or county is compared with the figure of some other country in the world. For example, in the "Sweden" article, the county of "Stockholm" was compared to the Dominican Republic, as the two apparently have a similar GDP. However, this country-comparison column is WP:Original research, because no source contains this comparison; it is an invention of the Wikipedia editor who added the column.

An excerpt of a few rows from the table in the "Sweden" article before it was fixed will illustrate the problem:

More information Excerpt of SYNTH data from "List of Swedish counties by GDP" rev. 1075211592, Rank ...

Excerpt of SYNTH data from "List of Swedish counties by GDP" rev. 1075211592

The following is an excerpt of section "List of Counties by GDP" from revision 1075211592 of List of Swedish counties by GDP: List of Counties by GDP Counties by GDP in 2015 according to data by the OECD.[1] Rank County GDP in mil SEK GDP in mil USD (PPP) Equivalent country[2] 1 Stockholm 1,340,350 149,771  Dominican Republic 2 Västra Götaland 711,221 79,472  Costa Rica 3 Skåne 478,497 53,468  Cambodia 4 Östergötland 166,511 18,606  Haiti 5 Uppsala 142,126 15,881  Malta (16 more rows like these...)  Sweden 4,199,860 469,296  Singapore References [1] Regions and Cities > Regional Statistics > Regional Economy > Regional GDP per Capita, OECD.Stats. Accessed on 16 November 2018. [2] "GDP, PPP (current international $) | Data". data.worldbank.org. Retrieved 2018-11-17.

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I'm aware of similar SYNTH problems in the tables at the following articles:

Any assistance would be appreciated. (Normally, I use Kephir's handy table editing gadget for column editing, but for some reason, the icons didn't appear in my editing toolbar; at least, not for the two articles I fixed, so I used regex replace instead.) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:14, 13 July 2022 (UTC) updated by Mathglot (talk) 20:48, 13 July 2022 (UTC) and 04:29, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Any way to get a bot involved here? The list keeps growing, and I don't know where the end is. Mathglot (talk) 21:11, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

If you can regex it out, why not JWB it? — Guarapiranga ☎ 03:59, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, that sounds like a good idea. I don't have AWB perms so I can't use it right away, but I can still use my offline regex engine. It's just a bit tedious, and it's a bit too much for me right now. I'll do a handful of them. Mathglot (talk) 06:28, 14 July 2022 (UTC) Fixed ten more. Mathglot (talk) 06:52, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Area, GNP, and other metrics are probably as problematic. Iterresise (talk) 23:16, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot, removing a column from a table takes about three clicks in the visual editor. If you're still working on this, I suggest trying it out. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:02, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I haven't used it, but that would be an excellent reason to try. I've honed a regex, but three clicks would still be easier, as I have to cut-and-paste back and forth from the regex editor. Thanks for the tip! Mathglot (talk) 00:08, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

The visual editor is also handy for rearranging table columns, which is IMO a nightmare task in raw wikitext.

The process is simple: Open in the visual editor. Click on the some part of the column you're deleting. Notice that it highlights the column at the top, with a small arrow pointing down (like a "v"). Click that arrow to see the column operations menu. Click the red "Delete column" item. Publish page. You're done. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:54, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes, definitely faster than my method (and more reliable; I sometimes have to tweak the regex because of different row styling, or white space differences, etc, and VE seems to handle the variation). Thanks again, Mathglot (talk) 01:57, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm plodding through this, doing about five table repairs every other day or so, but every once in a while, I find more articles with this issue. Most of the ones I know about are fixed, now, and the rest should be fixed within the week. At this point, where I need the most help is in finding more articles with this problem, because I've been confining my search mostly to articles which begin, "List of..." in the title, but they don't all follow that pattern, and more keep popping up and I don't really know the true scope of the problem. The worksheet is here.^{[relative link]} Mathglot (talk) 22:57, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

 Done. I'm calling this done for now. The list of 210 articles^{[relative link]} that had problems have been repaired, and all the search queries^{[relative link]} for articles with this type of problem come up empty now, as they should. (Empty search results is not a guarantee that the problem has been resolved, in particular, it wouldn't find articles like #201–210, but it's but a strong indicator that most of them are fixed.) Mathglot (talk) 03:00, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

For more than a year, there have been issue that sources on Brunei may be unreliable. Can someone check and remove unnecessary one? MarcusTraianus (talk) 18:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Could anyone help look into this? I notice most if not all such territories with inhabitants are covered by this WikiProject according to the talk pages of those countries and according to this list yet there are editors who kept forcing their own way through. 1.36.63.143 (talk) 12:20, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're requesting for here. If there is a content dispute on a particular page, the best place to address that is on the relevant article talkpage. CMD (talk) 16:45, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

I think you won't be unfamiliar with this. This isn't a dispute just about a particular article. It involves many articles that involve these territories, and that's why it's brought here. A WikiProject works much better from a broader point of view. On the other hand if in case you may have overlooked most of the time this is addressed on the relevant articles' talk pages, on and off by many different editors. 1.36.63.143 (talk) 13:38, 10 September 2022 (UTC)

Any input would be great Talk:Turkey#Turkey authoritarian dictatorship Moxy- 15:22, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Turkey#RFC about authoritarianism and democratic backsliding Moxy- 19:43, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Switzerland has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 03:46, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Croatia has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Artem.G (talk) 19:02, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi everyone. A little while ago, I went ahead and created my first (non-redirect) article. Here it is! :)) Please take a look. I really hope you like the idea.

I did a lot of research/reading before creating it (and need to do more) :) I know the article is still in its infancy, I need to improve it: I've collected tons of references I need to add, I haven't added most of the autonomous areas to the list yet and I need to better some descriptions etc. Any help and cooperation would be highly appreciated <3

So, the idea is to have at hand a list of all the actual (de facto) political entities in the world which also have a permanent population, from the top to the lowest level. In a way, a list that represent the actuality as it exists on the ground, rather than who recognises whom. I think this is especially helpful when working with (or gathering) statistical data from around the world regarding populations, such as data on pandemic statistics, linguistic or sociological data etc.

I organised the entities in six categories, based on how they were categorised in most of the other list articles in the WP (as well as in other independent sources). De facto sovereign states in two categories (1-2). The middle category proto-states (3) Dependent territories and autonomous areas (4-5). And the complex cases, the special territories (6).

I originally thought of calling the article List of de facto entities, but thought that it could be too vague. List of de facto inhabited sovereign states, dependencies and autonomous areas would also be too long. But you get the idea.

I know that there are many articles that list countries and dependencies. But they come with their sovereignty disputes and other legal issues in detail. Their focus is legality and categorisation mostly relies on it. In this article, important legal details should obviously be mentioned; I started adding them through annotations (efn). However, the focus of this article is rather what is, the actuality on the ground. For example, if ISIS were still a de facto proto-state, I would include it in the list under that category, while the autonomous city of Buenos Aires won't be included under the autonomous areas category, as it is only nominally so.

PS. Normally I edit in the areas of languages, linguistics, culture & history, also of molecular biology and genetics and related sciences. So, this is quite outside my area of expertise. I would really appreciate any enthusiastic contributors that likes the idea :) --Universal Life (talk) 22:11, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Guys, I've moved the page to List of countries and inhabited areas (the wording in the previous title de facto autonomous states was easily misunderstable only as states with limited recognition while I had meant all countries that actually have de facto autonomy, regardless of their de jure status). --Universal Life (talk) 11:28, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

According to WP:COUNTRYCHARTS "As prose text is preferred overly detailed... historical population charts... should be reserved for main sub articles on the topic."

I think historical population charts can be kept to a high level of detail and are not overly detailed. Displaying the historical population for states in 10 or 20 year increments allows for a very brief overview of many aspects of a population such as population boom and declines. I often look first to the overall population history, then start to read the prose about what was happening during those boom or declines.

I am not sure if this is the right way to start a discussion on this topic, but I would to petition to remove "historical population charts" from WP:COUNTRYCHARTS list of charts that should be delegated to a main sub article. Perhaps an enforcement of a certain granularity (ie 10/20/50 year increments) in order to prevent overly long historical population charts. Tyrfenrir (talk) 05:16, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Historical population data Is worthless without context and a summary article is not really the place to write about decades of data WP:DETAIL. Raw data is simply not what we are looking for as it explains nothing WP:NOTSTATS. Moxy- 13:56, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your response.

Is there any high level of historical data that you would accept? It shows so much information and is one of my favorite parts of checking on places, I would be sad to see it hidden from main Wikipedia pages. I understand you disagree, but was hoping we could find a compromise. I agree with you about WP:DETAIL, especially that "Many readers need just a quick summary of the topic's most important points (lead section)." And this is actually why I really like the historical population summaries as they are so much easier to skim vs a paragraph of prose. Is there a limited version of the historical population summary that you would find acceptable?

I noticed that some countries like USA have these historical populations while others like Germany do not.

Also, you seem very knowledgeable about Wikipedia, so apologies for the basic question, but who ultimately decides this? Tyrfenrir (talk) 08:56, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Historical population is a really tricky topic. Anything before the Second World War and your data is patchy at best. Even today, with today's non-historical populations, we sometimes just don't know. Any historical population chart is going to running with a huge amount of caveats. This is of course, before you even get to the "what is a country" aspect of the issue. Land and political continuity can diverge greatly. Any such deviations and you're looking at even more caveats and guesses. CMD (talk) 09:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

You will find a few low quility articles do have them..but an article that is FA or GA level will not. Moxy- 13:11, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Ministry of Foreign Affairs#Requested move 16 February 2023 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. UtherSRG (talk) 12:20, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello! Bonjour ! I would like to know if there's a country without a Wikipedia page or one that needs work. If so, could you send me a link? Thank you! Merci ! ThatADHDperson (talk) 22:12, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Every country has a Wikipedia page. Most of them need work, for example any from Category:C-Class country articles likely need some care and attention. CMD (talk) 00:12, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! ThatADHDperson (talk) 17:04, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

As per the policies of Wikipedia as noted on WP:LEAD, leads should have no more than 4 paragraphs - or 5 if absolutely necessary in some very big articles. Unfortunately a large number of country articles exist where this rule is violated. Not only does it go against the site policy but the quality in the lead is reduced with it. It overpopulates the lead with too much information and does not look good. I have also seen some examples of country articles with more paragraphs than permitted of which some of the paragraphs are quite short, in some cases even one sentence.

I have made efforts to fix it on some articles such as Eswatini, Senegal and Turkmenistan. But this is not something I can do alone of course. I want members here to acknowledge this problem that exists so that we can fix these, improve the quality, and prevent from happening in the future. A good way to do this is by:

• Merging two short paragraphs especially if they can be related quite well (e.g. about current government and current human rights/issues)
• Removing trivial information that isn't of much use in a lead (for example in Kenya I removed a short sentence "Other important urban centres include X and Y" in the first paragraph - after already mentioning the capital and 2nd largest city - totally unnecessary to have in the lead and just overpopulates it)
• Having a good structure where for example 1st paragraph talks about size/borders/cities, 2nd about history, 3rd about culture/government etc - not necessarily in this format or order, but at least a good structure that works best for that article, because I have come across articles that have a poorly laid out structure, for example where a single topic is mentioned in multiple paragraphs
• Putting a hidden comment at the bottom of the lead as I've done in some articles like Eswatini, just so editors are aware of the site rule to have no more than a max of 4 paragraphs - and this helps with preventing the problem from happening again in the future by future editors

We can all help improve the quality of country articles if we do this. WR 17:43, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC on using maps and charts in Wikipedia articles. Rschen7754 15:34, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

The RFC, now at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Using maps as sources, has questions related to notability. --Rschen7754 06:12, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

There are two problematic points in the countries' lead. 1. Many times the term "highly developed country" is problematic, so for example, can Italy which only ranks 30th in the HDI index, be classified as "highly developed" probably not, and besides, it creates confusion because countries with better HDI or GDP per capita performance are not defined As such, in my opinion, only the first 20th countries in the HDI index should be automatically classified as "highly developed". 2. The second and more problematic thing is about the ranking and performance of the countries in different indexes, so for example in Poland or Greece it is mentioned that the countries have a "high standard of living" but without a source and also many times the sources are not reliable. In my opinion, it should be decided that in the lead of each country only the GDP/GDP per capita and the HDI data should be mentioned. The mention of all other data is misleading and creates confusion. Qplb191 (talk) 15:06, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

There isn't really a standard for such things, they are best discussed on the individual talkpages. CMD (talk) 22:44, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I see you have randomly decided to make edits all across various country pages based on your self declared WP:POV criteria of top 20, thus you have just self declared an assertion WP:ASSERT that you cannot backup with objective criteria.

I suggest you revert those edits and get consensus beforehand instead or use a more objective criteria such as if the Human Development index for a country is above 0.90, which it is in fact for those countries that you have edited out and which would be commonly considered highly developed.

Using this is a criteria objectively better as it judges the country individually in its development. Thus a country can be highly developed, even if it’s not in your artificial “only the top 20 countries are highly”, which limits countries relative to each other instead of individually against an objective standard. Raladic (talk) 15:11, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

• To add to this, within the infoxbox for countries Template:Infobox country, the HDI has an automatic classification based on its value, not relative to other countries but just against the index and considers >0.7999 to be "very high".

So if you disagree with this, please take it up at the template talk page. Raladic (talk) 15:19, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The term "highly" is problematic. In the HDI report there are 66 countries that are classified with "very high" human development, but certainly the standard of living in Thailand is not comparable to that of Iceland. Today the HDI and GDP per capita are the most common and also the most reliable indicators for standard of living/development of countries. Spain for example has much lower GDP per capita than the average in the EU/OECD so to write that it is “highly developed” while other countries with better performance are not it’s very problematic as well. Qplb191 (talk) 13:49, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

There are tons and tons of articles in books, newspapers and online that definitely class countries like Spain and Austria as highly developed, as they objectively are.

The fact that some other countries that may rank higher on one index are not currently using the term on their article page doesn't invalidate that and the development of a country should not be dependent on its relative ranking to others, it should be dependent on objective criteria against some specific prosperity measures (which is for example what the HDI criteria are).

So, while I agree that maybe the current classification of "very high" on the Template criteria by itself may not be enough for some countries and maybe should be increased, you should take that up on the Template discussion.

You could also look at the combined criteria for developed on the Developed country article page, specifically the Developed Country#Comparative table (2022) which combines them based on the objective criteria of each of the indices tracked, by that measure there would be 36 countries that fulfill all four criteria and looking at the list, most would agree all of those countries are highly developed nations.

So maybe as an objective criterion on when it is okay to use the term "highly developed country", using this combined Venn diagram table could be a better measure as it judges each country individually against a (combined) objective set of criteria set out by some of the biggest organizations on the planet (UN, IMF, WB) that rank countries. Raladic (talk) 14:43, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

This is not quite accurate, Spain is undoubtedly a developed country, but its GDP per capita is significantly lower than the EU/OECD average, so defining it as highly developed is generally incorrect. The term “highly “refers to developed and particularly rich countries such as Iceland, Sweden, Norway, etc... Although it is a gray area and cannot really be defined, regarding Austria it would be much more correct to write "Austria has the 17th highest GDP per capita in the world with a high standard of living, is ranked 25th in the Human Development Index” Rather than writing it as one of the countries with the highest standard of living in the world it’s just would be much more accurate .. Qplb191 (talk) 15:15, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

"Highly developed" is a bit of an editorialization - none of the datasets referenced actually say this. The IMF resigns itself to simply characterizing countries as either developed or emerging. Very high equally HDI doesn't mean 'highly developed country', and the HDI report never claims it - it never even uses the phrase 'highly developed'; very high HDI just means very high HDI, no more, no less. Grading development levels is a statistical gray area fraught with challenges. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:25, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

True, but today the two most common and useful indicators of development/standard of living in different countries are GDP per capita or HDI; the most commonly used is GDP per capita. In my opinion, the term "highly" should simply be deleted, it doesn't really mean anything and is difficult to define. Qplb191 (talk) 20:09, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I said "highly developed" is editorialization, which is a pejorative in Wikipedia terms, see MOS:EDITORIAL, so not sure what you're disagreeing with. But please don't consider GDP per capita as a good metric of anything; it's a terrible one. It's a simple average of a rough estimate of productivity divided by population without any account made of where wealth is generated or concentrated, where it ends up, whether it is well distributed and what the rich-poor disparity is. It is an extremely crude measure by any standard and grossly favors nations with profitable extractive industries, such as the Gulf nations. If one were to misguidedly measure 'development' by GDP per capita, one might assume Qatar was the fourth most developed country in the world basically because of its gas sales ... that should really be enough said. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:42, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that the term "highly" should be deleted, without a doubt. Regarding GDP per capita ,today GDP per capita is almost the only and most common indicator used to measure the development/standards of living of various countries, whether it is accurate or not. Qplb191 (talk) 20:52, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Who says it is the "only and most common indicator" of development/standard of living? It is one of many, and, as mentioned, a demonstrably flawed one. GDP per capita (PPP) is marginally better, but marginally is the word. This is almost why the HDI was created: to create a broader indicator, but as it itself admits: "The HDI simplifies and captures only part of what human development entails. It does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc." For that the UN defers to its HDRO reports Iskandar323 (talk) 08:50, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

You are right , I also think that GDP per capita and even GDP PPP per capita are not accurate but they are the most frequently used today… Qplb191 (talk) 10:25, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Not to concerned about the removal of a puff word or two like "highly" ...but can we get all involved to research terms, phrases and relevance used in the academic community pls.....like a Jstor seach..that would lead to something like Lind, Niels (2019). "A Development of the Human Development Index". Social Indicators Research. 146 (3). Springer: 409–423. ISSN 0303-8300. JSTOR 48704905. Ranking is a primary objective of the HDI, especially among the very highly developed countries where careful ranking seems most important. Moxy- 15:06, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 13:51, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Please see my comments on this talk page, thanks. Titus Gold (talk) 14:01, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be an appropriate category for constituent countries of sovereign states, which are typically autonomous/semi-autonomous e.g Scotland, Wales, Greenland, Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten. (I made Category:Constituent country, but this seems about to be deleted.)

Is there room for an appropriate category for these countries? If so, what would it be? Titus Gold (talk) 14:06, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

There are a lot of list articles with tables full of demographic data based on GDP and so on, and they generally converted currency figures to US dollars as a standard for comparability, and for column sorting.

I noticed that editors at List of cities by GDP were doing their own currency conversions to calculate US dollar values from other currencies, and also doing their own per-capita GDP calculations in the table rows, but this is error-prone both for calculation mistakes, as well as pulling the wrong currency conversion factor, or in the case of different editors using conversion factors from different sources, which makes values in different table rows incomparable. Templates {{To USD}} and {{To USD round}} are available for converting a GDP or other currency figure into US dollars, and these should be used rather than editors pulling their own figures and doing the conversion themselves. When I searched around for a template for per capita calculations, I was surprised to see that there wasn't one.

So I created template {{Per capita}}. Please use it, and if you find any problems with it or if there's anything that isn't clear in the documentation, please raise a discussion at Template talk:Per capita. Same thing, if you have an enhancement to propose. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:50, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Perfect. ......thank you. Moxy- 23:13, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

We have a mass of new editors ( yes perhaps a puppet but I think it's best we know who they are ). The article has been overwhelmed (Edits in the past 30 days 438) with mass copy pasting, addition of subpar sources and changes of neutral to non-neutral content. This has caused mass edit warning, multiple ongoing talks with walls of text, lots of POVs with very few sources. Just need more eyes on these new editors and perhaps some guidance. The article has grown by 1/8 in 5 months with edits related more to WP:Main article fixation over WP:Summary. Will also bring this up in wiki chat. Let's refrain from blocks and put our efforts into education of the editors. Moxy- 02:49, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

Wondering if locking the page up till the 7 ongoing talks (with related edit wars) is over is best. Moxy- 20:04, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

We are discussing a proposal to refactor the guidelines for geographic feature notability. Please feel free to join in the discussion of this proposal. — hike395 (talk) 03:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

The guideline on the main project page here for the length of the history section on country pages lacks realism. It says that the history section should consist of 4-6 paragraphs. This is patently unrealistic, as not even featured country pages achieve this. In this context, a more realistic guideline would be worth discussing - one that reflects the best summaries of featured country articles to date, perhaps based on a word count, rather than paragraphs, which at best is a vague content measure. Below are the featured country pages by rough history section word count:

That averages out at about 2,000 words per featured article, and only Rwanda, at 1,150 words, makes it down to six paragraphs. Based on the above, which are this project's best examples of featured articles, I struggle to see how '4-6 paragraphs' is a constructive or even relevant target to have in the guideline. A rule of thumb more like '1,500-2,000 words' seems more viable. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Clearly it can be achieved, and is thus realistic. It needs to be even shorter in the lead! Looking at current article states is not the best guide, for example see Australia at last FAR, rather than the current iteration. Perhaps not 4-6, but there is no need to endorse much higher bloat. CMD (talk) 01:03, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for sharing that - it's insightful. A few further observations there - Australia has a bit of an easy run of it from having a very binary prehistory/modern history setup, but even then it was still at 7 paragraphs and about 1,000 words. I seriously doubt that 4 paragraphs have ever been hashed out at a FAR level (though I may be wrong), as too brief a history tends to skip key details. The Australia FAR nom version was notably sparse on the indigenous prehistory - something that has now been built upon, not unfairly or disproportionately I think, in the current version (if anything, the pages is still a little light on the 'current affairs' that the guideline also says should be squeezed into this, but that's an aside). Overall, I think this still supports ditching the paragraph-determined approach, or at least the current minimum. If '1,500-2,000 words' is too much, perhaps '1,000-1,500 words' instead? That would align with Australia's qualifying FAR version, as well as the current Cameroon, Japan, Nauru and Rwanda pages, as well as Canada's FAR version (1,300 words). (Bulgaria, Germany and Madagascar never had less than about 2,000 words of history, while India had 500 words, but that seems like an outlier.) Iskandar323 (talk) 05:20, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Well, we could get rid of the current events bit, a bit of an odd inclusion. I wouldn't object to shifting from paragraph based to word count based along 1000-1500/2000 as suggested. I would also suggest removing the "complexity" part. It's worth keeping in mind that the reason for an explicit mention for length of history sections is due to the tendency for such sections to balloon. Other sections should also be similarly restricted, but they tend to be less of an issue. CMD (talk) 05:52, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

So the impetus for discussing this is, yes, precisely to try to close in on a more realistic guideline that can be more practically advocated for on country pages to argue against history section bloat. At the moment, the current guideline is strict to the point of detachment from the realities of our content (only one featured article manages it): it needs to be a guideline that the editors of country pages can actually rally behind and reasonably achieve, not a pie-in-sky abstract target. I also agree with cutting emphasis on current affairs and complexity - they just confuse it really. So, how does the democracy work here? Hold a vote? Iskandar323 (talk) 08:21, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

@Moxy:, thoughts on shifting to a word count metric (1000-1500 or 1000-2000) and removing advice to include current affairs for history sections? CMD (talk) 08:45, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

Seems logical. Moxy- 11:11, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

@CMD, @Moxy: upper limit as 1500 or 2000, or ambiguously 1500/2000? Iskandar323 (talk) 11:25, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I prefer 1500, at 2000 that's recommending perhaps one-fifth of the article, which seems a bit much. CMD (talk) 12:12, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

For the interested: Talk:Czech_Republic#Closure_of_"Rename_to_Czechia"_discussion Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:03, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Moxy- 02:51, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa#Mali_government_maps. —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 19:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I recently started an RfC on Serbia about adding a "see also" note to the section on law and criminal justice to link to Crime in Serbia. Unfortunately it has not had any further input from uninvolved editors so I thought I would seek opinions and information here. The editor who disagreed with the addition is saying that the link is WP:UNDUE and "makes it looks like Serbia has more crime than other countries". I disagree, because the article is relevant to the context of law and criminal justice, readers should have easy access to it as MOS:BUILD advocates. The full discussion is on Talk:Serbia. TylerBurden (talk) 01:48, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Since 2018, there has been a tacit agreement at Albania to have a dual image illustrating the use of minority languages (Greek and Macedonian) in the country . Today, 6 years after he first tried to remove the Greek language sign , Ktrimi991 (talk · contribs) has decided to try again, this time keeping only the Macedonian language sign, and removing the Greek language sign . The ostensible reason is to avoid "breaking the text" (by which he means image sandwiching) , even though his edit does not resolve the image sandwiching one bit. I tried to resolve the issue, to no avail . I opened a talkpage thread , from which it is apparent that the claims of image sandwiching are just an excuse to remove the Greek language sign. I find it very POV to leave in one of the minority language signs but to remove the other. Any help in resolving this would be greatly appreciated. In general, this articles suffers from a lot of POV activity, and the more eyes on it the better. Khirurg (talk) 18:06, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Article has image problems all over mainly image sandwiching and centered images that causes the whole article to have horizontal scrolling for many. Drop many images and any galleries WP:COUNTRYGALLERIE...as for language sign(s)...no room... dialects map should be bigger. Moxy- 04:00, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

@Moxy: I asked another editor to take a look at the pics in the article and remove/move some if need be, but they have not responded. I could do it myself but I am not sure which excatly. Can you make some improvements there, because it looks to me the article is hard to navigate on the phone because of having misplaced or redundant pics? Ktrimi991 (talk) 10:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I have nominated Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations for featured list removal. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. DrKay (talk) 06:48, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

After corrections of mine were reverted whilst I was introducing maps of a border dispute of Suriname, I have started an RfC at Talk:Suriname#RfC: Should maps show border claims? I hope it will have a clear outcome, because the border dispute cannot be denied (there are enough reliable sources for that). I am generally contributing to the Dutch language Suriname Wikiproject and I do not have a lot of knowledge of regulations here on English Wikipedia. It is even my first RfC. So I would welcome a helping hand for a flexible and successful process. Ymnes (talk) 06:36, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

You're invited to participate at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 August 21#Fooian culture to Culture of Fooland part 2. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:40, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

User:buidhe has nominated Rwanda for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:23, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council § Determining the future of B-class checklists. This project is being notified since it is one of the 82 WikiProjects that opted to support B-checklists (B1-B6) in your project banner. DFlhb (talk) 11:33, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Western Sahara has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. CMD (talk) 12:47, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

An editor has requested that Guayana Esequiba be moved to Guyana–Venezuela territorial dispute, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. --WMrapids (talk) 20:43, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

An editor has requested that 2023 Guayana Esequiba crisis be moved to 2023 Guyana–Venezuela crisis, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion.--WMrapids (talk) 03:19, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Hello. There is a discussion that might be of your interest and it would be great if you can provide your feedback at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Maps#Feedback requested for innovation made. Sincerely, --Thinker78 (talk) 01:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

An editor has been actively pursuing against the presence of dependent territories on Wikipedia. A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. Please share your comments to what has happened. 113.52.112.27 (talk) 14:38, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

About 2 months ago, I made an RFC at Talk:Somalia#Somalia showed as controlling Somaliland. After a slow RFC after which the opinion remained split, nothing happened. Owing to a recent edit war regarding the image, I am posting this here for further input so this issue can be put to bed. Fantastic Mr. Fox (talk) 20:51, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

1 Etymology <-- sometimes it's just 'names'

2 History not every country has these categories & yet they apply to all modern countries-->

- Ancient world (9500-4000 BCE)

- Stone Age (4000-2000 BCE)

- Bronze age (3300-1050 BCE)

- Iron age (1050- 800 BCE)

- Axial age (800 - 200 BCE)

- Ancient world (200 BCE - 500 CE)

- Medieval period (500-1400CE)

- Modern era (1800 CE to present)

- Indigenous people (ie KhoiSan are the only indigenous people to South Africa & are not listed)

- Migration - colonisation (even the UK was under the Roman Empire at one point & a lack of colonisation is so rare it should be notable as in the case of Ethiopia)

- Independence/confederation/development & Expansion - national anthem

3 Geography and environment not every country has these categories & yet they apply to all modern countries--> - climate - geology - flora and fauna (may be easier for a broader population to understand than biodiversity?) - conservation

4 Civil society not every country has these categories & yet they apply to all modern countries--> - taxation - states/provinces and territories (organisation including sub-divisions) - legislature and law (ie: torte vs president) - foreign relations - security (is probably a better word than military & should not be lumped in with foreign relations) - media/freedom of the press/censorship - human development - education - peace (every country is assessed & it is foundational to govt/society/economics/development & yet it is not listed) - beliefs and values (including perspectives on gender)

5 Economy not every country has these categories & yet they apply to all modern countries--> - Application/Progress of the UN 2030 agenda for SDGs - Progress/efforts regarding 2050 net zero energy transition & climate change - Natural resources - Science & technology - Tourism - Industry & Manufacturing - Trade & Finance - Infrastructure (ie: Water & sanitation; roads; transport; etc) - Labour

6 Demographics not every country has these categories & yet they apply to all modern countries--> - religion - language(s) - health, vitality & wellbeing - education & literacy - diversity & ethnicity - gender

7 Arts and Culture not every country has these categories & yet they apply to all modern countries--> - literature & publishing - cuisine - visual arts (painting, sculpture, film etc) - performing art (music, dance, theatre, etc) - sports and recreation - festivals & customs - cultural institutions (ie: museums) - popular culture

8 See also

9 Notes

10 References<-- sometimes it's bibliography or sources

11 Further reading

12 External links e11e99 (talk) 18:47, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this a general change to be made to the project page? Moxy🍁 20:53, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Guessing based on the section name that this is meant to replace Wikipedia:WikiProject_Countries/Templates#Article_template. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:45, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe an idea for a cooperation with Wikipedia:WikiProject Lists are lists of countries by year. That would mean making a list based on List of sovereign states for a specific year, e.g. 1900. Would only need to show all countries which existed that year and columns if they were part of an organization like Commonwealth of England and if they were just founded or dissolved in that year.

More lists for different years like 1800, 1700, 1500, 1000, 500 etc. Over time it would possible expand with list for more years. Nordat (talk) 11:50, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Have an odd situation with an editor.....Randomly changing the area number multiple times as seen here then change here to another number and a third number change here all on the same page . I am not sure if this is purposely disruptive or they're trying to find the best number. But this seems to be happening on multiple pages that has been reverted by multiple editors. Moxy🍁 20:06, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

In the case of South Korea, it appears that sourcing exists to support all three of those numbers, so it's probably just that they're trying to find the best one. Can't speak to the other cases. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:32, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

They simply wont talk about their changes all over...with horrible personal attacks. Moxy🍁 12:19, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

There is a requested edit discussion at Talk:Taiwan#Straw poll that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Butterdiplomat (talk) 15:25, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Why is Russia described as an authoritarian dictatorship but China isn't?, China is just as authoritarian and dictatorial, if not more, than Russia 2806:230:1036:BCED:217D:27A5:62E3:8815 (talk) 06:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Czech_Republic#Requested_Move_11_Jul_2024, your view is welcome. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:28, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Why should only the instrumental versions of national anthems appear on their respective countries' infoboxes? I noticed that an invisible comment in the infobox for Turkey states "Please do not replace this with the vocal version. In order to keep continuity with other Wikipedia pages on modern countries, the instrumental version should be used." The only reason that the anthems have no vocals in these infoboxes is because the majority of free-content recordings come from the US army band, which does only provides the instrumental versions. The lyrics are especially important to understanding how the song is supposed to sung in the native language. I propose that the following passage should be amended from:

National anthem; the name of the National anthem and a link to the article about it.

to:

National anthem; the name of the National anthem, a sound recording of the anthem (featuring vocals in the native language if possible), and a link to the article about it. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 16:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Turkey is a bad example of a country article....But there is no rule of thumb......most have no voice because there is no point because the majority are non-english countries and words would be pointless. Moxy🍁 21:47, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

For one, words would be useful to know how the albums are sung in the language. It can help readers identify the song later on when they listen to it in other contexts, or if they just hear someone singing it the lyrics. Although even English-speaking countries (Australia, UK, US) don't have vocals in their sound files. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 21:58, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Agree most dont....only reason I can give...I have had limited interaction in these conversations in the past many years...anthems are contentious in nature..... most can never agree on the type/who's voice..... thus most default to no voice at all. Moxy🍁 22:06, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how the voice specifically would be controversial, or any more controversial than the people performing the music itself (Keep in mind, for most of these recordings are performed by the US military). But I think if an uncontroversial vocal performance for a particular country can be decided on, then that recording should be used. We should not limit all countries to a musical performance because some find vocals controversial in their specific cases. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 22:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

They are just contentious in nature.....if you look at Canada we have an American version to the detriment of most Canadians because the tone and pace are off to what we're use to. But the RFC I assume attracted many Americans that like the current version. On a side note Canada is one of the only country articles that actually discusses the anthem in the article. Moxy🍁 22:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

There was a time when the addition of the sound recordings themselves was a bit unsure, but they seem to have spread like the multi-image infobox. I have not observed however consistent discussion on the question of vocals, nor do I want to get into the weeds of defining "the native language". CMD (talk) 01:08, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

There is also the potential complication of layering on yet more copyrights needing to be cleared. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:22, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Thankfully, the music/lyrics to many of these anthems were written long enough ago that copyright doesn't apply, and many governments have even willingly released them into the public domain. If in the case of lyrics or music, an issue of copyright arises, then we will use the version of a song which does not infringe, whether vocal or instrumental. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:28, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I do not mean the native language of the entire country, that would be impractical, difficult, controversial question to settle. I mean the lyrics of the anthem that is currently approved by the government of that country. So the Turkish national anthem would be in Turkish as the government has only approved the Turkish-language version of the song. South Africa's national anthem is currently in many different languages, so we'll use that version. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The RFC discussion was 6 years ago, and it appears to have been ignored as the US army band music has been re-added to the infobox...

Regardless, I have now realized this question is much more complex than I thought so I will revise my original amendment. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

What I have suggested here will clearly not be applicable to every country's article, therefore I propose the following instead, which I hope is far more agreeable:

National anthem; the name of the National anthem, a sound recording of the anthem (with or without vocals, according to local consensus), and a link to the article about it

I hope that these kinds of discussions can be made at the individual country pages themselves, since each will have a different discussion on what exactly should be placed in the article. I do not want so-called "consistency" to prevent some articles from being forced to have no vocals. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:43, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

England has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 20:47, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

 Courtesy link: WP:WikiProject Countries/Common section size

See the link for a table of comparative section sizes of the seven common sections in country articles: the lead, History, Geography, Politics, Economy, Demographics, and Culture, for 24 countries. This is in part intended as helpful informational background for this project, and in part as a demo of new features like displaying section size information that was not easily available before a recent upgrade to Module:Section sizes and creation of a convenience template to invoke it. This table is quite dense (15 statistics per row) and can take some seconds to load; see the table at this project subpage.

Another thing that is relatively easy to do now and was almost impossible before, is to add a brief, comparative analysis of section size in order to support a comment in a Talk page discussion, like the following: imagine someone complaining about excessive lead size in some country articles, and including this Talk page post:

Compare the relative size of the lead in France (6.62%%), Germany (5.80%%), and Italy (5.79%%), with Belgium: (11.62%%)...

This would have been so tedious previously as to make such a comment very unlikely, but it is now doable, using this new feature.

Hopefully this illustrate some of the power of the new section size feature, and will lead to new ideas for tracking country article characteristics. These new features could be used by any WikiProject to compare article characteristics, but the Country project sprang to mind as one that might have clear benefits due to the common section structure among many of the country articles.

Feedback is welcome; you can leave general comments or bug reports about the {{section length}} template at Template talk:Section length, and specific comments about how to use it with this project below. I'd be especially interested to hear new ideas about how you might want to use this new capability. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:40, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

A discussion is going on about the intended use of the |native_name= parameter in template {{Infobox country}}. Your feedback would be welcome at Template talk:Infobox country#What is |native_name= for?. Mathglot (talk) 23:55, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Should the infobox template for countries be expanded to include greenhouse gas emissions? See the request at Template talk:Infobox country#Request for comment on greenhouse emissions

20WattSphere (talk) 12:09, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:LGBT rights by country or territory#Requested move 30 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. --MikutoH ^talk! 22:46, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

For the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:40, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

As an organizational point for the Project, is there a list or definition somewhere about the list of continents (Americas, or North and South separately? Oceania including Australia, or separately as its own continent with only one country? and so on), and a list of countries that belong to the continents? Failing guidance, I would probably just look at the nav templates that divide by continents and countries (e.g., from {{Countries of Africa}}), but I don't know that that's authoritative for the Project. Seems like the Main project page should have a #Continents and countries section, and talk about this. Mathglot (talk) 11:17, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Ba'athist Syria#Requested move 8 December 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Feeglgeef (talk) 16:15, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Recently, Krishnpriya123 (talk · contribs) has been adding the Global Hunger Index to the articles of each country. While I am not immediately opposed to this, I do feel any addition that one feels should be made across every single article in a class like this merits further discussion. For one, I am not immediately aware of the prevalence of the index or the institutional standing of its authors. Discussion as to whether it should be something readers see prominently in every article about a sovereign state is welcome. Remsense ‥ 论 16:18, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

My longstanding view is that indexes should generally be avoided. The proliferate because they provide what seems an easily graspable and comparable metric, but specific use and general applicability will vary. It's much better to discuss the specific circumstances of each country through dedicated sources. CMD (talk) 01:09, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

That's my view too, but I didn't want to impose it unilaterally, especially since I might have blinders for what is possibly an underrepresented topic on Wikipedia. Remsense ‥ 论 01:13, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Main article fixation for indexes has always been a problem.... indexes about forests, crime, health, water, gold, silver etc. My main problem is that these additions simply list the index score without context.... Basically highlighting the index article over any real prose text. I remove most when I come across them. That said if one is an important point..... as in it's actually relevant to the country cuz perhaps the place in the top 10 of surveys. I would change something from - to (eg below)

From: "Liberia scored a 3.3 on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt) on the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index. This gave it a ranking 87th of 178 countries worldwide and 11th of 47 in Sub-Saharan Africa"

To: "Corruption is endemic at every level of Liberian society, making Liberia one of the most politically corrupt nations in the world"

::Or..

From: With a score of 31.9 in the 2024 Global Hunger Index, Liberia has a level of hunger that is serious.

To:Liberia has a high level of hunger and food insecurity

Moxy🍁 01:20, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Categories in this WikiProject's scope have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 January 6 § States and territories (dis)established in YYYY on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. harrz ^talk 22:23, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I propose we merge two stubs about a region of Colombia into an article to be named either Magdalena Medio region, or perhaps Magdalena Medio, Colombia.

We currently have two articles on the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia:

• Magdalena Medio Province – identified as a subregion of Bolívar Department
• Magdalena Medio Antioquia – identified as a subregion of Bolívar Department

I'm not really clear what is going on here, but this appears to be a region that spans these two Colombian departments. From the map that appears in the Antioquia article, the dark red shaded area presumably identifies the Magdelena region, and it appears to extend beyond the borders of the pale yellow shaded region, which I assume is Antioquia department. So, maybe the next department towards the east is Bolivar department. (Besides a merger, the map should be clarified.)

This is a geographic region that appears to spans these two departments (and more; see below), and unless there is something very distinctive about the portion within each of the departments, they should be one article, not two.

According to Citizens' Media Against Armed Conflict], p. 150:

Magdalena Medio has no official territorial status. The territory known as Magdalena Medio comprises municipalities from four different departments—and sometimes five or six, depending on who is defining the region.

The Antioquia article is linked via wikidata to d:Q1638495#sitelinks-wikipedianine other Wikipedias; the 'Province' article is linked to one other.

This argues for a merger under one of the proposed names, likely the Antioquia one, possibly renamed as it is not confined to that department. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:02, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

@Zero Gravity and Shevonsilva: pinging active users with >5% of text contributions to the article. Mathglot (talk) 20:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Somehow both those stubs are less informative than their respective department articles, but in general I don't think we usually merge defined administrative divisions into more vague geographic regions. We might have a separate article on the supposed geographical region though. CMD (talk) 02:35, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I had briefly considered Afd for the two of them, but there are too many sources for that, so these are basically just your simple stub-and-run effort. Tthere are tons of sources for the English term Middle Magdalena Region (see books, Scholar) so probably it/they need to be renamed in whatever new form it ends up in. Mathglot (talk) 03:04, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

The most intuitive rename would be to add the department name in parentheses as a disambiguator. They're both informally provinces, so I wouldn't use that as a disambiguator as the Bolívar article currently does, and the department name isn't part of the name as the current Antioquia article title suggests. We actually do seem to have an article on the region, it's at Middle Magdalena Valley, although curiously that article seems to treat the two mentioned provinces as just west of the region. CMD (talk) 03:15, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Moved from User talk:QwertyZ34 § Country maps replaced with ones that make the country too small to see

Hello, I recently added image switcher to the majority of African countries, some of them got reverted, because it was small countries like Rwanda, Malawi etc... But, for something, I don't understand why Burundi article still have an image switcher since it's a small country, the fact that this article got an IS is incoherent in the term of "Small Countries no Image Switcher" which is logic at first but unlogic if Burundi have it. Thank you. QwertyZ34 (talk) 11:22, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

We should really not have the African Union maps at all. They are deeply misleading to readers. CMD (talk) 15:27, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

I think it's better to have ONLY African Union map for small countries because it highlight the country itself, on the globe, it's not really visible and it have to be an complet different color or surrounded to atleast see it correctly, so yes, according to my opinion, AU maps are better for small countries, and for normal and tall-sized countries then it need a switcher to have both maps : Globe (orthographic) and Africa Union Map. QwertyZ34 (talk) 17:12, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

For small countries on a globe we should have insets, such as Timor-Leste. The AU maps are misappropriated in their infobox usage, as they suggest a much higher relevance of the AU than exists in reality. CMD (talk) 17:34, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

You are right QwertyZ34 (talk) 17:37, 24 January 2025 (UTC)

Note: added Courtesy link above. Mathglot (talk) 03:20, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Can we get some more eyes on the inclusion of a section about Donald Trump in this article. Talk:Greenland#Donald Trump section. Moxy🍁 22:02, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Currently most articles have something of the form Short Name, officially Full Name is a country in Region. For example China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia or Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa. This matches the way common/"short" names and "official" names are defined by (for example) the UK government, listed here.

The articles of both Austria and Sweden were changed by K1812 (talk · contribs) to use "formally" instead of "officially" (Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe and Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. This is based on how the UNGEGN defines the different names listed here (both "short" and "formal" names are "official" in this context).

Even using the UNGEGN list, there are some countries where "officially" would remain appropriate. For example Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America, the UNGEGN short name being Bolivia (Plurinational State of) as opposed to just Bolivia.

If the logic behind changing from "officially" to "formally" in the articles for Austria and Sweden is sound, then "formally" should become the norm for country lead sentences. Otherwise, the articles for Austria and Sweden should be reverted to using "officially".

MildlyLucid (talk) 11:10, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

At the moment, Sweden is used as an example for WP:COUNTRYLEAD and so formally appears there. This would need to be updated too if there is agreement to change this. Mellk (talk) 11:30, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Formal is likely better as short names are often also official, although generally I suspect the meaning is conveyed. CMD (talk) 11:51, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Just looking for some generic input at Talk:Australia#Reverting without explanation. Is a hard article to update. Moxy🍁 00:49, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

A perennial topic at Talk:Armenia and Talk:Georgia (country) (though apparently not so much at Talk:Azerbaijan, though Azerbaijan gets mentions in discussions at the first two) is the matter of how the leads of the respective articles should identify their locations—Eastern Europe, West Asia, both, or leave it at "the Caucasus". It is always pointed out that different sources put the boundary between Europe and Asia in different places. There are those who describe them as "culturally European", with the consequence that "in Europe" is correct, while others want what we say in the lead to be a purely geographical designation. And there are those who will point to inconsistencies between the way this is handled for Armenia and the way this is handled for Georgia (and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan), which could confuse readers.

This applies to the short descriptions as well.

Is there any interest in establishing uniform guidance regarding their respective assignment by Wikipedia to one continent or the other or both, synthesizing the relevant sources together as necessary, for all three countries in the interest of clarity and consistency? Largoplazo (talk) 12:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia used to "assign" them to Asia along the UN geoscheme lines, but by used to I mean decades ago. Since then the more flexible current consensus developed. There is no guidance that can be developed to stop this issue, as it is an issue stemming from real life, and is mostly lead-fixation. We generally should replace "culturally European" (vague) with something more to do with self-identity, as that better reflects why the issue exists, and partially why it is less prevalent for the Azerbaijan article. CMD (talk) 13:01, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we should get rid of "culturally European", a subjective buzzphrase with at least a whiff of cultural superiority behind it that has no place in Wikipedia voice. It's rather meaningless. I know (before anyone yells at me) that Armenian culture isn't Turkish culture, but is it closer to Norwegian or even Bulgarian culture than it is to Turkish culture? How close are Romanian and Norwegian culture to each other, that one can define a "European culture" that Armenian culture belongs to? Also, if it's culturally European, then isn't Australia too?

Anyway, I'm specifically talking about the lead. Regardless of the terminology chosen to convey it, the lead isn't the place for "And, in case you were thinking Armenians are like Asians, they would very much like you to know they'd prefer to be considered European." At least with regard to any mention of either Europe or Asia in the lead, let's stick to geography as we do with pretty much every country outside the Caucasus. Largoplazo (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Addendum I meant to add that I wonder whether this is worth holding an RFC over so that future debate on the respective talk pages can be forestalled by pointing to its outcome. Largoplazo (talk) 16:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

In two days, WP:The Core Contest is starting, which might be of interest here :). Plenty of C-class country articles that would benefit from TLC. Sign-ups are open, and remain open during the 6-week contest. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:29, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi all

I wanted to see if we could come to some kind of consensus about adding Warming Stripes bar graphs to country articles in sections which talk about temperature and/or climate change (not the pure stripes, the bar graphs as shown below). There was previously a discussion here but there didn't seem to be a consensus, only different opinions. I've Pinged the users who took part in the previous conversation in the table below. I want to restart this disucssion because I recently added to a few articles which Moxy reverted pointing to the previous conversation, but there doesn't appear to be a consensus.

About the graphics

The graphics are called Warming Stripes, there are two main versions, shown below, I want to suggest we use the version on the left, a bar chart and axes and labels. They are created by Professor Ed Hawkins at Reading University. More of an explatation is available here and on the Show Your Stripes website, there's a lot of other press about them as well by the BBC and others. The graphs are visual representations of the change in temperature as measured in each country, region or city over the past 100+ years. The data sources are Berkeley Earth & ERA5-Land, NOAA, UK Met Office, MeteoSwiss, DWD, SMHI, UoR & ZAMG. They have their own Wikipedia article here Warming stripes.

• 
  Temperature change in Afghanistan, each bar represents the average temperature over that year
  This is the format I suggest is most suitable for Wikipedia country articles
• 
  Temperature change in Afghanistan, each bar represents the average temperature over that year

I've recently uploaded all versions of the graph for all countries and regions on Commons here.

Reporting an update 93.67.125.128 (talk) 12:30, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Pls see Template talk:Largest cities#Drop images stop sandwiching the actual prose information. Moxy🍁 23:37, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

Pls see Talk:Switzerland#Removal of cannabis consumption and mental health data from 2012 Moxy🍁 04:50, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

I have nominated India for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. JDiala (talk) 08:28, 7 July 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Article attributes should have alt text on the icons in the table so they can be read by screen readers, per WP:ACCIM. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:54, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Article attributes is a redirect the leads right back to this page. Which page did you mean? Largoplazo (talk) 13:13, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

There doesn't appear to be any legislation in Antigua and Barbuda establishing an official national anthem, wether it be Fair Antigua, We Salute Thee or God Save The King. There are no proclamations or laws even mentioning these songs (https://laws.gov.ag/), neither are there any references to the anthem in the Constitution. In case the government laws website was missing information, I also decided to check an official law book which did not appear to have any information on the subject. While the government website does have lyrics to Fair Antigua, We Salute Thee (https://ab.gov.ag/detail_page.php?page=26) there are no references to the song God Save the King anywhere on the website. As there appears to be no standing for God Save The King as having any sort of status in the country, should it be removed from the note on the article? Also, should it be noted that Fair Antigua, We Salute Thee has no legal status as the official anthem and is simply the de facto national anthem similarly to how God Save The King is listed on the anthem note in the United Kingdom article? It should also be noted that the Governor-General is greeted by the tune Fair Antigua, We Salute Thee and not God Save The King at official occasions (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjLqI8MzJw4 1:36; this being a video of the Throne Speech). This is also a video of Prince Harry being greeted in Antigua by Fair Antigua, We Salute Thee while the Royal Standard was flying (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIG-T9efXsA 1:30; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfOaIDK4dIQ). CROIX^talk 05:38, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

There is often an overconflation of "not mentioned in the constitution/laws" and "not being official", things can become official through their use by officials or by other methods. If God Save the King is unsourced it should be removed, but if a government has a webpage saying "this is our official anthem" we shouldn't second-guess them because it doesn't meet some specific meanings of "official". CMD (talk) 09:04, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree. Fair Antigua, We Salute Thee is definitely the official anthem by custom, but I do feel that there should at least be a minor note stating that the song has not been adopted by law as the national anthem, as is custom on other country articles with a similar situation. God Save the King being put as the royal anthem on the article appears to have been a mistake though. CROIX^talk 17:37, 22 July 2025 (UTC)

I would put such a note only if I found it in a high-quality source. Royal anthems in general are I suspect falling out of fashion, and in Commonwealth countries even literal country names (Dominion of Canada, Federation of Malaysia) can simply disappear without an 'official' end point. CMD (talk) 02:22, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion on the state and quality of the article List of wars involving Pakistan. To editors, please join the discussion at Talk:List of wars involving Pakistan#Why I removed content. KashanAbbas (talk) 09:37, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

There is an ongoing RfC on adding a EU Member Infoboxs: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_European_Union#RfC_on_EU_Member_Infobox. Moxy🍁 02:41, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 August 25#Culture sidebars part 3 Moxy🍁 17:04, 25 August 2025 (UTC)

This is going to be a cluster f*#k in the long run. Wondering if we should metion this in our guide - basicly going to have to deal with merged templates by thoses noit fammilar with our goals as a project. Moxy🍁 12:57, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

Will have to be careful no navboxes end up in the sidebar position. CMD (talk) 13:39, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

My main concern is we're headed down a path of merging all the sidebar templates into the country topics by those not familiar with what we do for country articles..... that is linking main parent articles and not all sub articles in a template to make them accessible. I'm assuming next we'll have the history then foreign affairs then economy etc all merged into one template making it useless.

More information To display all subcategories click on the "►": ...

To display all subcategories click on the "►":
Canada sidebar templates (1 C, 49 P)

Close

. It's too bad the opinions of those that actually create the content isn't more valid than random flyby recommendations. I would assume those at the deletion discussion are unaware that we do mobile versions and desktop versions of pages... {{If mobile|[[File:Maple leaf - panoramio - Mario Hains.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Perhaps the most prominent symbol of Canada, the [[maple leaf]] has been a de facto symbol since the 1700s.]] | {{Culture of Canada sidebar}}}}Moxy🍁 19:34, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

We going to have to keep an eye on this...... thinking link span is coming. lets make sure these are still functionable and accessible. Moxy🍁 00:11, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 September 25#Template:Infobox former subdivision Moxy🍁 21:13, 27 September 2025 (UTC)

It's that time of year again, if you have an opinion, please join. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:45, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

We have the same info being added all over..-addotion example..we should be able to find a better way of doing this. Main problem is there are many of these democracy indices why are we just using this one?..would say there are definitely more prominent ones.

We have an example at WP:COUNTRYSECTIONS

Prose should provide clear, relevant information and links to relevant sub-articles about the country, rather than listing random stats and articles with minimal information about the country.

Y Corruption in Liberia is endemic at every level of society, making it one of the most politically corrupt nations.

N Liberia scored a 3.3 on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt) on the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index.

How can we word this better ...any ideas? or should they even stay? Moxy🍁 15:29, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

As usual, the direct citing of these indices to themselves does not demonstrate due weight. Perhaps in a more specific page they can be better contextualised. CMD (talk) 15:49, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

I have been moving these to International rankings of Canada type articles. We literally have hundreds of these type indexes that people just keep adding over and over again.Moxy🍁 12:15, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

@Caramelmind(less): trying to get your attention. Moxy🍁 15:56, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this. Several credible news papers, including The Guardian, has described the International IDEA indices as being "considered the most comprehensive of its kind, covering 174 countries and measuring democratic performance from 1975". So if we're measuring prominence based on popularity then I agree that there are other indices that are more well know among the general public. However, if we're measuring prominence based on importance, then there's no question that the GSoD indices are important - particularly in academic circles and within the democracy space. Caramelmind(less) (talk) 08:19, 17 October 2025 (UTC)

Dame its hard to keep up with index spam new set added all over...with no edit sum.Moxy🍁 12:08, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Was reviewing a couple of obscure country articles.... some of these are just filled with indexes not giving any real information. Moxy🍁 12:26, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:List of sovereign states by employment rate#Requested move 25 October 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 15:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

North Macedonia has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Outside viewpoints would be highly appreciated! Thank you. --Local hero ^talk 17:02, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Template talk:Countries and territories of Oceania#Requested move 8 November 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 01:12, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I have nominated Madagascar for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Kowal2701 (talk) 15:19, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

See WP:VPI#Make it mandatory to fill basic information within the government_type= of an infobox when writing about countries Kowal2701 (talk) 12:05, 3 December 2025 (UTC)

For WikiProjects that participate in rating articles, the banners for talk pages usually say something like:

• "This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale."

There is a proposal to change the default wording on the banners to say "priority" instead of "importance". This could affect the template for your group. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Proposal to update wording on WikiProject banners. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 19:40, 6 December 2025 (UTC) (on behalf of the WikiProject Council)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Communist state#Requested move 23 December 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 𐩣𐩫𐩧𐩨 Abo Yemen (𓃵) 12:42, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Communist state#Requested move 23 December 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vestrian24Bio 04:04, 30 December 2025 (UTC)

Well @Glebushko0703, ExRat, Sbaio, CoolCuteBear, Neptuunium, and HKLionel:, I tried to create peace, concerning "short description", via consistency at Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania. But one of you reverted me at Estonia & another at Lithuania. I don't know why anybody would want inconsistency in the area, on those three articles, so I'll start the discussion here & let you all come up with a solution. Recommending that @Callanecc: monitor. GoodDay (talk) 05:31, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

As far as I’m concerned, you removed useful information from a short description in the name of consistency, which holds no weight against SD guidelines. If you want consistency, then I’d change Latvia and Lithuania to Baltic country in Northern Europe as well, as all three are Baltic states in Northern Europe, while mentioning Baltic region would make the SD too long. In your revert, you cited Sweden and Finland, which after review, I would change to Nordic country in Northern Europe as well. Imparting helpful information to the reader takes precedence above all other concerns in the field of short descriptions. HKLionel TALK 05:41, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

Change them to whatever you & the others can come to a conesnsus on. GoodDay (talk) 05:44, 3 January 2026 (UTC)

I think it's time to get opinons from outsiders, on this issue. I'll be opening up a RFC here, soon. GoodDay (talk) 00:02, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

See RFC discussion. GoodDay (talk) 02:17, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

The primary topic of the RfC is the short desc used on three articles. That is not clear from the above post; therefore, it should be worded as such, like this:  You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Estonia § RFC: Short description of Baltic states. Redrose64 🦌 (talk) 13:23, 4 January 2026 (UTC)