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Archive 14

Assistance requested with SYNTH issue in country demographic articles

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:

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. Rank County GDP in mil SEK GDP in mil USD (PPP) Equivalent country 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

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)

Sources about Brunei

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)

A by country topic

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)

One of your project's articles has been selected for improvement!

Hello, Please note that Countries of the United Kingdom, which is within this project's scope, has been selected as one of the Articles for improvement. The article is scheduled to appear on Wikipedia's Community portal in the "Articles for improvement" section for one week, beginning today. Everyone is encouraged to collaborate to improve the article. Thanks, and happy editing! Delivered by — MusikBot talk 00:05, 17 October 2022 (UTC) on behalf of the AFI team

Turkey authoritarian dictatorship

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

Turkey RFC about authoritarianism and democratic backsliding

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

GAR notice

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)

GAR of Croatia

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)

List of de facto autonomous states and areas

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)

Include Historical Population Chart in Main Country Page

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)

Requested move at Talk:Ministry of Foreign Affairs#Requested move 16 February 2023

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)

Are there any countries without a page or needs work?

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)

Improving the quality of article leads: by reducing the no. of paragraphs

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)

RFC on whether citing maps and graphs is original research

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)

Countries lead

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." [1] 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)

Project-independent quality assessments

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)

Category talk:Regions of Europe with multiple official languages

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

Appropriate category for constituent/autonomous countries

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)

Templates for currency and per capita calculations in demographic lists

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)

United States

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)

Proposed refactoring of geographic feature notability

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)

History guideline rethink

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:

• Australia - 1,900 words
• Bulgaria - 2,300 words
• Cameroon - 1,300 words
• Canada - 2,800 words
• Germany - 2,700 words
• India - 2,250 words
• Japan - 1,500 words
• Madagascar - 3,150 words
• Nauru - 1,300 words
• Rwanda - 1,150 words

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)

Czech Republic RM

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)

Mali government maps

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

Links being WP:UNDUE?

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)

Images in Albania article

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 [2]. Today, 6 years after he first tried to remove the Greek language sign [3], Ktrimi991 (talk · contribs) has decided to try again, this time keeping only the Macedonian language sign, and removing the Greek language sign [4]. The ostensible reason is to avoid "breaking the text" (by which he means image sandwiching) [5], even though his edit does not resolve the image sandwiching one bit. I tried to resolve the issue, to no avail [6]. I opened a talkpage thread [7], 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)

Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations

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)

Maps of Suriname

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)

Culture by country categorisation

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)

Requested move 20 September 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) The Night Watch (talk) 23:27, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

---

• Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Armenia
• Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Azerbaijan
• Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Belarus
• Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Estonia
• Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Georgia
• Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Kazakhstan
• Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Kyrgyzstan
• Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Latvia
• Soviet Latvia → Soviet Latvia (disambiguation)
• Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Lithuania
• Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Moldova
• Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic → Soviet Russia
• Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Tajikistan
• Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Turkmenistan
• Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Ukraine
• Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic → Soviet Uzbekistan

– For WP:COMMONNAME; the WP:CRITERIA of recognizability, naturalness, concision, and consistency (within the set, and with Soviet Union, which is not entitled Union of Soviet Socialist Republics); with WP:NAMECHANGES and WP:MODERNPLACENAME lending weight to reliable sources written post 1991 (every one of these is an existing country that renamed itself after becoming independent, not a newly created polity).

Frequency of use of various names in reliable sources can be gauged using Google Ngram (links below). In some cases where there were variations on the national name and all variations were too long for a single Ngram, I compared the most common of several sets. In some cases, a different name was most common by a small or moderate margin (i.e., Estonian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Tajik SSR, Turkmen SSR, and Uzbek SSR), but this proposal gives weight to consistency as outlined above, as well as consistency with the modern name in the case of Moldavia/Moldova.

Am SSR,[8] Az SSR,[9] By SSR,[10][11][12][13] Ee SSR,[14] Ge SSR,[15] Kz SSR,[16] Kg SSR,[17][18][19][20] Lv SSR,[21] Lt SSR,[22] Md SSR,[23][24][25] Ru SFSR,[26] Tj SSR,[27] Tm SSR,[28] Ua SSR,[29] Uz SSR,[30]

This move follows the failed RM at Talk:Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic#Requested move 30 March 2023, where the lack of consistency resulting from renaming only one of fifteen was a significant roadblock for consensus.  —Michael Z. 23:23, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose 20+ years long established titles - official names of the republics. Of course, people use storter name. Why don't we move United States → America then? I give one attempt to guess what is the content of the latter page ;-) - Altenmann >talk 05:06, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

United States is a short version of the official name United States of America. See WP:OFFICIALNAMES for a relevant explanation on the WP:TITLE policy.  —Michael Z. 05:43, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Is Moldova intended to use a different format? I noted in the Ukraine discussion that this is really a question of disambiguation for particular historical entities/particular time periods of continuous entities (all very potentially nebulous). en.wiki has a habit of using official names for such constitutional period articles (French Fourth Republic, Fourth Philippine Republic, Kingdom of Nepal, Kingdom of Iceland). This is certainly not a perfect way to go about things (at the very least it certainly imposes a particular historical framing on the articles and their content), but its widespread use likely reflects its understandability and convenience. I think readers will understand both potential titles (or all 3), so I don't have a strong view, just a note that at the moment for whatever cultural-linguistic reason, "Soviet Latvia" feels like an adjective-noun pair, rather than the single compound noun feeling that "Soviet Union" evokes. CMD (talk) 05:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  I’ve updated Soviet Moldova for consistency. (I don’t know what I was thinking.)  —Michael Z. 12:25, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - I see Mzajac's point, but arguably "Uzbek SSR" (not giving abbreviation written out in full) is more common in English, and the "Soviet Foo-country" creates a number of ambiguities. 'Soviet Estonia' could refer to both 1918 Commune and 1940 SSR, Soviet Ukraine has similar issue. Kirghiz SSR indicates a republic where the Kirghiz were the titular nationality, whilst Kirghizstan indicates a specific country. 'Kirghizstan' was occassionally used during Soviet period but 'Soviet Kirghizia' was more common. Likewise we have the Belorussia/Belarus issue (a name shift that occured after end of BSSR). And so forth. --Soman (talk) 14:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  We have disambiguation for the ambiguities (which we’re already using for several of these), but the WP:PRIMARY topic for each is very clear.

  The Commune of the Working People of Estonia, for example, was a Bolshevik puppet government under Russian occupation that lasted six months. I see no evidence that any sources call it Soviet Estonia. Please give evidence if you insist there is ambiguity.

  Soviet Kirghizia/Soviet Kirgizia was not more common.[31] And of course this is about what we use now per WP:NAMECHANGES and WP:MPN, and not to proliferate Cold War terminology that has become anachronistic (or the Soviet Union article would probably be titled Russia or Communist Russia). The Ngram charts clearly show a dramatic change in naming of every one of these in the 1990s, and that the current names contradict our guidelines. The name shift of Belarus did occur, as you say, its outcome is clear, and it is not an issue if we just follow the guideline.

  Would you be in favour if the proposal were modified? Consistency is low in the WP:CRITERIAORDER, and we have an opportunity to improve all of these article titles if we just try.  —Michael Z. 15:06, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Kirg(h)izia was more common. I did not know this. You have to set the date range to something like 1945–1992. Setting it to 1983–2019 will not answer the question. Srnec (talk) 20:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  I’m not sure which question you mean.

  WP:MOS, note i, "recent", "current", "modern", and "contemporary" in reference to sources and usage should usually be interpreted as referring to reliable material published within the last forty years or so. In the consideration of name changes of persons and organizations, focus on sources from the last few years. For broader English-language usage matters, about forty years is typical.

  I’ve used 40 years for the Ngram charts. The charts show the transition started after the beginning of perestroika in 1985 and completed by 1995, so 30 years or less would be appropriate for names of most Soviet things. Renaming of the articles Kyiv in 2020, Donbas in 2021, and Odesa in 2022 shows there is also an extended post-colonial transition.

  The names we use for these places today are different than they were during the Cold War. We don’t write White Russia, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, Kiev, Kharkov, Lvov, to name some more obvious examples.  —Michael Z. 21:54, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  You don't write "White Russia, Byelorussia, the Ukraine, Kiev, Kharkov, Lvov", but you are well aware (since this discussion pops up again and again) that there isn't a consensus on this. And for what it's worth Kirghizia and Kyrgyzstan are two different names, adoption of Kyrgyz was a political move after break-up of USSR, talking about 'Kyrgyz SSR' would be like talking about the Mumbai Presidency. --Soman (talk) 16:07, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  That’s your opinion. Reliable sources of this century don’t agree. [32]

  In my view, imposing the Russian name on a non-Russian nation was political. Today’s more neutral sources are decolonizing the name as a result of depoliticization. The historiography of this is documented.[33] —Michael Z. 16:49, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

  Anyway, Kirg(h)iz SSR was most common then.[34] Soviet Kyrgyzstan and Kyrgyz SSR are most common now.[35]  —Michael Z. 21:58, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose : I concur with the other opposition: long history of the current names, increased ambiguity. The current names were the official names of those political units at the time they were in place, so changing them would be, I think, counterproductive. But even if none of those arguments were the case, I don't see any advantage to the move. If the desire is to have soviet whatever, then the existing redirects should satisfy the goal. Radzy0 (talk) 23:34, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

  Ambiguity is not increased, because 14 of 15 proposed titles just redirect to the same articles already, and in the 15th (Soviet Latvia), the target is the primary topic.

  The advantage is better fulfilling four of the five the WP:CRITERIA that are the principles behind titling.

  But ambiguity falls under the third criterion in WP:CRITERIAORDER, so the guideline mandates us to improve the title to better satisfy the first and second in favour of the third (and the fourth and fifth while we’re at it).  —Michael Z. 00:52, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose: I agree with others here, renaming the republics like this is very restrictive and leaves things open to ambiguity. Many of these name changes could lead to confusion with Soviet republics of the Russian Civil War. The currently existing redirects already fulfill this move request anyway.

One other issue comes from the title “Soviet Russia”, as this label is often used to refer to the Soviet Union as a whole rather than just Russia. 296cherry (talk) 01:33, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Which articles on Soviet republics would become ambiguous after the moves?

The current arrangement of redirects and disambiguation already address and resolve the ambiguity that exists, and swapping names would preserve the same arrangement. Including Soviet Russia, which redirects to the article on the RSFSR with a hatnote. The result would remain effectively the same.  —Michael Z. 01:48, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose:Per others. Confusing and poorly phrased. Redirects also already exist, so who cares? Daikido (talk) 17:05, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

What’s confusing?  —Michael Z. 17:19, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose: When looking at an old map, does one see parts of the former USSR labelled as "Soviet [name]" or as "[name] SSR"? More often than not, is it not the latter of the two? After all, the "[name] SSR" format is used to refer to most of these nations prior to their independence. The article should not be moved. transgerman_ (talk) 20:26, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

How does an old map relate to our guidelines for titling new articles? How does the data you’ve assembled compare to the Ngram searches I compiled? Maps are a special case: they tend to explicitly label official names of things, and only represent a very tiny proportion of the usage that COMMONNAME is interested in surveying.

But I see there are old maps that just say “Ukraine,” for example, 1921, 1936, 1941, 1941, c1950?, 1950s?, 1966, 1990.  —Michael Z. 22:14, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Oppose: Existing names are fine. Changing to Soviet Russia is an obvious problem, given that term was most often used as a synecdoche for the USSR as a whole. I also agree with the previous comment suggesting that this name scheme switches compound nouns for an adjective-noun pair; this also implies that their Soviet-ness was their key feature rather than their Tajik-ness, for instance, which downplays their distinctiveness. Handpigdad (talk) 06:49, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Its Sovietness individually was what distinguished Soviet Tajikistan from the rest of Tajik history.  —Michael Z. 13:27, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Pls review Wikipedia:Don't bludgeon the process (Arbitration acceptance of the essay) Moxy- 18:53, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose these are proper names, while "Soviet x" isn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beshogur (talk • contribs) 10:27, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

FAR for Rwanda

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)

B-checklist in project template

 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

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)

Move discussion at Guayana Esequiba

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)