Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries
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Category:Flag template shorthands has an RFC[edit]
Category:Flag template shorthands 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.
RFC on whether citing maps and graphs is original research[edit]
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[edit]
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. Springer. 146 (3): 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)
- 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. Springer. 146 (3): 409–423. ISSN 0303-8300. JSTOR 48704905.
- 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)
- 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:
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- "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)
- 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)
- 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)
Project-independent quality assessments[edit]
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)
History guideline rethink[edit]
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)
- 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)
- 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)
Please see my comments on this talk page, thanks. Titus Gold (talk) 14:01, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
Appropriate category for constituent/autonomous countries[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]
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)
Czech Republic RM[edit]
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[edit]
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa#Mali_government_maps. —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 19:05, 18 May 2023 (UTC)