Talk:West Indies

"Mis-disambiguation"

"West Indies" should of course have its own article, as this is an island group, while "Caribbean" is a region, and/or a sea. Anyone up to taking this on (again)? Sfahey (talk) 03:20, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. What happened to the West Indies article? The West Indies is historically EXTREMELY important: It was the first region in the Americas to be discovered and colonized by Europeans. This is where Columbus spent most of his time in the Americas. It was the beginning of the present-day Americas. This is where Wikipedia suffers from the lack of editors who see the big picture (let's make it a disambiguation).

The West Indies overlaps with the Caribbean but is quite distinct. The Caribbean includes: much of the West Indies, the E. coastal areas of Central America, the Belize Cayes, the Bay Islands, the Mayan Riviera, etc. It doesn't include the Bahamas. English speaking residents identify as West Indian: University of the West Indies, West Indies Cricket Board, West Indies Rugby League, West Indies Rugby Union, West Indian Medical Journal, etc. Commonwealth residents understand this (others not so much). There should be three articles. (1) The West Indies as a historical, cultural, and geographical region. (2) The Caribbean as a cultural and geographical region. (3) The Caribbean Sea as a geographical maritime entity. There will be some overlap but that happens constantly in Wikipedia and other encyclopaedias. Read this and weep (from embarrassment): http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/640195/West-Indies 6 fabulous pages of information.StonePeter (talk) 03:50, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Merging

As per earlier threads on Talk:West Indies, it makes no sense to have one page called West Indies (disambiguation) and another page called West Indies that redirects to Caribbean. The West Indies is not a subset of the Caribbean, and the Caribbean is not a subset of the West Indies. Since there is no article on the West Indies as a whole, there is no primary topic article, and the disambiguation page should be called simply West Indies.

It seems so obvious that Caribbean is not the primary topic of West Indies, and this was mentioned on Talk:West Indies in earlier years but apparently never done. So as per WP:Proposed mergers and Help:Merging, I'm going to be bold and just merge them, as soon as I get time. The content will be identical to the current content at West Indies (disambiguation), and the title will be West Indies. Also the mis-capitalized West indies will redirect to the merged page.

Let me know before I do it if you think there's a reason to have a merger discussion first. But as Help:Merging says,

Merging is a normal editing action, something any editor can do, and as such generally does not need to be proposed and processed. If you think merging something improves the encyclopedia, you can be bold and perform the merger, as described below. Because of this, it makes little sense to object to a merger purely on procedural grounds, e.g. "you cannot do that without discussion" is not a good argument.

Duoduoduo (talk) 22:23, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposed move to new name

The following discussion is an archived 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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move, to allow for WP:DABCONCEPT. -- tariqabjotu 06:49, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

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West Indies (disambiguation) → West Indies – Reason for move: There is no primary topic page for West Indies, and currently "West Indies" redirects, improperly, to Caribbean. The Caribbean region includes some but not all of the West Indies, plus part or all of a lot of non-West Indies countries on the north coast of South America and the east coast of Central America. In contrast, the West Indies includes a subset of the Caribbean, namely most of its islands, plus the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos islands. Since West Indies has no primary topic page, the disambiguation page should simply be at West Indies rather than have the latter redirect elsewhere. Duoduoduo (talk) 16:55, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support - this should be treated as a stub article on the term rather than a dab (see how de.wp etc. treat the term). In ictu oculi (talk) 11:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support, provided that the disambig tag is removed, as this would clearly be WP:DABCONCEPT. bd2412 T 12:52, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support making this a WP:DABCONCEPT at West Indies. Red Slash 07:14, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support making this a broad concept page rather than a DAB and moving it to West Indies as proposed. As noted it's already not strictly a DAB. I also note that the target talk page has significant history, and would suggest not moving the talk page is the easiest way of preserving this (with a suitable heads-up added there to point to this RM). The target article history probably doesn't need preservaton, the only previous article text was added at 22:14, 7 April 2002‎ by IP 136.186.1.117 The West Indies are a group of island states in the Caribbean Sea. Although they comprise a number of nationalities, they do occasionally act together, most notably making up a composite cricket team that successfully competes in Test matches and one-day internationals. This was replaced by a redirect a few months later, and the only subsequent edits were administrative ones such as changing the redir target, adding a redir template, and listing and delisting it for deletion. Andrewa (talk) 02:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

• Support only if the page is allowed to remain a CONCEPTDAB and is not turned into a strict DAB page. —  AjaxSmack  03:04, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• Comment. In the current form, this is not a disambiguation page. older ≠ wiser 12:26, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• I support the proposal but is there any institutional way to see that the CONCEPTDAB page remains short and does not become a content fork of Caribbean? —  AjaxSmack  03:07, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Turks and Caicos Islands?

Not a part of the West Indies? Certainly not a part of the Bahamas. The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands do however form the Lucayan Archipelago together. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.217.103.193 (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Geology Subsection

Hello,
I am interested in adding a section describing the geology of the West Indies. Specifically, I would describe the geologic origins of the three island groups (Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles, Lucayan Archipelago) and possibly include a subsection describing the GAARlandia hypothesis.

here's a list of references I would cite:

• Blair Hedges, S. (2006). Paleogeography of the Antilles and origin of West Indian terrestrial vertebrates. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 93(2), 231-244.
• Graham, A. (2003). Geohistory models and Cenozoic paleoenvironments of the Caribbean region. Systematic Botany, 28(2), 378-386.
• Iturralde-Vinent, M., & MacPhee, R. D. (1999). Paleogeography of the Caribbean region: implications for Cenozoic biogeography. Bulletin of the AMNH: no. 238.
• Pindell, J. L. (1994). Evolution of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Caribbean geology: an introduction, 13-39. Lindsaeaceae (talk) 02:56, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Misspelling

In the 'Island groups of the West Indies' image, 'Caribbean' is misspelled as 'Carribean.' 46.17.166.92 (talk) 10:26, 6 February 2024 (UTC)