Wikipedia talk:Formatting bilateral relations articles

Things I like and things that could be improved upon

So, first of all, WikiCleanerMan, great work.

Things I like (going to be brief, I like a lot of stuff)

• A format for bilateral relations? Now that's pretty great.
• Overarching structure, includes categories and navboxes. Nice.

What we could improve

1. This essay is hard to read because it's missing subsections, we should add those!
2. I think that this essay could be shortened and make use of bullet points when listing criteria, i.e. what categories to add (towards the end of the essay);
3. The notability paragraph is interesting, but it's currently attempting to define a subject-specific notability criteria (WP:SNG), which is a way for an article which lacks significant coverage (WP:GNG) to avoid deletion, and is agreed upon at WP:N. You can suggest these to editors who wish to create new relations pages, but I think you should more importantly remind them of GNG: is there enough coverage to survive an Article for Deletion discussion? (i.e. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Guinea–Spain relations, but not Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Liechtenstein–Spain relations. See also past failed proposals at Wikipedia:Notability (bilateral relationships) and Wikipedia:Notability_(bilateral_relations).
4. There's a lot of disparity in what subheadings are shown in each bilateral relations page, and I think we should try to establish those. Examples of heterogeneity: Argentina–Chile relations (historical); Ukraine–United States relations (historical, controversies, sister cities); Portugal–Spain relations; Guinea-Spain relations (historical, diplomatic relations, cooperation, high-level visits, agreements signed)

Questions

1. Should we recommend the following subheadings? In what order?
   1. Country comparisons
   2. History
   3. Present
   4. Common membership in international organizations [[i.e.
   5. Resident diplomatic missions
   6. Sister cities
   7. Economic/Trade relations
   8. Diplomatic relations
   9. Cultural relations
   10. Visits by heads of states/official visits /list of summits (who to include?)
   11. Agreements/treaties signed

Things to review

1. WP:INTR has a "suggested standards" section which describes what should be included in bilateral relations articles. Worth checking out. Maybe worth updating through discussion?
2. I also like what WikiProject Nascar has done with their standards. Wikipedia:WikiProject NASCAR/Standards

Pilaz (talk) 17:27, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Pilaz, for some reason I didn't get your ping, but regardless, I could go for adding subsections to the essay and the bulleted list. Although, the information about the relationship isn't of concern in this particular essay. But I don't think this, in particular, is going to be left out by editors or those who create the pages that get taken to Afd's because it's very unlikely that they would leave out the relevant information. But if the relevant information isn't included, it's really up to other editors to include them in to improve the quality. The suggested standards are not set in stone as stated at the top of the section, but I won't be opposed to what types of headings there should be or shouldn't be. But I would recommend images if they exist outside of the map in the infobox. If you haven't seen my subpage of West German and U.S. relations, it includes a gallery as there are quite a good number of quality pictures. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)