Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Former countries/Archive 3

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Restarting this project

I am keen to get this project up and running again. At the moment, I am working on some templates and infoboxes for the former incarnations of Germany as well as the provinces of Prussia. Once I have that sorted out, I will probably get to work on other regions. — 52 Pickup 11:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Articles relating to former states here on Wikipedia suffers from a lack of coordination, and they would benefit from a concerted effort of improvement and clean-up in order to make them more readily accessible to other users and readers. I'm interested in improving this. I have been working alot with categorization and among the historical political entities there is a virtual plethora of different kinds of articles relating to various aspects of former states and polities. A major problem with the current situation is for example that there is no clear-cut distinction between what is an article on a former country and what is an article on the history of a former country. -- Domino theory 12:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Instead of inventing a new list of all historical states for browsing, just adapt the State leaders by year, which already links to articles on historical states by date, location and level of government. If the name of the state does not already link to the article on its history, simply add it on the same line. GUllman 18:47, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Domino theory: You've hit the nail right on the head there. Better coordination of the currently available information is of a higher priority that writing nice full entries for everything. Once things are more organised, it will be easier for people to contribute. To help display the information a bit better, and to navigate in a more chronological way, I have made some infoboxes for former states (Template:Infobox Historical State) and provinces (Template:Infobox Historical Province), and I'd appreciate any input on them. At the moment I'm not sure how to co-ordinate this project. Breaking it up into smaller sub-projects didn't seem to work. For a start, perhaps we can agree on a few basic things (content, format, etc.), redo the page for this project, and then each person states what period/region they want to work on.

GUllman: Good idea. Another place to look is also the categories for establishments and disestablishments. — 52 Pickup 13:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I took the liberty of doing a necessary clean-up of the project page and as a part of that also renamed it. There is no reason to purposely distance this project or the scope of articles herein from already established structures in Wikipedia, when all current sovereign states use the terminology countries.

I also introduced two new decendant projects:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Subdivisions of former countries
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Former subdivisions of countries

The first for subdivisions of former countries and the second for former subdivisions of current contries as they need to be handled separately.

I really like the work that has been done with the infoboxes, and I especially like the navigation features to preceding and succeding entities. An interesting twist of this that there could be succession both from and into sovereign entities as well as into subdivisions. I also think Prussia is an interesting place to start for developing the templates because of the many complex changes.

One of the issues I have in mind concerns the current status of articles that are in the scope of the project. To take one example: There are currently two separate articles for the two different Austrian republics that were established during the 20th century.

• First Austrian Republic
• Second Austrian Republic

The second Austrian Republic is the current one and because of this not in the scope of the project. The first republic is in the scope of this project, but how should these two articles be handled?

• Is there really a point to have the second article? One option could be to redirect it to Austria and to implement the template on the first article.
• However that would mean breaking up the sequence of articles in History of Austria. While these two articles are very short there are other more complex examples and one way to preserve an existing structure instead could be to rename them to something like History of the First Austrian Republic and History of the Second Austrian Republic respectively and then create a new article on the first republic from scratch based on the templates.

Thank you for pointing out the State leaders by year as a possible resource, however inspite of its massive structure it contains reatively few entities and on top of that there are many links, which are are outdated. It links to United Kingdom when it should be United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, England when it should be Kingdom of England and so on. Also, updating it in its present form is more or less a hopless job.

Category:Former countries is likely the most comprehensive resource at the moment, but I know from experience that there are other material not included there as well. -- Domino theory 20:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Regarding your questions about Austria, see the following section (moved to avoid cluttering up this section).

Nice work with getting all of the project pages cleaned up, and for starting up the descendant projects. You are right about the scope, we need to interact with other projects (see section below the Austria section) and we should be careful regarding the scope.

Another scope-related problem is that of dividing the project into too many small pieces - which is ambitious and commendable, but can be hard to maintain. For example, the Prussia project currently contains 4 levels of subdivision and these sub-projects are now running the risk of deletion due to inactivity. The person who established the Prussia projects did an incredible job with all of this, but he hasn't been around for a while. I don't want to see it go, so I might have to take it over, even though I am not all that interested in getting all Prussia articles up to the proposed standard (I'm more interested in setting up a framework first, and adding meat to the bones later). Either that or re-incorporate all the sub-projects into just one or two projects. In terms of projects, one level of division (your Subdivisions project) is enough for now. Going down any further than that is not really a good idea at the moment.

The date-navigation feature of the infoboxes definitely work for subdivisions. My experimentation with the Prussian provinces has shown that it should be possible to jump back from the provinces to states of the Holy Roman Empire. Similarly, the states of the German Empire can jump forward to the provinces of Prussia or to modern German states.

For breaking up history passages, I am personally in favour of making separate entries for any soverign entity, and different entries for separate versions. For example, I have made a new entry for the city-state of Lübeck - Lübeck (state). Even though all links referring to Lübeck the state currently link to the Lübeck entry for the city, I am changing them as I see them. Referring to the city when actually meaning the state is, to me, somewhat confusing. -- 52 Pickup 18:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

There are several things I would like to comment on and if I'm unable to sum it all up at once I'd like to come back to it at some point. Like you I'm in favour of the notion where separate Wikipedia articles are maintained for former countries, or virtually any former entities, as opposed to a number of contrasting ideas like the extensive "catch-all article", or the "historic-period article" as part of the history series for a extant country. The fact that there has been no common standards means that all these ideas exist in parallell and when reviewing an article on a former country for the first time you never really know what to expect.

I believe that each former country or entity should have a top-level article characterized by the same hallmarks that the extant country articles have. This doesn't mean that this project should be directly modelled on the countries WikiProject, but it does mean that each article is justified in itself and that it does not recieve its status subject to any other articles or series. In fact it is an anathema that such an article would even make up part of an article series. Decendant articles relating to countries or former countries such as history or politics is a different matter, and could well be serialized.

There is a definitive risk in dividing the project in too many small pieces, but over all I hope that introducing a new structure can actually help to reduce already existing fragmentation. In fact I'm a bit sceptical to country specific projects unless there is a good reason for it. Prussia does its job and I like the initiative of folding all the decentant projects into task forces of the main project. The raison d'être for the upstart subdivisions of former countries project is first to separate sovereign entities from subdivisions, but also to act as an umbrella for existing projects for historic subdivisions. It migth actually be possible to fold a few of them into the project in due course. There are a few projects under WikiProject Country subdivisions of a historic nature but I think there is a reason to separate former subdivisions from current on the same grounds that we distinguish sovereign entities. There is however a need for close cooperation with the country subdivisions project as work there progresses.

A difficult delimitation question that you address is whether to have different articles for separate versions of historical entities. Each entity should have its own article, but what change with-in that same entity would motivate a new article? A new government, a new constitution, a change in territorial integrity, a major de facto (but not de jure) change? There is no categorical yes or no answer, but it would be quite unlikely in the first two cases turning to a tentative possibility in the two latter. -- Domino theory 12:42, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

While I'm not too keen on the historic-period article either, many people prefer to use these when navigating histories, so I think it is a good idea to work alongside them to avoid completely diverging; but at the same time we should not be restricted by that system. I agree that multiple descendant projects are not necessary every time - I was only keen to keep the Prussia project going because:

1. There is no real structure to the Prussia articles. There are a lot of articles out there, but it would be easy to make the mistake that there is nothing there other than the Prussia article.
2. Taking advantage of the structure set up in Prussia project has helped me in clarifying what can be done in *this* project.

The creation of the Former Subdivisions project separate to the Subvisions of Former Countries project was a smart move. The difference is subtle but very important. A good example is that of Poland, whose internal borders had 3 different forms after WW2 (see Poznań Voivodeship).

What defines a change in a state is a good question. At the moment I have started with:

1. When a state becomes (or ceases to be) a monarchy
2. When a monarchy becomes a different monarchy (eg. the various versions of the UK)
3. When a state merges with another state, not including annexation (this particular point is full of grey areas)

This is a pretty simple list at first, but perhaps we can build on it - 52 Pickup 17:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

The history articles are important and its fundamentally a good idea to divide the text up by period. What I'm trying to say is that the concept of combining the description of a historic-period for a current country and a full account about a former sovereign entity in a single article is rarely a good one. It tends to become too much of one or the other while not really achieving the object of either. Often there is also some form of mismatch between time periods of the historic events described and the lifespan of the entity. I believe that the article on the entity outweighs a mere description of the historic period. -- Domino theory 20:58, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Now I see what you mean, and I agree completely. We should operate independently of the "History of ..." articles but at the same time make sure that the right links are in place so that it is easy to move between the borad history articles and the articles for the former states. - 52 Pickup 07:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Austria after 1945

The page on the Second Austrian Republic, as it is now, does appear unnecessary. To make it a bit more meaningful, while still fitting within the History of Austria sequence, it is perhaps a good idea to include information about the Allied occupation on this page. At the moment, the map of Allied-occupied Austria appears on Allied Occupation Zones in Germany and looks a bit out of place. Putting it on this Second Republic page then fits nicely within the stream of things. Alternatively, the Template:History of Austria box should be edited as you suggest.

I have had similar issues with the History of Germany stream. The Template: History of Germany column did not have an entry on Allied occupation and division and, given the amount of work already done on this topic, it does not appear noticeable enough from here. And so I have chosen added an entry to this column and used this Allied Occupation Zones in Germany page as the link. I have also used this page to represent the state of Germany as it existed bewteen the Nazi period and the East and West Germany (for use with the date-navigation in the infobox). If you feel that this is the wrong page, please let me know.

This was also done to counter a proposal on the entry on History of Germany since 1945 page where some would like to merge the West Germany entry into this page, as if this single page should cover absolutely everything that has happened in Germany after WW2 - an idea that I find absurd. -- 52 Pickup 18:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Even if Germany, or Greater Germany since Austria was also included, ceased to exist as a formal entity after the war there was an agreement between the Four Allies to treat Germany as a single nation. In view of this I welcome the idea of treating "Germany under Allied Occupation" as at least a sort of de facto entity. I think that the current namne "Allied Occupation Zones in Germany" founds a bit too technical and I would rather see that as name on a in indepth decendant article corresponding to an article on subdivisions. Regarding the "catch-all article" type for former countries I outlined my position above, in that I perfer a structured approach.

It might be the case that a deep involvement in defining and redefining article series as a process of dealing with the project might be difficult to avoid. But I must reiterrate my position that I can't really see how articles on either current or former countries can exist as parts of article series. Decendant articles is another matter however. -- Domino theory 13:13, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the current name "Allied Occupation Zones in Germany" is a bit technical, but I had to pick one page just from the need to assign one page to represent the period 1945-1949 for the infoboxes and the History of Germany template. It is a defacto entity, but this 4-year gap needs to be represented somehow. As I said, placing this with the "History of Germany" article was mainly a move to prevent the disappearance of the entry of West Germany. There is a rather comprehensive page for this period on the German Wikipedia (de:Deutschland 1945–1949) but, as you say, such a page does not yet exist in English. - 52 Pickup 17:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Article series of current countries like the history of Austria series is as such not the object of this project, however it may become necessary to work intimately with such a series in case it contains parts, which properly belongs to the scope here. The article series of former countries such as the history of the Soviet Union does belong here, at least in part, due to the virtue of already being a historic state. The first priority is of course the main article which acts as an umbrella for all the others. -- Domino theory 21:02, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. We have enough to work on as it is. - 52 Pickup 07:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration with other sections of Wikipedia

For this project and all descendant projects, we must definitely work alongside the History and Country projects - but I think we can do even more to give former states a bigger presence. To this end, I think we should also contribute to Portal:Atlas and Portal:Heraldry. That is when we have included maps or coats of arms in any entries for former countries or divisions, we should also include them in these portals. If we are missing anything, we should make the request for images there - in addition to getting what we need to complete our entries, it stimulates the activity of these portals.

At the moment, there is no portal for flags, which is a shame. But if there were one, all of the above would hold true for any flags we use or need. -- 52 Pickup 18:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been pretty busy lately working on these other features. Over at the Heraldry and vexillology Wikiproject, we're working on figuring out the right places to put images for flags and coats of arms for former countries together in a central location - just as those images for current states are now displayed. It's not quite ready yet. As for maps, they can be placed in the Atlas portal on the page for the modern country that best relates to the former counrty. For example, I've placed a heap of Prussian maps on the Germany page. This is not an ideal solution (soon this Germany page will be absolutely huge) but it will do for now. - 52 Pickup 07:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes

I have moved the historic state infobox to Template:Infobox Former Country to emphasize its connection to this project. I considered doing the same with the historic province infobox, but I felt that some changes were necessary to implement and I didn't want to disrupt the state of the infoboxes for the Prussian provinces so Template:Infobox Former Subdivision has been created. I also took the decision to redesignate the historic provinces template for use exclusively with Prussia. If it should be maintained as such or if that decision was wrong please let me know? I estimate that it will be necessary to have some nation specific subdivision templates down the line, and Prussia can be such a case. I have a few other additions in mind for the generic subdivisions infobox before it can be fully employed. -- Domino theory 10:40, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea with making a generic version of the subdivision template (you beat me to it!). Is the {{{subdivision}}} field the only difference between the Subdivision infobox and the Prussian Province infobox? If so, I'll just add that field to the Prussian province entries and then we will only need to use the one infobox. You are right in that we may need country-specific templates, but it is always good to minimise the number of different infoboxes.

Presently the {{{subdivision}}} field is about the only difference between them. I have some ideas on the functionality and the content which I would like to add before it goes into full employment, but I agree that the number of templates should be minimized. For one thing I want to simplify the flag navigation feature and it seems possible to implement.

Also, there are many former countries that already have infoboxes of some sort. Many are not in template form (eg. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) but I see no need to change them to be used with our templates just yet. But what we can do is add the date-navigation section to these infoboxes. This also applies to the country-specific infobox templates already out there (eg. the one for former Soviet states).

I agree, it's not the first priority to change well connecte articles that work well, but eventually the template and infoboxes should be applied uniformly.

Something new: I'm also working on a new infobox for previous vassal states (User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Template:Infobox Historical Vassal). I have long-term plans to work through the states of the Holy Roman Empire and this is a step towards that. It's a long way from ready, but playing with this new infobox helps in clarifying what other items will be important for other entities. A draft example using this infobox is at User:52 Pickup/Drafts/Ducal Prussia. Perhaps this new infobox is unnecessary and the extra items here can be added to the Former Country infobox, but this new one is still a work in progress. - 52 Pickup 17:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

It might be an idea to give suzerain countries its own template, they have an intermediate status between sovereign countries and mere subdivisions. Adding to that I feel that "Duchy of Prussia" is a more appriopriate name for that article than the present one. --Domino theory 21:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The naming of this entry was not my idea, it is the name that is currently used. "Duchy of Prussia" redirects to this entry. - 52 Pickup 07:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I have some more thoughts that I want to add after a hasty end to my commenting yesterday: Apart from a separate situation for historic vassals and other suzerain entities, separate situations also exist for former colonies and unrecognized countries. These merit different aspects of what information needs to be displayed in their respective infoboxes, but I'm not sure that we need to make these completely independent of each other. Since it is possible to hide and unhide segments of the infobox all aspects could virtually be contained in a single all purpose infobox. However I'm a little vary of extending this into having the same infobox also for subdivisions, and this is partly due to the large number of entries that will be connected to these. One thought is there for to have separate names for different situations like vassals and colonies, but to let them redirect to the former countries infobox which has to be extended to handle these features. This means that new infoboxes can be developed separately and then integrated in to a central infobox with out having to change anything in the individual articles. Am I clear enough or was it all too fuzzy?

Great that you found the Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries/Status. I was planning to set up something similar, but this is a good basis to work from. -- Domino theory 19:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Nice work on refining the infoboxes to a more generic function. I have a couple of comments about the changes, but it is more appropriate to put them on the talk page for the template itself. - 52 Pickup 07:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Great job with the project banner, working categories, assessment details, etc! I think they will be very helpful as tools in managing the project work. I haven't grasped all the finer details just yet, but it looks solid and systematic. -- Domino theory 11:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Some of the categories might still need to be initialised. There's one other file request parameter that I would like to add (for miscelaneous images) - i'll try to get that done soon. But i think that the banner is now ready to be placed. Even without filling in all of the parameters, it should help to get things moving along. - 52 Pickup 17:06, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey all, just a quick note, I don't particularly like how the infobox has been implemented. I would prefer it if the dates and preceeding/suceeding states were at the bottom. - Francis Tyers · 20:53, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I take it that you are referring primarily to the modifications that I made to {{Infobox SSR}} and the example for Armenia SSR? For that box, I can move the extra features to the bottom of the box if enough people want it so. But I am not all that keen on making the change for the main infobox. To me, placing the dates near the top of the infobox shows the reader immediately that this article is about a country that no longer exists - the same way that a person's date of birth and death are usually shown near the top. What do the rest think about this? - 52 Pickup 12:33, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

So long as it isn't used on SSR, ASSR, USSR and SFRJ articles I don't really mind. Typically it is mentioned in the intro that this was rather than is a state which makes it clear enough. I wouldn't object to having the start/end dates in brackets after the name, but this might be difficult in some circumstances. Also, typically the successor states are mentioned in the lead. On SFRJ having all the successor states listed at the top of the infobox is ugly, it would be countless times more ugly for the USSR.

Since the USSR is a collection of smaller states, the corresponding states would be just the Russian Empire and the CIS (similar to the German Empire - listing everything would make no sense). As for having everything explained in the introduction, that is true but in general, when a reader first sees an article, they more often than not see the infobox first. Sure, most of the information in the infobox is somewhere in the article, but the infobox summarises all of this - that's what it's for. You can be sure that more readers look at an article's infobox than at its introduction. - 52 Pickup 13:28, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

In conclusion I think that maybe the infobox is ok for some former countries where there is only one successor and predecessor, but for anything more complicated (and anything I work on), I don't think it is appropriate. - Francis Tyers · 12:50, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

With 2 states is also alright (eg. Kingdom of Great Britain). The layout of icons when there are a large number of states involved is something that we are still working on. For entries that have a lot of past/former states, there is another feature of the infobox which can list links at the bottom of the infobox (eg. Province of Westphalia). But avoiding certain articles simply because you are working on them is hardly an excuse - you'll have to be more specific. - 52 Pickup 13:28, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I moved it down, it is now much improved. Please discuss on the talk page of USSR before you make the change, as it is likely to be contentious. - Francis Tyers · 13:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

In addition, it would be better if the arrow was either singular and to the left (for pre-) and the right (for suc-) or alternatively if something like the {{Click}} was used (but this is UI-bad). - Francis Tyers · 14:02, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

OK. We'll try it this way and see how it goes. I would love it if we could do without the arrows altogether. - 52 Pickup 14:12, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 14:55, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A Holy Roman Empire sub-project?

I wonder if anyone would be interested in starting up a sub-project on the Holy Roman Empire, and perhaps more broadly to the German states and princely/comital houses down to 1918. Given that probably the majority of the distinct state-like entities that have ever existed were estates of the Holy Roman Empire, this would seem like a worthwhile endeavor, especially given how disorganized wikipedia's coverage is at the moment. There's some very good material on the Holy Roman Empire on wikipedia, and some less so good, but some effort at standardization, and at creation of, for instance, navigation boxes and other standardized formats for articles relating to the subject. I've not personally done much in the way of wikiproject management, but this is a topic that, at least at the moment, I'm feeling fairly enthusiastic about getting a real handle on, and if a few people would be interested in working on it as well, I think a lot of progress could be made. There's a wealth of information available just online - some of it already on the English wikipedia, some at Val Rozn's excellent site on the Holy Roman Empire[1], a fair amount on the German wikipedia, and more scattered about on other generally reliable websites - that we could use to get truly excellent coverage of this very confusing subject. People who can read and translate the German wikipedia articles on the subject would be particularly welcome (I can generally get the gist, but couldn't actually translate coherently), as would anyone interested in drawing maps of the various states (this element has been particularly neglected, I think, heretofore.) Anyway, if anyone is interested, let me know. john k 21:07, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Brockhaus

Right now I'm pretty busy with the new Germany WikiProject, which should be one of the parents of your proposed project, but am definitely interested. I would like to help with coverage of the states of the HRE. For them, my Brockhaus Jubiläums-Ausgabe is currently a much better source than Wikipedia. I'll be happy to help translate German articles related to states that disappeared at the end of the Empire, especially the Electoral states and other prince-bishoprics, but my English will need proofreading... Kusma (討論) 09:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

An excellent idea. For a while, I thought that this would be the first taskforce that we would establish. I have set up a page here - there's nothing on it at the moment, so use the corresponding talk page to put up your thoughts on the direction that this project should take. I'm in the middle of reorganising all project pages, so I'll fill in the project page later (of course, if anyone else wants to do it, go right ahead). The WPFC banner has now also been modified. For all relevant articles, the banner {{WPFC|class=[add rating here]|HRE-taskforce=yes}} can be placed on the article's talk-page: see Talk:Holy Roman Empire for an example.

The idea of covering the German states up to 1918 is also an interesting point - the direction of my work at the moment is practically going in the other direction: starting with those states and working backwards (it seemed easier that way), so I would be very interested in taking part in such a HRE project. A close co-operation with the Germany project is a good idea - all supbrojects should interact with regional projects wherever possible. - 52 Pickup

I think this is really interesting and worthwhile, but I am perhaps even more interested in a coordinated effort directed at all the states of the Holy Roman Empire, Austria and Germany up to 1918. One of the reasons why this catches my interest are the many inherent and complex coordination issues within this body of articles that needs to be solved, and the impact this will have on the entire project. In fact this would be a good testing ground for the various kinds of problems that are likely to arise, which needs to be solved not just for these articles, but for the entire project. In this way it could make life a lot simpler when dealing with the entire body of former countries.

Today we have a sub project on Prussia, and now a HRE task force is under way as parts of the project. I think a place is needed for this coordination and I would suggest including that in the HRE task force, perhaps rather than creating a new project or task force. -- Domino theory 16:30, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The Prussia project should not be considered as anything too separate from this project. It only exists now because it was made a long time ago and a considerable amount of groundwork had been done; and I started it up again because I felt like I needed a testing ground for many of the things that we are doing in this project - and in that respect it helped a great deal. The Prussia project could just as easily be a taskforce of this project since the project isn't that big in terms of members, unlike other projects on former countries (eg. the Soviet Union project, which appears to run well enough on its own). That can be arranged if desired.

A level of coordination is definitely needed. To address this, I have a few ideas about improving the set-up of this entire project. Still working on it. - 52 Pickup 13:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Lists of countries

There should be lists of countries by region or otherwise - possibly with a "state of play" table for as long as relevant - so that contributors know what is involved.

How would the "hundreds of statelets of pre-Napoleonic era Germany" be handled?

The two websites I have added are variously useful (and could be referred to elsewhere).

Jackiespeel 17:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. The listing of countries is something that definitely needs to be done. There is a list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries/Status but this is not dynamically updated. Some region-based categories are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries#Scope. Since this project has not been active for very long, the construction of a new list is not yet complete - but things have been put in place to make the construction of such lists easier. There are 2 steps that can be taken:

1. By placing the {{WPFC}} banner on the talk page of any state, a list of all states can be built via the categories generated by the banner (the subcategories of Category:WikiProject Former countries). If the {{WPFC}} banner simply is placed without any extra parameters, the entry will be listed under Category:Unassessed former country articles. The banner doesn't group articles by region but it can, with a minimum of effort, help show what articles need work.
2. The more complete way to list entries is via the Former Country infobox, which assigns entries to a range of region-based categories, depending on the parameters given. See Template:Infobox Former Country/Categories for the categories that the infobox currently supports.

As for the the pre-Napoleonic statelets of Germany, these are being covered by the new Holy Roman Empire taskforce - 52 Pickup 08:57, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Help

Concerning this article on the Former Yugoslavia, I would like to ask you a question about the Former Country infobox.

On the bottom of the infobox in the mentioned article, we can see one flag on the left (the flag of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), while on the right we can see five flags of countries that were created from the SFRY in 1992. However, the country flags changed throughout the years, including the flag of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, while with the dissolution of Serbia-Montenegro, we got two completely new flags of Serbia and Montenegro. Is there any way to create a little tree diagram, because what happed in Yugoslavia is very specific and I think deserves a specific template.

Your help would be greatly appreciated, thank you in advance,

--GOD OF JUSTICE 23:58, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

You are right in that the breakup of the SFRY could be accurately described by a tree diagram, and a separate template outside the infobox to cover this is a good idea - maybe something like {{History of the Low Countries}}. It is very difficult to have so many flags in the infobox - ideally, the number of flags used should be kept down, otherwise it doesn't look so good (still working on this problem). This is why the flags in the infobox describe what happened at the instant that this state broke up, not what happened to its decendant states. For the change in flags over time, that is better described by the Flag of xxxx link underneath the main flag in the infobox (eg. Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina). Having these separate flag of and coat of arms of articles is necessary because there are other people who take care of these features, namely the members of WikiProject Heraldry and vexillology- 52 Pickup 09:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Things to do

At the top of the page, you will see the new To-Do box. This box is now also part of the {{WPFC}} banner. This box is located at Wikipedia:WikiProject Former countries/To do, which also provides an area for detailing any other necessary project-related tasks. The banner now also has a link to a comments page, where people can leave comments and suggestions for other editors to view.

To get a better idea about what things need to be done, I am asking all members to help in assessing all relevant pages. This primarily involves placing the banner on each talk page, assigning a tentative rating, and noting if the page is missing any important features (flag, coat of arms, map, infobox). Any piece of information that you give will place the article in relevant categories which can make it very easy to keep the to-do box populated. See the {{WPFC}} banner page for more information on the necessary banner parameters.

At the very least, simply placing the banner without entering any extra parameters will help, by listing the entry under Category:Unassessed former country articles, which can then be easily placed in the to-do box under "To assess".

On the subject of assessment, a number of improvements have been made. The Assessment department is more or less up and running. There is also a section for assessment requests. The feature for A-class assessment is not yet running, but that can wait.

Once the banners are properly in place everywhere, then it could truly be said that this project has started. - 52 Pickup 13:33, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Category names

There is currently a proposal to rename Category:Countries and its subcategories by substituting the word "countries" for "countries and territories". The set of categories under Category:Former countries are not subcategories to Category:Countries, but several categories belonging to the project have none the less been included in the proposal. My contention is that the proposal as such does not apply to categories governed by this project, but a change in the naming structure regarding extant countries might have bearing on how navigation between categories for former and extant countries. Aside from this I think it's a bad proposal and a half measure. Follow the duscussion here. -- Domino theory 22:00, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Banner

I've made a number of attempts lately to clean up the appearance of the {{WPFC}} banner, trying to make it a bit more compact, but I'm still not too happy with it. If anyone has any ideas on how it can be improved, please go ahead and give it a try.

And please don't forget to add the banner to any appropriate talk page, starting with any where you implement the Former Country infobox. - 52 Pickup 15:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Category: request for expert attention

Wikipedia:WikiProject Expert Request Sorting has recently set up a new category that is related to our project: Category:Pages needing expert attention from Former countries experts. There's only one entry listed there at the moment, but it's well worth keeping an eye on. - 52 Pickup 11:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Scope

Do fallen Empires come under the scope of this project? =Nichalp «Talk»= 04:57, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. - 52 Pickup 15:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)