Talk:Country/Catalogs

I realise I've made an off-the-cuff policy decision here with my intro. Feel free to dispute, but I think it is the only way to avoid back-and-forth POV pushing of the type that plagues Wikipedia: To count it must be a UN member.Ian Cundell 18:44, 7 March 2007 (CST)

Why not rename the article to "List of Member States of the United Nations." (or something more catchy.) Since that's what it will be. Derek Harkness 04:03, 8 March 2007 (CST)

I agree with Derek about the title of the article. I've added the members from A through L. I'll add the rest later today.Hillie Plantinga 08:55, 8 March 2007 (CST)

The problem with the name is that we aren't interested in "member states of the UN" (right now). We're interested in the countries of the world. Therefore, in addition to the UN states, we can have a handy list of nonrecognized/questionable/whatever states. --Larry Sanger 09:21, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Gareth's slight reworking of the intro is immensely helpful. The point is to have a clear concept of organization that avoids the problems of special/ vested interest groups arguing that their hobby horse absolutely MUST has recognition at the top level: as a matter of policy we should deal with "nonrecognized/questionable/whatever" in the article for the pertinent state that is recognised. Any argument is over at a stroke and if you wish to know about South Ossetia you start at the Georgia article.

I would also argue for a name change, but to Citizendium Gazetteer, with a category of the same name for country's/ city's/ continent's etc articles, and the removal of Countries of the World from the Social Science section on the front page because, quite frankly it ain't. As I may have cited elsewhere, mere place names are not geography.Ian Cundell 17:38, 8 March 2007 (CST)

I'm very open to a name change. Citizendium Gazetteer is an interesting possibility. --Larry Sanger 19:18, 8 March 2007 (CST)

Cool. What's the best way to take things forward? Just go for it and see it it ends up making sense? Ian Cundell 15:05, 10 March 2007 (CST)

I'd like to discuss the implications of our labelling a list of countries a "Gazetteer." What precisely will we mean by this term? Does this mean that we will have Gazetteers for every national and major subnational entity? Let's get a reasonable proposal on the table before we take an action with such consequential implications. Will we mean something different by entries in a "Gazetteer" than what we mean by "encyclopedia article"? Or is the only reason we choose the word "Gazetteer" that it provides a nice label for a list of geographical entities? --Larry Sanger 17:46, 11 March 2007 (CDT)

Additional Information.

Can we convert this list into a table and add some addition information and or demographics. For example, Capital City, Continent, Population, Land area, Adjoining Counties and Seas. Derek Harkness 19:49, 8 March 2007 (CST)

No problem in principle, but I'd be wary of over complicating things. I'd favour keeping as sinmple an index as possible: Country; Capital; Land Area; Population. No real need for "feature bloat"

But if we switch to a Gazetteer approach there may be scope for a more flexible outlook. In the end any apporach needs to be easily understood. Ian Cundell 15:02, 10 March 2007 (CST)