Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Former countries/Archive 1

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Various comments

Perhaps we should come up with a comprehensive list on all the historical entities we need to apply the template on at Wikipedia:WikiProject Historical States/Status. Prussia does not seem to have this particular template applied, but seems so fine without it. The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia articles on the other hand seem so lopsided and messy. Irish Free State looks neat, but listing all the heads of state would not be feasible if there were too many and the article covers mainly political aspects. Let's discuss what is so appropriate about the existing country templates when applied to defunct states.--Jiang 20:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

For example, it won't be necessary to go into much detail about the geography, given that this doesn't change much over the course of time. We only need to specify the location and mention geography when it concerns other aspects, such as the economy. We should also use "economic history" instead of economy.

Agree Bwood 22:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

The current country articles don't have much transportation and communications. I suppose we won't find much for historical states either. Perhaps a section on techonological advances like at China (which very well resembles an entry on Imperial China)? --Jiang 20:34, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Partially agree. Let's leave an option, for example, to discuss the development of the railroad. Perhaps including a table of when various lines were created. This is useful for knowing when RR transport was available for certain areas. In earlier times, canals were more important than in the modern world. Bwood 22:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, the subpages inherited from the World Factbook should go. More attention should probably be paid to history, geopolitics, heritage/legacy, ... --Shallot 21:20, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Also jurisdictional boundaries and their changes. Bwood 22:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

I would prefer to allow for an approach that may be a little different than most. It gets to the matter of how strictly is WikiPedia a traditional encyclopedia. Using the Prussia page, as an example, note how it deals with several different historical states. You can see that they are all related and that the scope of "Prussia" waxed and waned. While on the one hand, I wouldn't advocate a separate article for every little border change. However, I would like to have separate articles for "obvious" major incarnations. So, in the Prussia case, I would like the Prussia article to remain as it is, and used as a "disambiguation" type page as an umbrella to at least two article pages. My personal agenda is to allow the ability to go into extensive detail about 1800s historical states, including a hierarchy of descendant articles, breaking the state into smaller civil jurisdictional units. For example, for Prussia in the time period of 1815 to 1871 (defeat of Napoleon to unification of Germany), Prussia was a Kingdom (sovereign, independant) that could be subdivided into these sublevels: province > admin. district > Kreis (county) > Standesamt dist. I've been working on incorporating this structure on the Province of Posen pages. I've already successfully defended two articles on the lowest level of this structure from "Vote for Deletion". See Standesamt Kolmar for example, and then work your way up the linked hierarchy to Kreis Kolmar, Bromberg Regierungsbezirk, Posen province. Once there, please note that the province article is just one of several for the same area, but for different time periods. I know most ppl would feel that this structure is too ambitious and detailed, but please refer to the vfd disscussions. We don't have to create the detailed articles for every historical state, but I'd like to have the blueprint ready when someone comes along with a desire to add the info. One of these days, the millions of online genealogists are going to discover Wikipedia, and will be able to contribute an incredible amount of info that they've researched about certain small areas. Let's give them a good working structure to use, instead of playing catch up. Bwood 23:06, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Just finding this project. I don't know that I disagree with anything that's been said. By the way, Prussia remained a Kingdom that was at least quasi-sovereign until 1918, and after that was a state, with presumably the same district boundaries, until 1945. One thing that concerns me here is how to deal with states that exist now, as part of a larger entity, but were formerly independent (e.g. Bavaria, Tuscany), and how to deal with formerly existing states that share their name with current states (the only one I can think of at the moment is the Republic of China, which doesn't do a good job of talking about anything beyond the current incarnation on Taiwan). At any rate, I think this is a good idea. john 01:47, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

There's the question of what more to include other than history. Is having all these extra sections like at Soviet Union really necessary? For the Republic of China, the commentary on what was on the mainland exists in history of the Republic of China. What is there to add before it becomes redundant with China?--Jiang 05:37, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

I would add that subdivisions can be highly problematic, since they change. john 02:03, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

We should explain how they change. I suggest having a section on "territory" rather than geography. Dont know if subdivisions should be merged in though. --Jiang 05:37, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Furthermore: is such a strict structure as suggested in this article really necessarily a good idea? For instance, would we need such things for Kingdom of Great Britain? Surely these articles, beyond situating the subject geographically and perhaps identifying subdivisions (carefully...), should focus on the history of these states (as Prussia does, for instance. But note quasi-duplicate page at Kingdom of Prussia.) At any rate, I'm going to go to status and begin to list defunct states. john 02:16, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Our immediate goal should be transforming articles, such as Soviet Union, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, that have the existing country template applied. We need to make it obvious that these states no longer exist and the current template (e.g. listing the population in the table) is inadequate. I don't think the historical states template should be as widely applied as the existing states one. We will have less info available for older defunct entities than for newer ones. We might want to exclude states that had clear successors (eg Great Britain and People's Republic of Poland) and keep them strictly part of the history series. --Jiang 05:37, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Oh, and should this page include former colonial entities? john 02:17, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

Just to throw my two cents in, I think there is much too much variation among historical states to have a single infobox usable for all of them. I do agree there should be infoboxes, and they should have a recognizable look to them that distinguishes them from current countryboxes, but the fields of information in the infobox should be flexible. Tuf-Kat 07:15, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

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I agree that historical states will need to be more flexible than current states. And I'm thinking that it should be all-encompassing (colonies, etc). Otherwise, there will eventually be someone who wants to start an article of that scope. There should be a core of consistant features, but it should be expected that each article will have some variety. The histories should be more detailed for that time period than the history of the current states. Bwood 03:48, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Flags, Coats of Arms, and Maps

The idea of making taxoboxes for some of the former states appeals to me, but unfortunately we don't have any of the things for which I named the topic for most of the former European states. I don't have any talent for creating such things on the computer. Any takers? Images of the flags can mostly be found at Flags of the World, but they have an awkward fair use policy. Another problem which arises - changing flags. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, for instance, seems to have had four or so, over the three hundred years of its existence. Any thoughts on how to deal with such things? john k 07:20, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

The taxobox is looking good. How about on multiple flags, we display the last one used and add a link to a page that displays them all?

I made the official name of the country have a solid background. Maybe we'll stack those on top of each other for name and flag changes, but it'll look awkward if only the flag changes and not the CoA. Before we call for technical help, we need to figure out what to include in the box. Ideas?--Jiang 01:37, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Archived messages

I've just updated the 2011 archive to include the entire year and created a new archive for 2012's discussions. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 16:12, 5 January 2013 (UTC)