Talk:List of first-level administrative divisions by area

Why are people removing all the subdivisions that have an area below 200,000 km²?
Recently we've been adding a lot if subdivisions in this page, going all the way into Nenets, with around ~170,000 km², but I have been seeing attempts to remove all those subdivisions and only leave the ones with an area more than 200,000 km², why?

I mean, I don't see any cons on putting administrative regions below 200,000 km², in fact, I only see pros, since there can be more variety in this page to keep who is seeing more interested, your typical Chinese, American, Brazillian, Russian and Canadian subdivisions make most of this list, and subdivisions between 200,000 km² and 150,000 km² include more Mexican, Algerian, Angolan subdivisions and etc.

My point here is, what is so problematic about adding these administrative regions below 200,000 km² that you guys keep removing it? Daniboy0826 (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This article cannot hold every single administrative division, I established a baseline at 200,000 km2 to limit the amount of administrative divisions we can list on this particular article. We can make companion articles for lists of subdivisions that have smaller areas. I will admit that I chose the limit 200,000 km2 not because it was important, but because it was the closest "clean number" that was completed. I apologize for not speaking to you sooner, as you have made tremendous contributions to this article. I'll stop trying to impose the 200,000 km2 limit, and instead I'll let you add subdivisions until this article reaches 100,000 bytes, when we reach that, we will round up or round down to the nearest "clean number" (btw clean numbers means numbers like 200,000, 150,000, 100,000, etc). Thank you for posting this discussion, without it I would not have stopped to realize the mistake I was making! – Treetoes023 (talk) 21:56, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Things I would like to say:
 * • Thank you, you're cool. :)
 * • I also just happen to notice the mistake I was doing trying to put every single First-Level Administrative Region in the world here, it would probably take down my point of "making this page more intuitive to a normal Wikipedia user" with too much information at once. As you stated, when the limit of 100,000 bytes is achieved, it's going to be better for me, you and everybody else that I stop.
 * • I think we can both agree that the Second-Level Subdivision List alredy has its own article, so it doesn't belong here, I removed it in my latest update. Daniboy0826 (talk) 22:29, 8 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know about 200,000 km², but I think we we should remove subdivisions that have an area below 100,000 km². 100,000 km² is less than the lots of countries in Europe. As for me, I'm from Russia, it's very funny to see Kemerovo Oblast (95,500 km²), Altai Republic (92,903 km²), Chelyabinsk Oblast (87,900 km²) and other small regions of Russia. Saratov Oblast with 100,200 km² square - it's only 33th rank of Russian subdivisions (Russia contain ~88 subdivisions). So about half of Russian regions is here, it's really funny =). Should we have 40(!) of the 50 US states on this list? 80% of all US states! Let's list everything, haha...Especially one like Maine. Yes, the largest country subdivisions are from Russia, Australia, Canada, Brazil, China, United States but it's not a reason to artificially add other countries with 80000+km² subdivisions. This version seemes for be to be better. However 100,000 km² is, imho, better decision - the list will countain Lapland (which is ~half of Finland), Sarawak, England, New York State, Bashkortostan, La Pampa and West Kalimantan - well known and important subdivisions in the world. I thought about the border 150,000 km² - but in this version the above mention subdivisions will be removed. Brateevsky (talk to me ) 10:54, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Should England be here?
There has been multiple edits recently adding and removing England from this list, and I have seen some arguments over this.

Some say that England should be here, because it falls into the category of the first administrative divisions of the UK, that being the constituent countries, then the counties/shires, then the districts, then the civil parishes. Also, the fact that Greenland is here, marked as a subdivision of the Danish Realm, alongside with metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands, supports this claim.

But there's people saying it that the constituent countries of the UK aren't exacly "subdivisions", and that they are more like things of their own, since the UK has three distinct legal jusridictions in Scotland, England and Wales, and Northern Ireland, each retaining its own legal system even after joining the UK, and that the real First-Level Administrative Regions of the UK are the counties/shires. In Reddit, I've even seen some people calling them "0th-Level Administrative Regions", although this argument is without support. Daniboy0826 (talk) 17:16, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I support the inclusion of England. I recently changed the country column to sovereign state, this is primarily because of Greenland. Greenland is an administrative division of the Danish Realm, but the Danish Realm is not a country, it is a sovereign state. Greenland is a country. The same goes for England. England is an administrative division (constituent country) of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is not a country, it is a sovereign state. England is a country. Contrary to popular belief sovereign states and countries are not the same, and countries can be administrative divisions in a larger sovereign state. – Treetoes023 (talk) 18:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This is atypical semantics. Most people, and sources, are very happy to call the UK a country. As for England, it doesn't really exist as an administrative division, unlike Scotland, Wales, and NI, although it's an unusual case. CMD (talk) 00:44, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

List of first-level administrative divisions by population & GDP
I feel like there should be articles listing first-level administrative divisions by population and GDP (which I think are more interesting than just area). I note that this article has population figures, but it doesn't rank by them. Does it make sense to split out two separate pages for administrative divisions by population and GDP, or to somehow consolidate them? Rxtreme (talk) 12:17, 20 July 2023 (UTC)


 * There is alredy a page for that, although I do support putting more informations about the subdivisions here, maybe we'll make a row for GDP in the near future. Daniboy0826 (talk) 16:07, 20 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks like there's a page for GDP (though it's oddly restricted, and the title doesn't lend itself to easy discovery) but not for population? I think the latter is also important -- it's what I was originally searching for in vain (well, until I somehow found this page, which isn't about population). Rxtreme (talk) 08:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Second summary table feels arbitrary
Do we really need the second summary table at the bottom? It ranks countries by the number of subdivisions they have on the page (which lists the top 380), which is a completely arbitrary bar to meet. If the list were longer, eventually Slovenia and its 212 občine would pull out on top, just because it has the most total subdivisions. Why do we need this table at all? I could understand if it included number of subdivisions within a certain size range, but right now it's completely silly. iRDM 05:21, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Area
To help reduce clutter: Instead of stating the unit of area (square kilometer, km$2$) at the top of each table; how about we just state, at the top of the relevant column, "Area (km$2$)", so that we don't hav to keep stating the unit? Solomonfromfinland (talk) 00:26, 27 May 2024 (UTC)