Talk:List of political and geographic subdivisions by total area

List of countries - done, to be done
If you'd like to add regions, please see Talk:List of political and geographic subdivisions by total area/Progress for a list of countries which have yet to be added. bd2412 T 23:48, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Attribution and references
Material on this page initially incorporated content from a number of other pages, including:
 * List of countries and dependencies by area
 * List of U.S. states and territories by area
 * Administrative divisions of China
 * List of federal subjects of Russia by area
 * List of Canadian provinces and territories by area
 * List of Algerian provinces by area
 * List of Brazilian states by area
 * List of Mexican states by area
 * List of states and territories of India by area
 * List of Spanish provinces by area
 * List of Burundian provinces by area
 * List of Ecuadorian provinces by area
 * List of provinces of Thailand by area

Cheers! bd2412 T 02:47, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Size of the United States
This is for some reason quite controversial. And it all plays into dick waving politics it seems. CIAFactbook claims one number, the UN claims another and Encyclopedia Britannica claims another. This all comes down to how much ocean the US is claiming belongs to it, which is a greater amount than other nations.

http://www.britannica.com/nations/United-States Total area (sq km): 9,522,055 (2) Includes inland water area of 78,797 sq mi (204,083 sq km and Great Lakes water of 60,251 sq mi (156,049 sq km); excludes coastal water area of 42,225 sq mi (109,362 sq km) and territorial water area of 75,372 sq mi (195,213 sq km)Laomei (talk) 20:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Numbering
I wonder if anybody would have the time to number this whole thing?Stevv (talk) 03:31, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Unless numbering could be done automatically through the template, I doubt that would work. New divisions will need to be added fairly regularly, which would potentially throw the whole thing off. bd2412  T 04:46, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * You're right. Stevv (talk) 13:50, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Spanish Empire
Where is the Spanish Empire. Is it too complicated to add? The Spanish regent who ruled the most land should do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.102.251.165 (talk) 18:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, added. I had been focusing mostly on existing countries, and had just not gotten around to doing all the empires yet. Cheers! bd2412  T 20:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I calculate the greatest extant of the Spanish Empire with the most anachronistic map possible (the United States west of the Mississippi and south of the 49th parallel, all of central America and Mexico, and South America except for Brazil, Guyana, French Guinea and Suriname, plus the Caribbean Islands, the Philippines and the union with the Holy Roman Empire in 1520) as being 17.5 million square km, not the 19 million listed in the chart. If we were to use more realistic numbers for the Hapsburg Empire of 1520, in order to include the 815,000 sq km of the Holy Roman Empire, we would have to exclude the Philippines (300,000 sq. km.), Louisiana (2.2 million sq. km.) and about 40% of Argentina and Chile (1.4 million sq. km.) for a grand total of 13.7 million sq. km. which is commiserate with what the Spanish Empire page used to list and the List of Largest Empires pages still does list as the area of the empire.  The most expansive the Empire was under the Bourbons in the late 18th century was still only 15,850,000 sq. km. still without southern Argentina and Chile, and still no Philippines at this time, while also losing the Holy Roman Empire.  Please advise as to how to change the value in the chart or if it should be left alone. Lawfair (talk) 06:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Rename proposed
These lists are not just "continents, countries, and political subdivisions" but also include geographic such as oceans, lakes, and islands. Also, countries are a kind of political subdivision. Propose rename to: List of geographic and political subdivisions by total area in excess of 200,000 km². 60.27.145.8 (talk) 10:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That seems reasonable. Prodego  talk  16:54, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, reasonable (since there are now geographic subdivisions on all the lists). I'd like "political" to go first - any objection to that? bd2412  T 02:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. In the future, please direct discussions of this type to the main entry, List of political and geographic subdivisions by total area. Cheers! bd2412  T 08:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Flags
Is there a reason why for some subnational entities the flag of the country they belong to is shown and for other entities their proper flag? Some examples: for Sakha Republic, Western Australia and Katanga the flags of the Russian Federation, Australia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are shown, while for Nunavut, Alaska and Amazonas the Territory or state flags are shown.

Is there a logic behind this? Wouldn't it be better to schow each entity's proper flag, except when the entity in question has no flag (the flag of the country it belongs to can then be used)?

Regards, WHB (talk) 07:56, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


 * No specific reason - many of the entries here were copied from local tables already in Wikipedia; in those cases, whatever flag icons were in use were replicated. Cheers! bd2412  T 02:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

UK pieces
Whoever maintains these and other lists, constituent countries of the UK, most notably England (in English wikipedia! :-) are missing. The others are Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales. I added England into List of continents, countries, and political subdivisions by total area from 100,000 to 1,000,000 km². Please process the whole "Constituent country" for omissions in these lists. `'Míkka>t 00:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of things missing - there are well over 200 countries in the world, and only a few dozen have been completed. I will get to the UK soon, however. Cheers! bd2412  T 02:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * All done (please review!) Cheers! bd2412  T 03:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, there's quite a major problem. Most of the UK items link to the town of that name, rather than the political subdivisions - which tend to be named after the largest towns within.  An example would be Dudley/Metropolitan Borough of Dudley, whilst the administrative areas of City of Carlisle and City of Lancaster are amongst the largest administrative areas in England, yet the linked towns (Carlisle and Lancaster) are relatively small and occupy only a small part of the administrative district. Fingerpuppet (talk) 11:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * That should certainly be fixed, then. bd2412  T 02:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Inconsistency with bold text
Should Aruba, the Cook Islands, Niue etc really be in bold text? They each have a special association with their mother country but none are really independent countries... If they are bold, should Montserrat, Macao etc also be bold? Mjb1981 (talk) 16:13, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Addition?
Maybe add the area of the United Nations? I don't know. I've also never participated in a page discussion, so I apologize if I've done something incorrectly here...

66.161.234.179 (talk) 23:12, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting proposal, but do you mean the land that the U.N. actually controls (i.e. the U.N. building in New York and some similar properties in Geneva and other places), or do you mean all U.N. Charter countries (which is basically the land area of Earth minus some random bits of flotsam)? bd2412  T 23:57, 2 July 2009 (UTC)