Talk:Regions of Europe

To describe Visegrad group as "a group of four former Soviet occupied countries" is quite obsolete twenty five years after Cold War. Not to mention that Czech republic and Slovakia have actually never been soviet occupied during their independent existence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.178.145.73 (talk)

Very bad article. Not specifying what is north or west or east europe!!! Specify which country is easter and which central, etc.. In the past not only was specifying but also was having maps specifying them!User:KRBN mkersshhy

FYI: The term "British Isles" is no longer used by the the government or the people of the Republic of Ireland. All reference to the Republic of Ireland like as being a constituent part of the British Isles has been removed from Irish school curriculum and school books. The Islands of the North Atlantic (IONA) has been suggested as a more appropriate reference to the islands of Ireland and Britain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.71.252.193 (talk) 14:27, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There's no sense in replacing something with a redlink, and the note points to the dispute about this. Carl.bunderson (talk) 20:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Regions of Poland
Comments appreciated at Talk:Regions of Poland, regarding whether the article should be moved to Polish historical regions or stay at regions of Poland.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:48, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Problems with the template
See Template talk:Regions of Europe.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:34, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Historical regions?
I was hoping to find some information, maybe even a map of historical regions like for instance Bohemia, Silesia, Galicia and Transylvania, just to take some examples from the eastern parts of Europe. --Oddeivind (talk) 06:07, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

The United Kingdom will need to be removed from the list of countries in the European Union. (11/8/2017) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.148.170.106 (talk) 20:40, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Disputed territory controversy
If it is a problem to call places disputed, such as Kosovo, then we can tackle the matter from the foundations. We can present all breakaway states without modifiers (such as Kosovo note) by editing each heading to say, "the following countries which includes any disputed regions" or something similar. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 07:43, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not a problem to call places disputed. The Kosovo note has been produced (after much discussion) in order to have a standard procedure for explaining the dispute around Kosovo, mainly to avoid endless discussions on how to describe it in every single situation. No similar template has been made for other states with very limited or no international recognition. There is, after all, a difference between being recognised by a majority of UN member states and being recognised by five or less or even zero UN member states. --T*U (talk) 15:12, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * True but looking at the history I see the Kosovo note was devised very long before Kosovo surpassed the 50% mark of sovereign nations (and even today, it exploits this status as a result of its recognition from tinpot microstates with a commitment to US foreign policy but that's another topic). I'm happy to keep it as you left it but the note really is designed to be used once at the first mention only. Having it everywhere might provoke an editor to delete the bulk and then we'd be left with Abkhazia disputed everywhere. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 16:48, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Edin, it seems that this is only an issue with you and perhaps your personal biases. Nobody is arguing with you, we ALL know Kosovo is disputed. But it does have significant international recognition (111 countries). That is why perhaps, it has been included on the map of "Religions of Europe". The other disputed regions (Ossetia, Artsakh, Abkhazia, Transnistria) have mutual recognition of each other and by very few UN member states. Please consider that while they are all technically disputed, Kosovo is in a different geopolitical "situation" than the others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JJ 2626 (talk • contribs) 17:52, 1 June 2018 (UTC) <-- CU blocked sock of User:JJ 25.
 * No there is no personal bias. Saying it is an issue with me per se is a wild exaggeration - just look at the history of the Kosovo page and do you know what? I am not even Serbian. My country happens to recognise Kosovo though I would have preferred all de facto sovereign bodies were recognised and that is my personal viewpoint - nothing anti-Kosovo. The "111 countries" argument is disingenuous because it ignores the fact that the remainder do not recognise Kosovo, whilst at the same time Wikipedia policy on this entity is that parity is supposed to be reflected and this can neither be done with a map that outlines Kosovo with equal sovereign status to all other countries, nor by a map which shows Kosovo to be an integral part of Serbia. I had planned to replace the map with a perforated borderline for Kosovo and possibly for Transdnistria. I am able to make these myself, but I decided not to go ahead when looking closer at the article. It seems the map I was removing was one of a few. Among the remainder it is clear that the border between Kosovo and Central Serbia is a thinner line whilst on at least one other Kosovo appears to be marked as part of Serbia. So either it is a case of making the thing uniform across the article or just leave them as they are. So I was not against the marking out of Kosovo in some form and it definitely needs to be highlighted anyhow since its majority faith differs from surrounding Slavic regions. So I'm leaving it at that. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 07:59, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Your redundant arguments on Kosovo note aside, why are you removing the map? Ktrimi991 (talk) 20:39, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * There were no "redundant" notes, only valid notes. Not sure what you've been reading but on another note, edit warring is not something one can do by himself and if you wish to issue warnings then distribute them to all warring parties or to none at all. If you're party to either version then you are not qualified to even comment there. Besides, I never breached any policy. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 08:00, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Edin, even if only 50+ states had recognised Kosovo at the time of the Kosovo note, it is still quite a difference between 50+ and zero recognitions of Transnistria. Another point: Regarding religion, there is not any significant difference between Transnistria and Moldova, as both are Orthodox by more than 90%. There is, however, a significant difference between Kosovo and Serbia that gives them different colour in the map. That difference is interesting information in the "Religion" section of this article. The borderline between Transnistria and Moldova is not. --T*U (talk) 16:00, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, I am aware that the note is designed to be used once at the first mention, but that part of the article is really not so much a "normal" article with prose, it is more like a collection of lists, not designed for reading through from A to Z. So just in the same way that the country names are linked again and again in the lists, the note is also repeated. I think that is logical. --T*U (talk) 21:02, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
 * TU-nor, so you know with regards the map I have decided to WP:DROP the stick with this comment farther up. With regards the rest of it (the note business), I am satisfied that you are doing what you believe best to reflect the parity required therefore I leave this one to you and will not interfere with how you handle it. Cheers. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 08:03, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * @Edin Balgarin I never said "redundant note", do not put words on my mouth. There is a note on the status of Kosovo, and editors are not allowed to place "disputed" after any mention of Kosovo. Your arguments on placing "disputed" and the map are naive, as the status of Kosovo is known, hence there is no need to avoid a civil discussion and start a campaign of warring. I know very well the rules of Wikipedia, or at least much much better than you. I have fighting vandalism, socking etc a major occupation. You can not have yourself equaled with a newbie, newbies should be given a welcome template before other acts are made. Ktrimi991 (talk) 13:02, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The newbie was a sock which you conveniently failed to notice for someone prating about others being "naive". Rules apply to everyone from the time they hit "edit". Neither the map I removed nor the "disputed" mentions I added were "weak arguments", they were 100% in keeping with WP:PARITY. You know, for someone sounding your own trumpet, I don't see one scintilla of PARITY observance from you. I'd go as far as to say you have an unequivocal pro-Albanian bias on Kosovo/Balkans matters. When I breach a rule, come back and tell me then. In the meantime, I suggest you go back to reading the rules you claim to know about and WP:Don't template the regulars. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 13:22, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * WP:Don't template the regulars does not apply for an account with less than 600 edits like yours. The sock that you said to be "my friend" a few minutes ago on your talk page is gone and recycling it as a tool to make personal attacks on me is dishonest and does not give you any kind of credibility. The maps are small details, and they do not have any value in changing the public opinion on Kosovo or other similar issues. I see around maps that show Kosovo separately and maps that show it as a part of Serbia. Maps are used just to illustrate some Wiki text, and warring over them is naive. Yeah, some say I am pro-Kosovo, some others have threatened me for "supporting Serbs". I have been thretened for my edits by Albanians, and have been attacked by non-Albanians. In the end, I am still here editing and adding my input to wherever I think it might be of value. Ktrimi991 (talk) 13:42, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * From what I've seen of you, it's pro-Albanian. An editor is auto-confirmed after ten edits and four days, can start applying for privileges after 200 and clears the next obstacle at 500 when he reaches WP:ECPGUIDE, and you think you can carry on pretending those to do so are novices? I think this is more a matter of Ktrimi991 vs The Policies. I had already finished discussing the maps several edits back. Have I touched them since? --Edin Balgarin (talk) 14:05, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Maps
In the end there seems to be a talk page consensus that the Religion map can be accepted with the borderlines as they are. Looking a bit deeper into this, I am, however, surprised that no-one seem to have noticed the real problem with the map, the fact that it is irrelevant to the article. Given the content of the section "Religious groupings", it could be useful with a map showing which parts of Europe have Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Muslim majority or plurality. A map showing percentages of Christians in each country gives no illumination about this at all. The map is already removed as a roll-back of a sock account edit, but the source link is still in the article, so I'll remove that.

The EuroVoc map in the "Geographical" section is also problematic. This classification scheme is not mentioned in the article, and it is only one of many possible such schemes. No need to give precedence to one such scheme, and particularly not in a section presenting peninsulae.

The same arguments can be used against the CIA Factbook map. There is no reason for giving that map some kind of "official" standing by placing it as the only map in the section "Geographical boundaries".

I will remove both the Eurovoc and the CIA map from this article. The regional boundaries are discussed thoroughly in the different linked articles about Northern, Central, X-ern Europe. That is where such maps belong, not here. --T*U (talk) 11:32, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
 * For what it is worth, I will support keeping maps off for the time being. They cause all sorts of problems anyhow (as we saw) but on the whole, the basis for my argument is that this article is just too insignificant to need maps with highlighted areas. The article is just a classification page for how we can subdivide Europe into various types of zones. --Edin Balgarin (talk) 15:28, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

First map on the page
Archives908 pushes the map of the CIA World Factbook to be the first map on the page. Obviously the United Nations map is the most neutral as the UN is the most important international organization in the world. How can anyone even push the map presented by the intelligence agency of one country over the map of the UN?? 81.221.222.158 (talk) 10:55, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * As the UN geoscheme explicitly states, "the assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories". It is therefore no more autoritative than any other source. But let us discuss it. In my opinion, it might be better to have the EuroVoc map on top, since they can be regarded as experts on European matters. Perhaps a RfC is needed? --T*U (talk) 11:14, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * And the CIA World Factbook is still not above it. They are by no means experts of Europe, looking at how Cold War specific their division is. I repeat, the UN geoscheme is the most neutral source and it should be the first one. I really don't understand your motives here and you are the one going against common sense. Agenda-pushing is not cool! 81.221.222.158 (talk) 11:43, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Each of the three maps have pros and cons. That is why we present more than one. The World Factbook grouping is, as you say, based on the intelligence agency of one country. On the other hand, that grouping is specifically done for the purpose of grouping states into regions, which is what this article is about. The UN Geoscheme is, as you say, neutral. On the other hand that grouping is made for a completely different purpose (statistical use only), which leads to oddities like Siberia being included in Europe and Turkish Thrace being included in Western Asia. The EuroVoc grouping is basically produced for standardization purposes, which is fine for this article. However, it does group Central and Eastern Europe together, which is not quite suitable for the purpose of this article, since Central and Eastern Europe is not really considered a region, but is a geopolitical term coined after the end of the Cold War.
 * Actually I begin to think that we should remove all three maps from the top of the article and perhaps making a section further down about "Different groupings" or similar. That way we avoid feeding the misunderstanding that the top map is the most important, which has never been intended. --T*U (talk) 13:17, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think readers would assume that the maps are "more or less neutral" based solely on the order presented. However, if we're going to be really picky, a new section in the article dedicated to maps isn't a bad idea. I also could see the EuroVoc map switched to the lead since that map is based on a standardized EU definition of the current political classifications of Europe. But again, I don't believe it's that big of a deal if we maintain the status quo. Regards, Archives908 (talk) 21:29, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, 81.221.222.158, being indifferent to the random order of maps/ maintaining the status quo is not "pushing an agenda". Based on your talk page history, I think this will serve as a good reminder to focus on the content rather then pointing fingers and making accusations. Thanks, Archives908 (talk) 21:32, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I have suggested a presentation here. --T*U (talk) 23:17, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Looks great to me, thanks for working on that! Archives908 (talk) 00:30, 25 December 2021 (UTC)