Talk:South Maluku

"List of islands in the South Moluccas" see-also
A colleague reverted in part, saying of List of islands in the South Moluccas:
 * article/list doesn't exist as it actually isn't an entity anymore than the eastern Moluccas or eastern England are entities

Whether the Republic of South Maluku insurgents meant Ambon and its two big neighbors, or everything south of them in the province (or hadn't committed in their own minds to a boundary), their naming choice indicated they thot it (whether South or Southern -- even if the Bahasa makes an equivalent distinction) would mean something to others. Once Indonesia named the northern part, it became pretty hard to argue that the meaning of South/Southern Moluccas/Maluku doesn't have an obvious de facto meaning.

More crucially, inquiring minds want to know what they had in mind, and deserve a Dab page addressing the danger that everyone who's never heard of the RSM before would be misled by the old Rdr into thinking the province and the Mollucas include nothing south of those three islands. The list may be short of solving the problem completely, but that ambiguity in the reasonable ways of construing the expression needs addressing by the Dab. --Jerzy•t 05:38, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

--Jerzy•t 08:11, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * My apologies, but I find the above very hard to understand - I don't know what point you're trying to make. So, with regards to List of islands in the South Moluccas how about I propose a question to clarify things: What exactly is this article about? Is it a (supposed) contemporary region in the Maluku Islands? Or is it specifically the islands that were claimed by the Republic of South Maluku? 
 * I was bold and changed the lead to specify it is at the latter - i.e., those islands claimed by the RMS. The article/list has two main problems: firstly, it's scope/definition is not defined, and secondly, it has no reliable sources - until these two issues are fixed, it risks going off the AFD. --Merbabu (talk) 05:49, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * No apologies needed; there were a lot of moving parts, and i also had not gotten them all straight in my head. Your input has helped straighten me out. I think it's almost there, and i'm anxious to find out if you'll agree.

--Jerzy•t 10:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * My attention was drawn off into the fact that WP says that Indonesia issues "South Maluku" license plates, and that a bird comes from South Maluku. And the dozens of links to South Moluccas, and my brain rotted away, almost before i got some hopefully helpful stuff down on my talk page. Let's discuss further.


 * All I was requesting was a specific definition of what constitutes (or constituted?) South Maluku and WP:RS - not so much for this page, but in particular for the List of Islands of the South Moluccas. I also note that the Republic of South Maluku article also does not contain either a specific definition of the territory let alone WP:RS. --Merbabu (talk) 11:13, 20 August 2011 (UTC)