User:Iketsi/sandbox/country data


 * Some 2-letter Template:Country data redirects can be ambiguous (CA, DE, etc.) and they are currently interpreted arbitrarily as either a ISO 3166-2 country code, an official state/province code , or even a shorthand for a different type of entity altogether . See the table below for a list of collisions between ISO 3166-2 countries and official state/province codes in Canada and the United States. Note that there are dozens of additional collisions with cantons, oblasts, and regions from other countries.
 * Unambiguous state or province codes (, , etc.) could safely redirect to Template:Country data Texas and Template:Country data Utah respectively, but they create an expectation that cannot be fulfilled consistently, for reasons mentioned above and illustrated below, so I would suggest deleting them to prevent the   confusion I am trying to address in the first place.
 * As a solution, to harmonize the current set of redirects, I propose:
 * Interpreting all 2-letter codes as ISO 3166-2 country codes and creating the appropriate redirects to corresponding long-form Template:Country data templates. Those codes are commonly used online as country code top-level domains (ccTLD) and most users are familiar with them.
 * Next, I propose that we build upon the aforementioned codes by creating nested codes for states, provinces and all other types of first-level administrative divisions:,  ,  , etc. This way, we eliminate the inconsistency and incompleteness of the current set of redirects, while keeping a reliable set of standardized, fixed-width aliases for administrative divisions not covered by ISO 3166-3. Having the option to use these codes would be particularly useful to users who want to preserve alignment in the source code of complex tables. They also make sense in interwiki translations, since codes remain identical between languages.
 * The only potential downside would be that, which currently redirects to Template:Country data African Union, would be redirected to Template:Country data Australia. We can still make exceptions for other commonly used codes that are de facto extensions of ISO 3166-2  as long as they do not collide with official ISO 3166-2 codes for countries and country-like entities.
 * I can personally correct the "What links here" page of every existing redirect, in case expected workload or projected laziness come up as arguments against this proposal.

Two-character codes

 * Country (ISO 3166-2)


 * State/Province (CAN/USA)