Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of colonial, imperial and otherwise controlled foreign territories by dominant power


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was no consensus. Strongly urge to make use of right columns (perhaps structure this in tables, supplanting and supplementing the templates). Renaming is also an option, as is reorganizing. It's obvious merging is likely to detract from the holistic scope of this list &mdash;which some view as desirable, while others maintain some overlap to be unavoidable&mdash; and this decision is left for discussion elsewhere. El_C 18:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

List of colonial, imperial and otherwise controlled foreign territories by dominant power

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Delete indiscriminate collection of loosely related things. Also, unnreferenced, POV and difficult to verifiably maintain. The definition says:"widely varied spectrum of colonies, protectorates, mandates, trust territories, occupied or annexed states, dependent territories and other political entities that were (or in some cases are) subjected to another sovereign power, or in (de facto unequal) personal union," There were thousands of wars and country expansions in human history during which someone "sontrolled" something else. This list may easily contain tens of thousands entries. `'Míkka 16:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete as per nom and as per WP:NOT. DES (talk) 16:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. Oli Filth 17:11, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Seems to be a fairly good job.  the dates provide the basic information, & the articles on the countries will give the details,. Indiscriminate means applying no criterion for discrimination, and there is a very clear one: those area... The list further fulfills the purpose of a list by being organized usefully by controlling country.  To delete an article because it "might grow too large" is a strange reason, given that we have several methods of dealing with such articles, such as splitting them. Deleting an article because it might have POV problems is equally strange, because probably all the content in WP dealing with politics or history has POV problems. Difficult to verifiably maintain is strange, since there is no evidence that it is not well maintained--and in any case is an editing problem.  I remind my colleague above about the usefulness of saying per nom without further explanation--it doesn't show that one has even read the AfD, let alone the article. And what is one supposed to reply. "anti-nom"? Let's have a real discussion here. DGG (talk) 18:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * My nomination is exactly because it is not clear. In particular, "occupied or annexed" covers basically the whole history of civilization territorial movements. The criterion is extremely vague. People even still don't agree what "colony" is. "Subjected to another sovereign power": was France "subjected to sovereign power of Vatican? After all, Pope could excommunicate a king. This article is an arbitrary collection. If there are salvageable, well-defined pieces, by all means save them before deletion. There is no problem with GFDL, because non-creative, purely compilative lists are not copyrightable. `'Míkka 19:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep I'd much rather filter this down to Nations who were colonies or something like that, where the inclusion criteria is strict. Corpx 20:09, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per DGG (except for his last two sentences; "per nom" can be a legitimate comment). Newyorkbrad 21:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete or Rewrite completely. Uhm.  I need a little help parsing the opening statement .. the stated inclusion criterion of this list is convoluted.  This list needs to either be pared down and renamed to reflect some kind of quantifiable purpose, or just deleted outright.  As it stands it is open to include literally any political entity in the world.  ɑʀкʏɑɴ 21:42, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete Poorly conceived, poorly defined, poorly titled, far too open to debate. I would say it is rather indescriminate, as the criteria are far too general, vague, and contains far too many poorly defined terms or concepts. Categories would work far better in organizing this disparate material. Agent 86 22:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete, that kind of lists are difficult to maintain and verify, and since we already have that information splitted in other articles (e.g. Antarctic territorial claims, British Empire, etc) such a huge list is unnecessary. Phrases such as American Empire may attract edit wars or flaming, and as Agent 86 said categories would work better. &mdash; Shining Eyes  23:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak Delete -it appears too vague to be functional in its current form. --Haemo 23:46, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * But Japan was occupied by Allied forces after WWII. :) ɑʀкʏɑɴ 00:20, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Damm! I forgot... uh, there's a slice of Antarctica that's not claimed by any country?...--Victor falk 00:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you kidding? Of course not. Russians claim even the North pole! `'Míkka 16:29, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * True there is a slice, although the USA (& the Russians) reserves the right to claim, but the Antarctic Treaty System currently over-rides all claims.


 * Keep May just need some clean-up in areas & better titled, but overall still informative & more sourcing could be looked into, if given the time & effort to get them. If defined better or even specifically split up in separate articles may help keep it in better shape. That-Vela-Fella 16:55, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep This is an excellent, intelligently organized table that sums up the history of colonialism and the age of imperialism about as concisely as I've ever seen. Without judgment, it simply lists when a current nation was once under the administration of another nation.  It wasn't that long ago (relatively speaking) that the sun never set on the British Empire.  Now it sets at 8:35 pm, tomorrow at 8:33.  Mandsford 00:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. A highly useful list for historical research -- though I think a chronological scheme of  organization would suit it better. RandomCritic 01:21, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment First, I'd like to point out that this list is highly redundant to List of empires, which is much more informative and better organised (and that's saying a lot, since it's tagged to be cleaned-up!); many of them have infoboxes that in turn list territories.
 * To be useful, this list would have to be a table, with on one axis, every year from 1500 to 2007, and on the other axis, every colony, protectorate, possession, dominion, satellite, dependency, mandate, condominium, province, and occupied territory that has switched allegiance at one time or the other. That list would be slightly cumbersome--Victor falk 11:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.