Talk:Indonesian Archipelago

Redirecting

I have restored this page as a redirect for the following reasons. The List of islands of Indonesia is basically synonymous with Indonesia, because the country is made entirely of islands. The meaning is therefore not actually ambiguous because both uses actually refer to the same thing; but a person intending to refer to the country of Indonesia as a geographic or political entity would likely just say "Indonesia". The person refering to the Indonesian Archipelago would be referring to it in its capacity as an archipelago, i.e. as a collection of islands. The third broader meaning of "Malay Archipelago" is not properly a disambiguation term, because it is a different, encompassing entity. As a matter of principle, disambiguation pages should not create unsolvable links, which occur when multiple links on the page are equally correct. Disambiguation should be used sparingly limited to situations where truly ambiguous terms have truly discordant meanings, as with Mercury, which could refer to a planet, an element, a god, a record company, or a car, among other things. To throw a disambiguation label on something because there are multiple ways of referring to the same geographic entity, or the same kind of thing generally, is an abuse of the disambiguation system. bd2412 T 21:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Indonesian Archipelago

@Farhan Curious: Can you explain why you want to delete this article?

Redirecting, again

As was discussed in 2011 this article is basically synonymous with Indonesia, and in the pre-reverted state the article did not pass quality standards. If we want to keep this article as an article and not a redirect then we need to set up an article in Draft so we can work on it and gather sources that establish the topic as being distinct from Indonesia. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 20:32, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

For reference, this[1] is the version we're talking about. It's good that it was pruned, but deprived from BS, it has little so say that's not in Indonesia. The term "Indonesian archipelago" is very often used in RS, e.g. by biologist who generally prefer to talk about geographical areas rather than political entities, or by historians who want to avoid the retroactive anachronistic use of "Indonesia" when talking about times when there was no single entity yet (either as colonial artefact or independent nation) corresponding to modern Indonesia. A careless, but silently understood wider use of "Indonesian archipelago" refers to political Indonesia plus the parts of Timor and Borneo that belong to its neighbors. Western authors who use it in this way do generally not support irredentist fantasies, but apparently just find it practical (including despicable me, who like many other colleagues has little qualms to talk about a "western Indonesian" typology that also includes e.g. Belait or Melanau). In sum, I see little potential for a standalone article without falling into a dictionary mode. –Austronesier (talk) 19:26, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

That's a really interesting take, thanks for sharing. I'm not super familiar with this subject and it's a real joy to learn new things while editing on wikipedia. I think this article could come back in it's own form if it was about like the geography or the Indonesian Archipelago. Like if someone wanted to do a deep dive on all them islands and seas and what not then it would make for a GREAT article. But for now I think redirecting is the best action. Dr vulpes ^{(💬 • 📝)} 05:36, 24 August 2022 (UTC)