Wikipedia talk:Status of the porting of U.S. Dept of State info

Consensus on breaking apart the long articles

History of *
Geography of *
Demographics of *
Government of *
Economy of *
Communications in *
Transportation in *
Military of *
Foreign relations of *

• Move everything to a separate page, as described immediately above, leaving a few introductory paragraphs on the main country page: --KQ, Danny, Jeronimo, Ed Poor, mav, Scipius, Stephen Gilbert
• Follow the "main page" format described at WikiProject Countries: Danny, Jeronimo, --KQ, mav, Scipius, Ed Poor, Stephen Gilbert

---

Titles and redirects
Should we begin the article name with "The" (as in The Gambia, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Netherlands), and have a redirect from Gambia?

• Omit "The" from the article name (as in Ukraine), but have a redirect from The Ukraine for the convenience of Wikipedians who expect it: Jeronimo (see notes below), Scipius, Ed Poor
• Name the article whatever's most common, and make the full official title the redirect. --KQ, Ed Poor
• Make a redirect from any common alternate usage: Ed Poor, mav (redirects are harmless and only increase the number of page hits) Stephen Gilbert (they also aid accidental linking)
• Use the conventional short form of the name as given by the CIA and be done with it. I can't think of a single case where this significnatly differs from what is mostly used by English speakers. --mav Danny, (KQ here sees no conflict with his vote above, hence it's 3 for this option and two for the first option), Ed Poor, Stephen Gilbert

---

Notes by Jeronimo :

• "The Ukraine" is technically incorrect usage, though many will still write it in that way.
• Let's not forget all the archipelagos: the Maldives, Seychelles, Virgin Islands, etc.
• The article "the" should be included in article titles of the form "X of Y", so "History of the Netherlands", since the use would otherwise be incorrect English. For Ukraine, I propose redirects for "History of the Ukraine".
• All country article should start with the country's full name in bold, so that should include "the" if applicable.

Yes, always use correct English putting "the" where needed for the "of" and "in" articles. --mav

"The Gambia" is also the conventional short form as given by the CIA. --mav

---

other discussion
Stephen Gilbert, Brion VIBBER, and KQ discussed moving away from the CIA World Factbook, as importing it directly results in biased and perpetually out-of-date information. mav and Ed Poor suggest using it for information but agreed that we should no longer import pages directly from it.

Election results

• Almost all agreed to use the pages

History of *
Geography of *
Demographics of *
Government of *
Economy of *
Communications in *
Transportation in *
Military of *
Foreign relations of *

• All agreed to use the format at WikiProject Countries (meaning that we may add additional pages when necessary, e.g. "Culture of x")

• All agreed not to continue importing the CIA World Factbook wholesale, but to work towards unique and less biased articles using it as well as other sources.

• Consensus on the use of "The" seems to be that the article should be at its most common name, and that other common names should redirect to it.

• It should be Demographics, not Demography. And if everyone agreed to use Government, how come it's Politics at WikiProject Countries?

Certification of Election Results

• Agree: Ed Poor, fonzy, mav
• Disagree:The Cunctator

WikiProject

I started a Wikiproject similar to this page. It is designed to use the Library of Congress Country Studies and incorporate the text into Wikipedia articles. Check it out at Wikipedia:WikiProject Library of Congress Country Studies--Bkwillwm 03:03, 27 January 2006 (UTC)