Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations/Archive 1

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WP:NPOV

Resolved

 – NPOV guideline added to WP:WPFR. Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 04:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Please be aware that this project will likely necessitate extreme vigilance to maintain WP:NPOV standards. I applaud you effort, but advise extreme care and caution in your endeavor. Best of luck, and happy editing! SkipperClipper 03:51, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to put a little note on the main page...hold on.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

original council proposal discussion for Foreign relations

Resolved

 – (technically an archived discussion) Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 04:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Description

This WikiProject will aim to focus on articles that not much people really focus on. This Project will have 3 different kinds of articles under its scope: foreign relations, diplomats, and international meetings. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Foreign relations - United States-Australia relations/Australia-New Zealand relations/Foreign relations of Azerbaijan
• Diplomats - Batyr Berdiyev/Hersey Kyota/Sayyid Faisal Bin Ali Bin Faisal Al-Said
• International Meetings - Millennium Summit/2005 World Summit/Shamrock Summit/Summit of the Americas

Edits made to WP articles are heavily focused towards topics regarding the US, UK, and other major English-speaking countries here in the English WP. This project will focus on foreign relations between...let's say-Samoa and Palau. The project would attempt to create a centralized list of further branching list of all ambassadors from all countries. It would also attempt to create a detailed account of any international meetings, such as those listed above.

I realize that most of this project's work would overlap into other WikiProjects. But an American Wikiproject can't possible form a United States-Australian relations without the assistance of the Australian Wikiproject! Therefore, I think that the Foreign relations WikiProject could also be a place where country-related Wikiprojects could meet together and discuss.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 15:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Ed 15:18, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
2. Chris 21:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Comments

I like the idea. I wonder how it would relate to the proposed "Diplomatic Missions by Country" proposal higher on this page, though. John Carter 15:36, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

• I like the broader scope of this Project, and believe it has more appeal than the abovementioned Diplomatic Missions by Country. In the long run, broader is better and stands a better chance of survival, given the inactive narrower projects. Chris 21:39, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
• Agreed. Diplomatic Missions by Country can be subsumed into this category rather than exist in its own right. Kransky 15:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Project guidelines - comments

Resolved

 – Concerns have been taken care of Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 04:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

In WP:FOR#Article_talk_page, editors are urged to add banners of projects that they think are relevant. I would propose that this project lets those other projects decide what's in scope for them and what isn't.
Also in the same section, for diplomats, editors are urged to place this project's banner first, the WPBiography, then the others that were there. There have been many incidents where project members have taken issue with their banner being put "below" others when their's was there first. I would think it best if the banners be placed in chronological order.
All in all, this has the promise of being a great project! --Kimon^talk 02:10, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

merge United Nations Wikiproject here

The United Nations Wikiproject is currently inactive. Chris and I thought that maybe it would be a great idea if we would merge that project here as a task force. That way, we can get more manpower and widen our scope! Do you think that this might benefit both WikiProjects?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

We should duplicate (or host) this discussion at WPUN, it is their project that would be merging. Chris 04:28, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to leave a message on the talk pages of the people who signed up for WikiProject United Nations inviting them to join us here. Even in the early phases we could use a few extra hands, and most of them would probably be interested, right? Any reason for me not to go forward with a miniature recruitment drive? --JayHenry 04:55, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

rename sub-discussion

Resolved

 – Rename has been completed--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 01:43, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... perhaps we should call it 'WikiProject International relations', then. There isn't anything "foreign" to the UN, really.--Pharos 04:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

No. The UN is merely one small aspect of international relations, while international relations subsumes the UN and other subjects like bilateral diplomacy. Kransky 15:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

So...your saying that this project should be renamed to "International relations" anyway? It seems like a good idea.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 01:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

You know, now that I think about it, it strikes me as right, too-"foreign" implies "other", we don't want to get this into an "us versus them" mood-support rename to Intl Relations. Chris 01:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

• comment-FR is just a disambig page, while IR has a substantial article. Yeah, I like the rename idea more and more. Chris 01:58, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I also like the idea of renaming the project International relations. Does anyone actually object?--cj | talk 09:23, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd support a rename to either International Relations or even Diplomacy. --JayHenry 17:12, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Diplomacy might be oversimplifying-sometimes those relationships are anything but diplomatic, sometimes flat hostile. IR covers the whole range without assigning a value to those relations. Chris 17:35, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm... I don't think of Diplomacy as a loaded term that necessarily carries those positive connotations. The dic def is simply "the conduct by government officials of negotiations and other relations between nations." That seems similarly neutral to me. I'm fine with either rename, so if we think that Diplomacy will cause confusion (which I personally don't), I'm fine with International Relations. --JayHenry 18:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I would also support the rename to either International Relations or Diplomacy (as JayHenry said). I would also support bringing the WPUN under this project. --Kimon^talk 17:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd personally prefer diplomacy over International relations. Does anybody really object to Diplomacy or International Relations?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

My original point re: Diplomacy is that sometimes relations between two nations do not take the form of diplomacy at all, sometimes it is simply outright hostility or not talking at all (vide U.S./Cuba after 1960), both of which _do_ fall under Intl Relations, but which most definitely do _not_ fall under Diplomacy. Favor IR-broader term to allow wiggle room where there is grey area. Chris 02:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I see your point. Maybe we should go towards Intl Relations. After all, that is what this project is intended for.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:50, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I would support making the Project "International Relations" and making WP:UN a task force of it, with a linkage of some sort to WP:MILHIST for the military aspects of the UN. Buckshot06 14:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

We seem to have no objections to the name International Relations. Shall we go ahead with that? --JayHenry 21:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead. It does seem like there are no objections--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 01:21, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I went ahead with the rename! I think I got it all... I left the old templates in place with the foreign name, and created new ones with international. That way we don't have any red links. Is there an easy way to get a bot to go through and switch all the pages that are tagged as part of the project? --JayHenry 04:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I sent a request on WP:BOTREQ. There's one thing we left out though, and those are the shortcuts. What shortcuts do you think we should use? Shall we maintain the old ones?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 04:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Another template

Resolved

 – Added to main page--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 01:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I presume Template:Infobox Bilateral relations would fall under the aegis of this project as well.--Pharos 04:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm...that is a really good template. Does anyone have previous experience with that template? I can't figure out its usage.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 15:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

You can check Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox Bilateral relations to see the template in use. It's pretty straightforward. It also gives us about 75 pages that are already under the scope of the project. Unfortunately, the maps appear to have been created in photoshop and uploaded one-by-one. --JayHenry 15:40, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Diplomatic Missions by Country discussion from Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals

Resolved

 – (technically an archived discussion) Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 02:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Description Listing all the diplomatic missions each country has.

Interested Wikipedians

1. Kransky

Comments

About 82 countries done so far.

I think other editors might be more likely to support the possible project if it were to expand its scope a little. Certainly, I do not yet know of a Wikipedia:WikiProject Diplomacy, which could cover the existing diplomatic missions, former diplomatic missions, diplomats' biographies, diplomatic history, and so on. In the process, of course, specific articles relating to each nation's individual existing missions would be pivotal. Badbilltucker 17:02, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Badbilltucker. The intention would only to focus on the diplomatic networks of each country, i.e: where they are, and have a consistent and publically endorsed format. Additional details like current or prior ambassadors or other details is possible later (some articles have this information already) but it would be laborious to keep current. Kransky 10:43, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realize that this proposal was here. I proposed #Foreign relations a bit farther down. Are the scopes similar?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 15:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Israel-United States military relations

Following the AfD debate and DRV discussion on United States military aid to Israel, I've created Israel-United States military relations in an effort to resolve the outstanding issues. Key points:

• The new article has a wider scope, covering military relations in general, military aid, procurement, joint military activities and significant controversies.
• The article is intended to be the prototype for a series of x-United States military relations articles; I've written it around a template that can be used for any article of this type. See Talk:Israel-United States military relations for an explanation of the template.
• The article parallels the existing Israel-United States relations article as a spinout and expansion of the military relations aspects.
• All the content is referenced. :-) It's a combination of expanded relevant bits from Israel-United States relations, merged content from United States military aid to Israel and a substantial amount of new content, mostly from Jane's.

I've proposed a merger of United States military aid to Israel into Israel-United States military relations (although I should note that I've already merged everything I feel need to be merged).

Please take a look at the new article and leave comments on the talk page. – ChrisO 10:38, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

IMHO I am loathe that a third level of taxonomy should exist (Foreign relations of Whereverstan -> Whereverstani-Whateverland relations -> Whereverstani-Whateverland military relations; to say nothing of Treaty of Military Cooperation between Whereverstan and Whateverland since many military treaties exist as articles here). Granted there is a U.S.-Colombia military relations article (so nobody can accuse you of bias by content forking, but I cannot see why it needs to exist separately. Kransky 09:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sovereign states

There's currently a request for comment going on at Talk:List of sovereign states about whether or not Transnistria or Somaliland or a few others should be listed on the list of "sovereign states." Thought some of the people here might be interested. --JayHenry 18:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Needed renames due to WPIR MoS

• Japanese-Russian relations to Russo-Japanese relations
• Foreign relations between China and Japan to Sino-Japanese relations
• Australia-Japan relations to either Japanese-Australian relations or Australo-Japanese relations

Chris 22:18, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Should be Australian-Japanese relations - the word with the fewest syllables goes first, and if they are equal then it is the word that would appear first in a dictionary that goes first. I've never heard of "Australia" being prefixed into "Australo-", except in the case of the extinct ape Australopithecus (which is telling something) Kransky 10:42, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

In that case, Japanese at three syllables is shorter than Australian at four. Chris 00:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

"Australian" has three syllables, not four. We say Aus-stray-lan, not Aus-stray-lee-an. Kransky 12:41, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Diplomatic mission naming conventions.

I have put up for discussion several 'embassy of' categories. These really should be Diplomatic missions of. You can see the discussion points Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_24.

Additionally, the project should look at Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(categories)#Miscellaneous_.22of_country.22 as it will explain it. To stay inline with the naming conventions, the individual articles in Category:Diplomatic missions by country need to be renamed to Diplomatic missions of..., as the categories how they stand now don't make it clear by the title if it is Diplomatic missions in Niue or Diplomatic missions of Niue. --Russavia 09:50, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The changes are being made. However I think it is obvious that (say) the article Russian diplomatic missions refers to diplomatic missions owned and operated by the Russian Federation. Kransky 10:52, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Activities of Limited Duration

• Activities of Limited Duration (via WP:PROD on 12 September 2007) Deleted

(PROD by User:Edcolins; "Activities of Limited Duration (ALD) is the name given to a contract modality within the United Nations....")

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:19, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Global Good Neighbor Policy

• Global Good Neighbor Policy (via WP:PROD on 4 September 2007) Deleted

(PROD by User:Fram)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

High priority articles

I thought I'd pick out some of the major missing articles, from different regions of the world. These ones should be relatively easy to research; perhaps we could collaborate: Sino-Vietnamese relations, Indo-Sri Lankan relations, Argentina-Brazil relations, Russia-Belarus relations, South-Africa-Zimbabwe relations.--Pharos 05:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Good idea! One question: How do we distinguish between Argentina-Brazil relations and Brazil-Argentina relations? Doesn't the order of the countries' names imply a superiority between them? And I also think that we can get the help from other WikiProjects too.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 05:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that under normal circumstances, the first name represents the perspective of that country. For instance, American-Italian relations represents the way America views its relationships with Italy; whereas Italian-American relations, represents the Italian perspective. Altough here, you need one single article to cover both of those things. Well, good luck! Heh...--Thus Spake Anittas 18:51, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I've given the naming thing a little thought too. The standard method would be just work alphabetically, and this makes sense to me. Such an approach, though, would be complicated by special forms like "Sino", "Indo", or "Anglo". We might want to consider a standard format that would avoid the adjectival forms (United Kingdom-United States relations instead of Anglo-American relations). It would be more awkward, but it would also be more consistent. This wouldn't be too different from the type of standard format we use for monarchs and nobility.--Pharos 06:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Where the adjectival forms exist, I feel we should use them. No need to shy away from common usage for the sake of a arbitrary standard.--cj | talk 06:23, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, we should have some sort of standard, because otherwise these articles will be titled quite randomly, as a cursory survey of the categories would show. As I see it, there are three types of name-forms we could be using, noun (e.g. India), adjective (e.g. Indian) and special prefix (e.g. Indo), where special prefixes only exist for certain countries. The first question is, what is to be the basic form used (i.e. Argentina-Brazil relations or Argentine-Brazilian relations? And then, if we assume countries with special prefixes always form the first part of the name, what do we do with double-prefixable countries – do we just go alphabetic (and alphabetic by country or by prefix?) or use the form that's more established? And what about prefixes that exist, but are a little rarely used, like "Russo"? It might be possible to work out these issues, but I hope you at least see the attraction of a simple standardized system.--Pharos 07:02, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Most of these types of articles that involve major countries have already been created. I think it would be best if we invite the other WikiProjects with countries to participate in this discussion as well.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 16:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I saw that you were asking about this on the Peruvian Wikiproject. I'd personally say that with regards to domestic Latin American relations there does not exist yet an article on Peruvian-Chilean relations. This is important because since the War of the Pacific the two countries have been considered "enemies" by "nationalists" from both sides. It also goes into cultural aspects such as the Pisco debate over who has the right to claim it as the national drink. Luckily there already exists a decent article with regards to Argentinian-Chilean relations, which is another important bilateral relationship in South America which came to mind when reading this.--Jersey Devil 19:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

You bring up a good point on that, too. Should we be creating articles on relations between all countries, whether they're hostile or peaceful?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 19:16, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Just dropping in from Wikipedia:WikiProject Switzerland. Thanks for the notification!

I think standardisation in that matter is a good idea. As to naming, how about we use commonplace forms for the title, but use the alphabetical ranking of the ISO country codes for priority? E.g., "Sino-British" because CHN comes before GBR in the ISO list.

As to Ed's question, well, that would be on the order of 200*200=40.000 articles, and probably more accounting for historical countries, regions, empires etc. As long as there's not much to say about a relationship, it may be better covered in the "Foreign relationships of ..." articles. Sandstein 19:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The name order should be alphabetical or whatever sounds more "right" like putting Sino before American... - Fedayee 19:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Just popping in to say that I agree with Fedayee on the naming. (My apologies to Zimbabwe, who would never be in first position due to this policy.) Further, I think that discussing both perspectives (i.e., A to B, & B to A) in one place would lead to a better & more helpful article, unless the matter becomes too complex or long. – llywrch 22:04, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

A quasi-linguistic 2c: the "natural" name order is usually formed by taking the shorter adjective first: Polish-Lithuanian relations sounds more natural and common than Lithuanian-Polish relations, and in some cases the difference is really huge ([1] vs. [2]). Other than that, I don't see a particular need for title standardization: just WP:NC(CN), some common sense and an appropriate number of redirects. Duja► 12:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

If there are any Polish-related relations articles, I (and many others at WP:PWNB) would likely help. Personally a Polish-Lithuanian relations list is on my 'to translate from pl wiki' list, and Polish-Ukrainian relations is on 'to do' list...-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  04:09, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The article about the Cellulose plant conflict between Argentina and Uruguay should definitely be under the scope of this project. James Hetfield (talk · contribs) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.64.4.72 (talk • contribs)

Similar project

Thanks for the notice that you posted on WP Former Countries. Are you familiar with WikiProject Power in international relations? It is not a very big project, but their scope runs very closely with yours, but they set themselves a much smaller starting scope (see this thread). Perhaps you should pool your resources.

The evolution of foreign relations over time fascinates me, so if you go ahead and work on relations between states that no longer exist, perhaps we can work out something together between your project and WP Former Countries.

This project sounds very interesting. Good luck! - 52 Pickup 07:50, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Definition of states

• Definition of states. Will this project recognize the TRNC, Taiwan, Somaliland, Sealand, or other countries on this list within the scope of this project? All of them have international relations, none of them are UN members, and in many cases to recognize or not recognize is a political decision that involves POV, so a strong policy on this would be a good idea. Vizjim 07:44, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, this definitely needs to be clarified. --Kimon^talk 12:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me that since the project is focused on relations and not the states themselves we don't have to express any POV. United States-Taiwan relations are a fact. It's not POV to write an article about them. In cases where two self-declared states recognize each other and have a significant relationship with each other, there should be an article on their relations. Saying that two entities have diplomatic relations does not imply one way or the other that the states in question are "legitimate." At least that's my $.02 --JayHenry 22:54, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to agree with JayHenry here, with the proviso that I'm fairly certain we don't need to cover Sealand, which does not have any relations with any country in the world.--Pharos 23:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Diplomatic missions by country (DMBC)

This category recently celebrated the 100th article completed! Not bad, considering it was nominated for deletion early on in its life. A general format has evolved, although some small issues need to be confirmed (do we say "consulate general" or "Consulate General", and do we separate the words with a hyphen or not?). Not mission critical, but it would be prudent to have an endorsed template that will make the articles look neater. Until then without a mandate I have just been asking people to follow what currently is being practiced, explaining that adding a new feature would necessitate changing the other 100 odd articles. Some writers have also gone out of their way to provide extra information (eg: Bulgarian diplomatic missions, New Zealand diplomatic missions); I am loathe to have extra stuff that becomes a maintenance headache, but I am equally reluctant to edit out somebody's work without a fair mandate. Can I have some opinions about a proposed template on DMBC? Kransky 15:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Kransky and I have gone back and forth on this topic, and I want to put it out to interested editors. Many country politics or foreign relations infoboxes link to that country's list of diplo. missions. For example, Template:Politics of Iceland links to Icelandic diplomatic missions. However, currently many of the diplo. missions lists Kransky diligently maintains don't link back to the "parent" article via the same infobox. You will notice that Icelandic diplomatic missions right now does not have an infobox. I think it's only logical for these lists to be linked back to their "parent" articles, otherwise they offer little context by themselves and risk deletion by aggressive anti-listcruft admins. Thus I think we should try to insert infoboxes on all of these list articles, and make the infobox prominent (ie, at the top of the page, before any photos - compare: [3] by me and [4] by Kransky). Kransky seems to be worried about going through all 100 or so list articles to implement the insertion of proper infoboxes, but I will gladly help out if others will too. Wl219 03:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

support Your argument sounds convincing enough. However could we ensure that (say) the "foreign relations of x" infobox will not result in an article's formatting or style being made to conform to what is being used by similar "foreign relation of x" articles. Also can we have the infobox and the photographs (in that order) positioned at the front (ie so they appear to the right of the introduction and then follow down to the right of the listings) Kransky 10:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I think this all very minor. First, it ought to be pointed out that the boxes here referred to are in fact navigational templates, not infoboxes (which are things such as {{Infobox Country}}). The politics articles navigational boxes are horrendously formatted (it doesn't get more obtrusive than that!) and fairly limited in terms of navigability among related article sets – I wouldn't support spreading them any further than they've already reached. It might be a better idea here to simply create "foreign relations of X" nav boxes (in the footer style) to navigate between topical articles for single countries. Or, of course, we could simply rely on categories. --cj | talk 11:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

On the subject of standard formats and content for all the articles:

I think some variation between article formats is acceptable, as different articles have different requirements. For example, I don't think we need to divide the list of Tuvaluan diplomatic missions into sections by continent – Tuvalu only has two missions in the whole world, and sorting them by continent doesn't make the article any more informative or helpful. (Personally, I'd rather not divide by continent at all – I've run into too many arguments about where certain countries should be placed.) And there are some things I think should be included where we have them, even if other articles don't have them (yet) – I've added some history and a map to the New Zealand diplomatic missions article, and I'd like to think that if such things are useful, they won't be deleted just for the sake of conformity. Some things are probably best not included – lists of serving ambassadors, like you say, will be a maintenance headache. But I wouldn't want to see a lowest-common-denominator policy that says no article can be more detailed than the bare minimum, or anything like that. Where additional information can be provided, and it doesn't pose a maintenance problem, I think it should be accommodated by any standard format we adopt.

Just my opinion, of course. (And good job getting the discussion going). – Vardion 02:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Vardion, Your New Zealand article was highly informative, and if I went into the same level of depth for every other DMBC article I fear I would be online permanently.

I am strong in favour of sorting the missions by continent as it allows people to identify within a continent the main cities where embassies are focussed, and you cannot do that in a list with every country listed A-Z. Having consistency makes the articles look neat, organised and we bypass arguments like "how many missions must a country have before we remove continental categorisation". Okay, we may debate which countries are each continent comprised of, but I am using a fairly consistent standard and nobody has raised any objections.

Saying that, you are right that we give the provision of useful, interesting and accurate information its due. Hopefully this could be arranged in the introductory paragraphs at the top of each article. Extra information could be off-loaded to a separate article (as I have done with a list of terrorist attacks on American diplomatic missions). Kransky 05:52, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I definitely support the improvements in the New Zealand article, but I don't see organizing by continent as somehow jeopardizing those improvements. In the New Zealand article, for example, some things are a little tricky to find. I wouldn't have thought to look for Finland next to the Netherlands; or Nigeria with Ireland. Without using Ctrl-F it's hard to find some of that information. As for Tuvalu, looks like the article is already divided by continents. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we need to have an empty "Africa" section for a country with no missions to Africa. In the bigger picture, what countries have complicated continental placements? Other than Turkey I'm not coming up with any... --JayHenry 22:14, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Europe is basically the former Soviet Union and the western peninsula of Eurasia (Europe). Africa is self-explanatory. The Middle East includes Turkey, the Lavant, the Arabian peninsula, Pakistan and Afghanistan. North America includes the American landmass from Panama northwards and the Caribbean; South America is what is below. Oceania is Australia, New Guinea and the Pacific. Asia is what is east of Pakistan, north of Australia and South of Russia and Central Asia. Kransky 04:14, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Go and see Lufthansa destinations of an example of how much clearer it is when countries are sorted by geography.Kransky 04:14, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm okay with all of that except "Middle Eastern." That's a problematic label. I think it'd be better to just stick to Asia, maybe breaking up along lines of Southwest, South, Southeast, East and Central if needed. --JayHenry 04:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand the problem of defining the Middle East. I decided to follow what is mentioned in the article Middle East, except that I relegated Egypt to Africa and included Turkey. The bulk of each country's territory resides in their respective continents. Kransky 09:34, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Featured article?

Does anybody want to work on getting an International Relations article up to FA status? I don't have any particular article in mind, but I have some serious downtime at work the next two weeks and I'd be happy to help out on nearly any subject. Any ideas?? --JayHenry 00:22, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, two candidates jump right out at me. Kofi Annan is close to featured status, with just a little polishing it could get there. But perhaps even better would be Ban Ki-moon, which needs a lot of work, but would be great to get featured early on. But those are just two ideas, if anyone has any others I'm all ears. --JayHenry 05:46, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

If anyone cares, I've put in a request for peer review of Ban Ki-moon at Wikipedia:Peer review/Ban Ki-moon. Comments at the peer review or at talk:Ban Ki-moon would be greatly appreciated. --JayHenry 23:57, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

New items, contributions

Hello all. Glad to be here. would like to mention a few things which i have added or edited. I set up the category Category:Diplomatic conferences. I also set up Category:Political charters. Hope you find these helpful. Just wanted to let you know.

I have also done some article edits related to this in various entries. Hope to discuss these more later. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 15:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you be a bit more specific on these categories. For Diplomatic Conferences are you referring to specific meetings (eg Reykjavík Summit) or general discussions (Conference on Disarmament)? Kransky 12:46, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Articles for Deletion: Harvard Model United Nations and related

• Harvard Model United Nations at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harvard Model United Nations (27 September 2007 – 2 October 2007) Merge→Harvard United Nations simulations
• Harvard World Model United Nations at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harvard Model United Nations (27 September 2007 – 2 October 2007) Merge→Harvard United Nations simulations
• Harvard National Model United Nations at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harvard Model United Nations (27 September 2007 – 2 October 2007) Merge→Harvard United Nations simulations

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:55, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Articles for Discussion: Czech Institute For International Meetings

Czech Institute For International Meetings at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Czech Institute For International Meetings (29 September 2007 – 7 October 2007) Keep

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:53, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:53, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Dependent Territories

When people make maps in the Diplomatic Missions by Country Articles, please note:

• dependent territories should be coloured identically to the state that holds its sovereignty. Excluding cases where small islands are represented as circles, the only dependent territories large enough to be obviously visible are:
  • Greenland (as per Denmark)
  • French Guyana, New Caledonia (as per France)
  • Svaldbard (as per Norway)
  • Falkland Islands (as per UK)

Kransky 12:55, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: 123 NUCLEAR DEAL

Resolved

123 NUCLEAR DEAL (via WP:PROD on 18 October 2007) Kept

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:59, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

List of foreign consulates in Oklahoma City

List of foreign consulates in Oklahoma City (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Fails WP:Notability. Unimportant, superfulous... It's a borderline speedy deletion candidate, but I'm just not completely sure. Okiefromokla•talk 02:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Just realized that similar articles were created for a number of other U.S. cities by the same user (Daltnpapi4u) within the last week. May need to nominate those as well. Okiefromokla•talk 02:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

+Keep as I have gone threw this with the other 40 pages that were proposed to be deleted however all were saved, AND HAVE meet wiki qualifications to keep Daltnpapi4u 02:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Please also refer to previous pages for this as well http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_foreign_consulates_in_Phoenix&action=history

Per User Ricky81682 on July 23, 2007 WP:NOT is not a reason for speedy. This included the cities of Anchorage, Phoenix, Detroit, Orlando, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Honolulu, St. Louis, Cincinnati and MinneapolisDaltnpapi4u 02:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• Delete bad idea for a list. JJL 03:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
• Delete. This is trivial information that changes frequently, making our keeping a list useless to those who actually need it. Many "consulates" are not proper offices at all but local businessmen with a connection to the home country. They serve functions similar to post offices or immigration offices. I don't see that we need to track this information, and if we do, I see us failing at it as articles are not guaranteed to be maintained. --Dhartung | Talk 04:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• Comment So this raises the question: does someone really have to go through and nominate all 40 something of these articles separately, or can this take care of all of them? Okiefromokla•talk 04:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• Comment You can put the AFD template on each of those pointing to this article, then add the list just below the nomination. The discussion should run five days from the time these are added. --Dhartung | Talk 08:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Delete all per Dhartung--victor falk 10:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Delete this and the others, on the basis that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a directory. Emeraude 15:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

• Delete "Paw, where are we goin'?" "We're a-headin' to the Bolivian consulate in Oklahoma City, afore Pecos Guevara gets there! Time's a-wastin'!" "How did ya know...?""Wikipedia, darlin'. Wikipedia." Mandsford 17:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

If that's a joke about Oklahomans I take offense :P Okiefromokla•talk 19:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Project Box

If the article receives a rating (GA, A, B, etc.) that can be noted in the Wikiproject template but there is no code in there to actually display the rating. Anyone care to take a stab at template code to correct this? Mikebar 10:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Problem with naming conventions

Specifically I have a problem with "Franco-Canadian relations". Having conventions is a good idea, but you have to realize that in some cases they are unworkable. Here's the problem: in Canada English relations with other countries almost always use the noun form, it's always Canada-France relations, Canada-Ukraine relations. Why? Because French-Canadians and francophones are an ethnic / linguistic group, as are Ukrainian-Canadians. The idea is to make it clear you are discusing states, and not ethnic groups. If we take the convention to it's logical extreme, we end up at Anglo-Canadian relations, a particularly ungangly title. "Anglo" in Canada always refers anglophones NOT the United Kingdom. What can we do about this? Kevlar67 07:57, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree. When I hear reference to Ukrainian-Canadian relations, I think of Canadians with Ukrainian heritage before I think of relations between Canada and Ukraine. Skeezix1000 12:29, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

How about we merge the International relations template with the UN template

I don't see the need to completely merge these two projects, but why not replace the {{WikiProject United Nations}} template with a version of the {{WikiProject International relations}} template with the optional paramiter "UN=yes". That way when someone tags an article as part of the UN wikiproject, it would also add it to this one. For an example of this, check out Talk:Senate of Canada, where that article is added to both "WikiProject Canada" and the subproject of "WikiProject Government of Canada" in one template. In effect, this would turn WP:UN into a sub-project of this project. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:44, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Both projects are inactive, so you may as well go for it. The categorization would still be useful if either project is successfully revived, but the chances of both suddenly perking up seems pretty unlikely to me. --JayHenry 23:31, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

International relations is too important to not have a project page to organize the standards, even if it is rarely updated. I would guess that having assessment tables would help foster some interest in the project since it would allow people to clearly see which articles need work. If you really think this project is dead, we could make this project a sub-project of WikiProject Politics, but that would require a lot more work given that this project already has 647 articles in it. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Done

The template {{WikiProject International relations}} now has the following parameters:

{{WikiProject International relations
  |class=
  |importance=
  |un =
 }}

You can check out Talk:UNESCO for an example of all three being used. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I tagged all US Ambassadors to the UN with WikiProject International relations|un=yes per latest info Mikebar 12:13, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Article for deletion: New Great Game

Resolved

New Great Game at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/New Great Game (10 November 2007 – 16 November 2007) No consensus (kept)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:28, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

updated --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:38, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Importance scale

I've made a first draft of a scale for this project's importance ratings at Wikipedia:WikiProject International relations#Importance scale. Comments? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Very good - it may be the subject of debate in later months but it looks solid. Mikebar 06:02, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Merge

After posting a comment at their talk page, I propose a merge of Wikipedia:WikiProject Cold War with this project with to bolster both projects - it's worked for the UN group. Mikebar Mikebar 06:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to this, but my first impression was that the Cold War would be a subproject of world history or military history rather than of international relations. I guess it could go either way. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:41, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

---

The cold war spans 45 years of history, that's 1945 to 1990 folks, why would you suggest merging it together just to bolster numbers? it is an incredible piece of history and deserves its own place on wikipedia. --Tom.mevlie (talk) 11:26, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

I still see the cold war project as a small, very specialized project in a larger field of international relations. How many times throughout history have countries gotten hostile against each other? (too many, really) Mikebar (talk) 11:44, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Diplomatic missions of Romania

The recently created Diplomatic missions of Romania has been nominated for deletion. As this appears to be the sort of article which interests this project, I thought members might wish to be informed of this. The discussion is here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Diplomatic missions of Romania. --The Brown Bottle (talk) 14:42, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Diplomatic Missions by Country - Honorary Consulates

Neither I nor others have included honorary consulates in DMBC articles. And for pretty good reasons: some countries annoint hundreds of honorary consulates (some no more than a plaque on somebody's front door) and don't bother keeping up to date information (and if they do, it would be a nightmare maintaining the articles). It would also be hard to maintain consistency when some countries publish honorary consulate details and others don't. Anybody got a different view? Kransky (talk) 10:54, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review

I am a member of this Project, but I would like a neutral person to rate my article New Zealand-United States relations. There is no request for review portion in the project, I have recently created a new Project WP:WLA (WikiProject Los Angeles), and I would be willing to update the page so it has accessible features if theres no objections. Cheers (♠Taifarious1♠) 08:57, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Templates

Depending on the answer to notability above, would it be helpful to have a series of templates similar to the Politics of Europe templates? This could be easily referred into via the main Foreign relations of x articles. AndrewRT(Talk) 19:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

• • Strongly Oppose Have you seen those templates? Pointless, butt ugly and with all those caveats about what is/isn't sovereign or in Europe it invites controversy rather than aid navigation.Kransky (talk) 09:36, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Rating

What importance do you think Talk:United Nations Parliamentary Assembly should have? I would think Low, but the main author appears to have self-assessed as high. AndrewRT(Talk) 20:00, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

It's kinda irrelevant now that it's become FA. Sarsaparilla (talk) 03:01, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

No so, can be FA and irrelevant. I'd say low or mid, as it doesn't exist yet - just another proposal, several in fact, with little chance of happening soon. Further more, if it did exist it would have few real powers. When something happens, then it would be more important.- J Logan ^t: 09:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Ambassador vs. Minister and Categorization

I'm familiar with diplomatic history enough to know that in the 17 and 1800s most head diplomats were Ministers and not Ambassadors as many diplomatic missions were legations and not embassies.

There are categoryies for Ambassadors of the United States and American diplomats (the upper level category). Would Ministers be in American Diplomats or Ambassadors as I believe there are articles categorized both ways. For an example, see Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

Thanks for your advice. Mikebar (talk) 07:45, 26 December 2007 (UTC) ==The nomenclature varies between countries. In Australia a Minister would be a senior diplomat at the Senior Executive Service level but is not a head of mission. They are usually found in large embassies.Kransky (talk) 09:42, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Blue Mediterranean

Blue Mediterranean (via WP:PROD on 5 January 2008)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:12, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion: Red Mediterranean

Red Mediterranean (via WP:PROD on 5 January 2008)

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:14, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Requesting comment

Hiya, we are currently debating a new name for the article Franco-Mongol alliance (since technically there wasn't really an alliance). Suggestions are "Franco-Mongol diplomacy" and "Franco-Mongol relations". If anyone from this WikiProject would like to participate in the discussion, we'd love to have you, at Talk:Franco-Mongol alliance#Article title. --Elonka 02:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

"Mongol" is not the right adjective to describe anything related to modern Mongolia. "Mongolian" is the correct term. But if you really want to be politically incorrect, use "Mongoloid". Kransky (talk) 04:36, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

This is true, but the article she linked to is for the Mongols of the 13th and 14th century. --JayHenry (talk) 04:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Correct, it's a historical topic. I posted here because I saw that someone had "claimed" the article for this WikiProject, but if the article is outside of this project's scope, we can definitely remove the template. --Elonka 07:18, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

There was an alliance between the Goldern Horde and the Franks? I thought stuff like that only took place in Age of Empires. Kransky (talk) 10:05, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Requesting assesment of Russia-United Kingdom relations

Hi, could someone from the project asses the Russia-United Kingdom relations article please, I'm thinking about working on it. Ryan4314 (talk) 21:50, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Foreign relations of South Korea

Basically, we're trying to figure out what Republic of China-South Korea relations should really be called according to this WikiProject's standards. Two problems:

• "Republic of China" --- what's the adjectival form? ("Taiwanese" is not really going to be an acceptable solution)
• "South Korea" or "Republic of Korea" (and similarly, "North Korea" or "Democratic People's Republic of Korea")?

In general, how do you make adjectival forms when country names need to be given in full to disambiguate them from neighbouring/rival states with the same name (e.g. Congo)? Thanks, cab (talk) 18:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I can help you mate, look here. Ryan4314 (talk) 18:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I saw that, but that doesn't tell me what the adjectival forms ... cab (talk) 18:57, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The guidelines suggest that the article should be Taiwanese-South Korean relations. This is certainly where the vast majority of people would expect to find this article. Taiwanese is listed at Republic of China as a standard demonym. The use of "Taiwanese" does not, to my knowledge, imply any sort of political endorsement of anything, and is just an acknowledgment of the factual existence of this relationship. Why would these standard adjectives be controversial? (Honest question, perhaps there are undertones of which I'm unaware.) --JayHenry (talk) 23:32, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

"Taiwanese" as a demonym isn't even accepted by a quarter of the people living on Taiwan; that's why there's a * in the Republic of China infobox. See Taiwanese people#Self identification for more fun controversy. On somewhat related matter, would relations between the country formerly known as Zaire, and, say, the UK, be "Anglo-Congolese-Kinshasan relations", "Anglo-Congo-Kinshasan relations", or something else? cab (talk) 00:19, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I think there might currently be a substantial formatting error somewhere on Republic of China that's preventing part of the article from displaying correctly? The link you provided says that "57% of people on Taiwan consider themselves to be Taiwanese. 23% Chinese and 20% both Chinese and Taiwanese." That would suggest that more than three quarters (77%) accept it. But this also seems to be talking about self-identification. Taiwanese-South Korean relations is about governmental relations. Although someone might live in Taiwan but consider themselves to be Chinese, I don't see that this correlates to an objection or a bias in using "Taiwanese" to describe something pertaining to their government. A lot of British citizens don't identify as British, but that doesn't make it a controversial adjective in Internation Relations contexts.

The case of the two Congos is an interesting problem; I'm surprised the project never discussed it. I had a textbook that used the convention that "Congo" was ROC and "The Congo" was DRC. A truly awful convention. For disambiguation purposes I would probably suggest "Anglo-Congolese (Kinshasa) relations" and "Anglo-Congolese (Brazzaville) relations". I don't really see an elegant solution to that unusual problem. (Dominica and Dominican Republic also.) --JayHenry (talk) 00:48, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, in the international relations context, no one recognises a country called Taiwan, nor is the island of Taiwan coterminous with the area controlled by the RoC (see Fujian Province, Republic of China). Of course, I'm sure there's someone in Scotland who would be unhappy about our use of the "Anglo-" prefix too, and the reverse problem, "American" solely referring to the USA, presumably makes people on two continents rather dissatisfied =). Many countries which do not recognise the Republic of China could be uncontroversially said to be conducting "Fooian-Taiwanese relations", as their unofficial bodies on the island include the word "Taiwan" (e.g. American Institute in Taiwan; though others use "Taipei" in the name instead, and the reciprocal overseas office is called "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office"). But the countries which do have formal relations with the Republic of China are conducting their relations with the whole of it, not just the Taiwan part. Incidentally, the issue of whether to include "Chinese" as a demonym on the Republic of China article seems to go back and forth; probably someone broke the article when trying to edit it back in or back out. cab (talk) 03:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I recognize the factual points you've raised, but I'm not sure why these points are a concern. If someone says "Taiwanese-South Korean relations" there's no confusion at all about what that means. It's not misleading, no ambiguity, and it presents no bias of any sort. Obviously it is referring to the political entity that is based in Taipei. I just don't see what other possible interpretation exists of "Taiwanese-South Korean relations"? It's not as if we'd have an article about the relationship between the government of South Korea and the geography of the island of Taiwan :) --JayHenry (talk) 07:24, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Foreign relations are inherently ambigous because the interlapping definition of state, nation, and territory make it so. Trying too hard to standardize this will not work. Look at Anglo-Russian relations. The succession of states that the cultural tags "Anglo" and "Russian" apply to include the Kingdom of England, Kingdom of Great Britain, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, the Tsardom of Russia, the Russian Empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Russian Federation. Should we create a new article for each time one of the states changes it's name? I would say maybe but not nessisarily. It is prefectly natural to see Sino-Soviet relations and Russo-Chinese relations as sperate issues, and it is just as natural to see them as part of one larger story. Both approches are valid and there is no need for a standard. To answer your question, leave it at Tiawanese-South Korean relations since Sout Korea didn't exist in a time when the Republic of China still controlled the mainland. Kevlar67 (talk) 19:52, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

List of United Nations peacekeeping missions

I'm considering taking this FL to WP:FLRC due to citation concerns, but it seems like a fixable problem, so I'll give contirbutors time to work on it. I'm just making sure the project is aware of this. – Scorpion⁰⁴²² 14:42, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Flags in International relations footers

kevlar67 (talk · contribs) and myself are having a disagreement over whether flags are appropriate for use in these footers. In the absence of a clear guideline (WP:FLAGS does not provide much directly applicable guidance), I'd like to have more opinions. I have made my case on his talk page (executive summary: hardly any footers at all use flags in this fashion, not all those in the category do, and flags make them much less legible). I'm also leaving a message at the MoS flags talk page to get extra input. Circeus (talk) 19:37, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
ETA: I'm only referring to templates with multiple mini-flags. I don't mind one large flag identifying the country. Circeus (talk) 03:08, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Recently we had a difference of opinion about the footer templates for bilateral relations. About half of the templates in Category:Foreign relations navigational boxes use flags and the other half do not. User:Circeus informs me that this may run afoul of Wikipedia:FLAGS. I tend to favour the flags but a look at {{Foreign relations of Russia}} shows how busy a template starts to look with too many flags. I ask for opinions so we can reach a consistant policy. Kevlar67 (talk) 19:40, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Probably the most applicable bit of WP:FLAGS is "Help the reader rather than decorate", which reminds users that flags don't add information, they just repeat it. IMO, the single-flag templates are pointless but harmless whereas the flag-packed Russian one looks horrible and is simply visual overload. If one were trying to argue the case against the latter, there would be no harm at all in saying that flags are redundant in all footers of this kind.Cop 663 (talk) 19:48, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

A single flag can help identify what the footer is about, such as differentiating between a footer about all states (marked with the country flag) and a footer about a specific state (marked with that state's flag). I don't think a footer for all states needs a flag next to the name of each state if the only content is a list of states. However, if a footer for all states includes "enough" entries for each state then the subsection for each state might be marked with the state's flag. [replace 'states' with 'counties' or 'provinces' until you get sufficient detail for a significant example] With the several possible formats the options become ambiguous beyond formats such as "a template with a list of all states". Do we assume artistic license or does it have to be confirmed? – SEWilco (talk) 19:59, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you clarify that i really can't understand it,maybe include some examples Gnevin (talk) 21:12, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

An example with many falgs is {{Foreign relations of Russia}} one with only the flags of the natio in question is {{Brazilian ties}}. Kevlar67 (talk) 21:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The flags have been removed from Foreign relations of Russia but can still be seen in this version. I agree with those arguing that less is more (i.e. remove the flags). I actually found it somewhat difficult to read the template when it included 30 flags. The flags didn't help me find the countries either. I agree with SEWilco in general, but don't see where it's applicable regarding International Relations articles. I can't see having an article about Russian-Saskatchewan relations. --JayHenry (talk) 22:00, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The flags have been re-added and it not looks like a ticker tape flag parade Gnevin (talk) 19:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. The Foreign relations of Russia template looks really silly and amateurish in my opinion. As noted above, I find it difficult to read. I support limiting "Foreign relations of" templates to one flag. --JayHenry (talk) 04:38, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd go to no flags as I can read the words but won't always recognise flags so its not adding anything but limiting to one is far better than the current state of play Gnevin (talk) 09:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes Russia look bad but doesn't that have as much to do with redlinks as anything? Wouldn't some better seperation also help? Or is everyone against the flags? Kevlar67 (talk) 15:26, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm prepared to declare this decided in favour of the anti-flag side. Any objections? Kevlar67 (talk) 19:13, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Navigational templates

Recently I have been seeing this navigational template used on some articles, as well as a similar one for European diplomatic missions:

Frankly speaking, but I humbly presuppose that I am not alone in this opinion, this template is ugly and useless.

1. If you want to navigate to other articles, you can go to categorisation page.
2. Are we ever likely to need a foreign relations of Crimea or Greenland article?
3. Including dependent territories or successionist movements just invites arguments over what should or should not be included...
4. ...or results in the template being cluttered with footnotes explaining the reason why someplace is included

What do other people think? Kransky (talk) 23:20, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

You do know that countries_only=yes will remove the dependencies? Circeus (talk) 03:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd prefer to see this as a countries-only template. As a countries-only template it encourages development of articles we really ought to have. Agree arguing over what dependencies to include becomes problematic ("Why not Sealand?"). As for footnotes, I think we could condense this into a footnote saying, "includes countries with strong historic ties" or some sort of wording that covers all the cases. --JayHenry (talk) 22:08, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Even so, it won't be a countries-only template. It will be a European countries only template, and so we will start arguing over which countries get included. Kazakhstan? Turkey? Armenia? Templates are not the place to define the boundaries of continents with butt-ugly footnotes about what is partially in Asia or has 'cultural links to Europe'. Guess what, Argentina has cultural links to Europe too.

My point is why have it at all. How does this support expanding the frontiers of human knowledge, or make things easier to find? Kransky (talk) 08:22, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Then TFD is what you want! besides, arguing over which countries go which of these templates is completely out of this project's purview! Circeus (talk) 16:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I think the template encourages development of articles that we ought to have, and also is useful for navigational purposes. If someone wanted to include Turkey on a Foreign Relations of Europe and a Foreign Relations of Asia template I don't really see what the problem would be with that. That said, I'm not in love with the template, if people here or at TFD think it should be deleted I wouldn't really stand in the way. --JayHenry (talk) 04:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Archieve the talk page

Y Done

I want to trim this talk page, since it is getting quite long. Shall we trim but time, or simply pick out the resolved issues regardless of age? Kevlar67 (talk) 23:50, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I have a archive bot set to clean this up. It will archive any topic that has not had any posts in a few weeks. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 07:37, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Sucession of States and Bilateral Relations

A proposal: When dealing vague cultural terms like "Anglo", "Russo", "Sino", or "Franco", or even "German", or "Italian" that could apply to many states occupying the same area, the main article should be a sort of clearinghouse or extended disambiguation page that would list all potential combinations of states bearing those adjectives. When warrented, they should then be broken into sperate articles for each pair of states. For example Russo-American relations should be a short disambiguation page with seperate sections linking to Relations between the Russian Empire and the United States, Soviet–United States relations, and Russian Federation-United States relations. If there isn't enough material for seperate articles for each pairing, then it can all be handled on one page a la Austro-Russian relations. If both countries have seen so many name or state changes that it would ruin the flow of the narration to divde it up by pairs of states, then the main article should present a general overview of the entire course of the relations, but also create divisions where warrarnted (e.g. (Anglo-Russian relations) or even sperate pages (e.g. Sino-Russian relations with a seperate page for Sino-Soviet relations). In this way relations between cultural entities (dare I say nations?) and states are both covered. Kevlar67 (talk) 23:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

WP:FR

Why is there a link to wikiproject france at the top of the main page, i think it should be removed as it seems to me that there is no good reason for it to be there. Taifarious1 04:35, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I bet there are some users who type WP:FR looking for WikiProject France. It could be useful to them. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 07:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

League of Nations at WP:FAR

League of Nations has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. – Testing times (talk) 00:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

New form of human trafficking

In February, a travel agent in Ghana chartered a Ghana International Airlines aircraft on the pretext that a group of 'Ghanian' tourists would be spending two weeks in Barbados. The aircraft left Ghana around 1 Feb 08, and was supposed to return to Barbados to 1) deliver any group of 'tourists' and 2) take the first lot back to Ghana. The aircraft didn't arrive as expected on 15 February, and to this day (15 April 08) most of those 'tourists', who turned out end up coming from both Ghana and Nigeria, are still stranded in Barbados, with the Ghanian government dragging its heels on their return. The rest have basically left Barbados for other countries (not long after arriving there). Due to the fact many of these 'tourists' are now working in Barbados (construction, etc), and some have gone on the record that they don't want to go back to Ghana, they want to be allowed to stay in Barbados to work, it is now believed that this is a new form of human trafficking. I think this would make an interesting addition to the Human trafficking article, and could also help build a Barbados-Ghana relations article as well. Having little time to add this, I am posting this at the following: Talk:Human trafficking, WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography, WikiProject Sociology, WikiProject International relations, WikiProject African diaspora, WikiProject Human rights. Perhaps contributors to the Human trafficking article or wikiprojects could look at it further and include it in the article, as this hasn't gathered much attention outside of Barbados and Ghana, and if it is human trafficking, it will change the modus operandi of traffickers. Searches of google and google news for barbados+ghana will return plenty of results, mainly from Ghana or Barbados which can be used. --Россавиа ^Диалог 17:35, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

How many articles should we have on bilateral relations?

Cool

Now we can start those 40,000 articles on bilateral relations!--Pharos 00:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I received an inquiry on my talk page, and yes, I'm quite serious about that figure, actually. With about 200 countries, and each state actor having a significant relationship with every other one, we really should ideally have 40,000 (200 x 200) individual articles on bilateral relations. Anyone care to get started on Andorra-Tuvalu relations?--Pharos 04:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

It's not the figure I question, it's the tone and meaning of your statements. If you seek to mock, be clear. I am certain the creator of the project was using Samoa and Palau as illustrations, not literally. I would be very surprised, outside the G8, whether most smaller countries even have individual articles about relations with their own neighbors, unless there has been some conflict historically. If you have something constructive to say, be open. If you are just being ugly, that is unworthy of an admin. Chris 04:49, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

So far as I can ascertain, those two countries do not maintain formal relations with each other. Why should we have an article for this and similar circumstances if they are inherently unmaintainable? Your suggestion is grossly overstated.--cj | talk 04:55, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

What I meant by the statement I placed was to point out that we don't have the foreign policies of some small countries as detailed as we want them to be. I only meant to illustrate the lack of coverage among our political neighbors less covered by the media. However, this project is open to suggestions, and I would love to change the goals, scope, and guidelines if necessary.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 05:01, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

It appears there's been some misunderstanding of my statement. I think this is a great project, and hope to contribute to it in future. I was just pointing out that there's a lot of work ahead (FWIW, I do actually think that bilateral relations between any two UN members would be inherently notable, though obviously Andorra and Tuvalu would be a low priority). By the way, I actually didn't notice you'd mentioned Samoa and Palau in the above section; I wasn't responding to that section in any way.--Pharos 05:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up! :) I'm glad that you think this project's great. And yes, of course there's plenty of work to be done...that's pretty much why I thought this project would be needed.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 05:29, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

What nobody pointed out is Pharos's bad math! It's not 40,000 articles because 200x200 is not the problem here. 200x200 forgets that there's 200 articles for each country, but all those articles are shared between two countries. The real problem is to find the summation for i = 1 to 200 of (200-i). In other words (199+198+197+... all the way to +1). The answer is only 19,900 articles to be created! Anyways... in all seriousness, there's no reason the project can't prioritize. Mongolia-Ecuador relations? Uh... not needed! --JayHenry 22:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about that. Thank heavens it's only about 20,000 articles; that's a huge burden off my shoulders! And I still stand by that there are encyclopedic things to write about each and every one one of those relationships. For example, did you know that Mongolia and Ecuador established relations on October 30, 1982, and that Mongolia handles its Ecuadoran relations through its Cuban ambassador, and that Ecuador handles its Mongolian relations though its Chinese ambassador. Low priority, yeah, but writable.--Pharos 23:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, here's a different idea, what if we grouped together? Using Mongolia-Ecuador as an example, you're talking about an article that'd be a permanent stub. But if you had Mongolia-South America relations – which included the Mongolia-Ecuador paragraph and the Mongolia-Peru paragraph, etc. and did this across the globe, you could cut the number of needed articles by a factor of about 10. I guess there's still the issue of how you make this two-directional, but 19,900 is just way too many unless we get way more contributors. And, as a side issue, how on earth are we going to keep 19,900 ambassadorial appointments current? --JayHenry 00:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggested guideline

Could WP:FOR clarify the standard naming order for the relations titles?

For example, should Indian-South Korean relations be Indo-South Korean relations or India-South Korea relations, etc... Also some nationalists might switch the order of the countries in the titles (i.e. Japan-Korea relations --> Korea-Japan relations). I think that WP:FOR will play a very important role in making standard procedures that would minimize inter-ethnic/national disputes. (Wikimachine 22:05, 9 April 2007 (UTC))

OK, I've gone over the feedback in the above section, and I think I've come up with a workable guideline using "colloquial" terms. We should use adjectival forms (Argentine-Brazilian relations rather than Argentina-Brazil relations), with the countries being ordered by the adjective with fewest syllables first (for common usage reasons), and tie-breakers being broken by the alphabetic order of their name in English noun form (American is filed under "U"), just because that's easiest to remember. In keeping with common English usage, we should also recognize a limited number of special prefixes, specifically "Anglo-", "Sino-", "Indo-", "Franco-" and "Russo-", which will always take the first place. If we are discussing two countries which use prefixes, the first item would be the one nearest the beginning in my previous sentence, as I've ordered that list (which took some research to perfect) with common usage in mind. I do not think that other, less common prefixes, like "Luso-", should be used. The thinking behind this proposal has primarily been to generate "common names" using a fairly simple and standardized rule, and I think it works at that.--Pharos 23:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The most important thing to remember is that we want to avoid instruction creep. IMO, it would be best if we continue to use the simple, English, noun forms in alphabetical order with ISO 3166-1 alpha-3, per Sandstein--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 23:31, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I suggested the noun forms at first, but almost everyone, including Sandstein, has preferred the adjectival forms. I recommend putting the syllabically shorter adjective first just because that's the tendency in speech, and that will be common usage much more often than not: for example, google "German-Italian relations" and "Italian-German relations". In cases where the adjectives are of the same length, I wouldn't have a problem with using the ISO order to decide.--Pharos 23:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

That sounds good. Shall we use the following special adjectives?

• Sino or Chinese?
• Indo or Indian?
• Russo or Russian?
• Anglo or British?
• Franco or French?
• American or just United States? Note that the use of the term "America" is different in the USA than in other parts of the Western Hemisphere. South Americans might be offended by the use of the term "American"...

Any suggestions?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi there. Let's not go overboard with special names. Aim for clarity and simplicity. I would think an article dealing with Jakarta-New Delhi diplomacy called Indo-Indonesian relations sound a tad odd. Furthermore, IMHO I don't think it is wise to have two articles for each relationship that each takes the perspective of each country, since making articles all-encompassing is a hallmark of NPOV subjective writing. Kransky 14:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I never suggested having two articles; I agree that would be a terrible and self-defeating idea. Actually, you should try googling "Indo-Indonesian", and you'll find some quite reputable stuff like this.--Pharos 23:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, international diplomacy has been used to repetition since Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Kransky 15:10, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Bilateral relations

Okay, here's how I see it. We can have (based on the support in sections above) articles that use the adjective forms of the countries when doing bilateral relations articles. In addition, only one article will be used for two countries at a time. However, the naming part of the guideline is an issue. So, here are the issues:

1. Should we use special adjectives like Anglo, Franco, Russo, Indo, or Sino, rather than using British, French, Russian, Indian, Chinese, respectively?
2. Should we use "United States" or "American"? Most countries in the Americas might get offended by this.
3. Should we do the order of the countries in the title alphabetical by their ISO 3 letter code or their short form names as listed on List of countries? Or would you rather put the countries in order by syllable? (ie Chinese-American instead of American-Chinese)

These are very important issues to clarify. I'd really hope to get these guidelines set so that we can all begin editing articles on bilateral relations without worrying about the naming.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 03:00, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I rather think Pharos' suggestion above is a fair compromise, and would support it as a guideline. In reference to your above points, this would allow special adjectives and would preference ISO order. As for using "American" or "United States", I'm uncertain; using special adjectives requires it in at least some instances, but otherwise it could go either way.--cj | talk 09:51, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone object to this? If we have a consensus, I'll go ask Pharos to write down his guideline on the project page.--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 15:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I really think it'd be preferable to just use the noun forms placed alphabetically. Then it's straightforward and neither incorrect nor confusing. If we do adjectives we need to make a table for a lot more countries than those listed above. Is it Greco or Grecian; Malagasy (which nobody knows) or Madagascan (which is substandard); Persian or Iranian; Afghanistani or Afghani (which technically speaking, is an Ethnic group and shouldn't really be applied to Pashtuns living in Afghanistan)? If we use adjectives the entire list of countries does need to have its preferred adjective listed somewhere. --JayHenry 17:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the adjectives would be pretty obvious, actually. In these cases Greek, Malagasy, Iranian and Afghan. The World Factbook is a pretty good source for national adjectives.--Pharos 18:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

As I see it, we could go either way on this one. The problem here is that some, if not most, or our bilateral relations articles contain the noun forms of the countries. Will we actually take time off our articles so that we can move the articles to the right names? Do we have enough manpower for this?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 23:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I could move them. We only have a few dozen bilateral articles so far, anyway. Better to establish a standard now, before the set of articles to move gets much larger.--Pharos 18:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Due to all of the discussions above, I think that the consensus goes towards adj. based titles by order of the number of syllables. Does anyone object?--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 01:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

bilateral relations have been added

See here. Enjoy!--Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 00:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Organizing foreign relations proposal

I am aware that several articles on foreign relations between countries already exist, but there is at present no way to view a centralized list of such articles. Therefore, I'd like to propose the following format for such a list:

Example title: Foreign relations of the United States in detail

Country	Relations	Diplomat to the US	Diplomat of the US
United Kingdom	relations	Ambassador	Ambassador
Vatican City	relations	Nuncio	Ambassador

Of course, the listing will involve all countries in alphabetical order by short-form in English. (Philippines, not Republic of the Philippines) Also note that we would consider the official titles of the diplomats. (ie Nuncio) Would this be a good idea? Do realize that this would require loads of cleaning up our foreign relations articles in an organized manner. :( Ed ^{¿Cómo estás?} 04:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I quite like this idea but it is only really necessary for those countries likely to have dozens and dozens of bilateral relations worth writing about (i.e. G8 countries, China, India, and maybe a few others). Kevlar67 (talk) 15:34, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Counter proposal

Article title: Foreign relations of Canada by country

Country	Relations	Mission to Canada	Mssion of Canada	Heads of mission to Canada	Heads of mission from Canada
France	relations	Embassy of France in Ottawa	Embassy of Canada in Paris	List of Canadian ambassadors to France	List of French ambassadors to Canada
United Kingdom	relations	High Commission of the United Kingdom in Ottawa	High Commission of Canada in London	List of Canadian High Commissioners to the United Kingdom	List of High Commissioners from the United Kingdom to Canada

"Relations" Naming Convention

I'm not too keen on the "[x-adj] - [y] relations" naming convention given the problems noted above. How about change it to "Foreign relations between [x] and [y]" AndrewRT(Talk) 19:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Notable relations

Are relationships between countries always notable? Is Nauru-Guyana relations a valid article? What would be the criteria for this? Should it be documented anywhere? AndrewRT(Talk) 19:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a moot question. Nobody in their right mind is going to write such an article, unless events later transpire to make it pertinent. Kransky (talk) 12:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

No, but user:Groubani wrote Paraguayan-South African relations. Potatoswatter (talk) 16:56, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Relations between state and regions

Is it a good idea to have pages dedicated to the relationship between one state and a region? We already have Sino-African relations and United States-Latin American relations but Canada - Latin American Foreign Policy if up for Afd. Please add your thoughts. Kevlar67 (talk) 12:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change to Bilateral template

See here for my proposal to include a photos option in the bilateral template - 52 Pickup ^(deal) 10:03, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Notability of bilateral relations

Since there has been an increasing boom in the numbers of articles written about bilateral relations, I though it might be a good idea to come up with some general suggestion on how to determine in the relations between two states (or a state and and organization) are notable. This is my proposal:

1. Borders. When two nations border each other, that is probably inherently notable. The longer the border, the more frequently crossed, the more people live near it, the more notable it is. It may also be notable for being unusually well guarded or unusually free. The Canada – United States border at 8,893 km long is so notable that is requires a seperate topic, but most will not. Probably the Mozabique - Swaziland border (105 km) is not notable, and nither are relations between those two states, but I may be proven wrong. List of land border lengths is a useful aid in this area.

2. Trade. Relations between states and its largest trading partner are probably notable. However there is a big difference in notability between Canada - US trade (US$371 billion in 2005) and say, EU - Macau trade. The size of the trade done in absolute terms is important, as is the relative percentage of total trade it makes up in the two states in question. As a side note, I believe a List of the largest bilateral trading relationships would be a notable topic.

3. Colonization and Occupation. When one state occupies or colonizes another that is highly notable, however, this history of the occupation or colonization would deserve a seperate topic. A page on British-Indian relations should explain how the British Raj's legacy impacts relations today and not retell they entire history, the same goes with the Soviet occupation of East Germany. Of course some colonizations or occupations are more signifigant than others. Scotland' short-lived Darien colony has very little to do with modern relations between the UK and Panama (which are probably not notable), nither are Spain Bahama relations just because Colombus landed there 500 years ago. Spain - Mexico relations probably are notable however because of lasing cultural ties.

4. Migration. The scale of migration between two states (in percentage and absolute terms determins whether this can be used to establish notability. As well there should be lasting cultural and political impacts from these migrations. A good example is American-Mexican relations or British-Bangladeshi relations. However the entire article shouldn't be about migration. That's what pages like Mexican American or Immigration to Canada are for.

5. Common membership of groups. This one the the most subjective, but it is very important because it could be abused so easily. That two states hapen to share membership in a large, diverse international organization or group, is not notable. If they are both members of a elite, selective group, that is notable. Large, diverse groups include the UN, the Commonwealth, La Francophonie, the OAS, the OIC, the Arab League, NATO, APEC, or the African Union. Examples of small, elite, powerful groups that select members of the basis of military, economic, or diplomatic power include the P5 and the G8. Generally speaking, just because two states share membership a large, diverse group based on shared geography or culture does not make bilateral relations between them notable.

Two examples: Luxembourg-Slovakia relations are not even faintly notable despite the fact both are members of the EU and NATO. A beter coverage of this topic would be under articles like Foreign relations of Luxembourg or Slovakia and the European Union.

By contrast relations between evey UN SecCon P5 member and every other P5 member (US-RU, US-CN, US-FR, US-UK, RU-CN, RU-FR, RU-UK, CN-FR, CN-UK, FR-UK) is inherently notable because of the power of that body, the same can probably be said, to a lesser extent, of the G8 (all of the above plus US-JP, US-DE, US-IT, US-CA, JP-CA, JP-DE, JP-UK, JP-FR, JP-RU, DE-UK, DE-FR, DE-IT, DE-CA, DE-RU, IT-JP, UK-IT, FR-IT, CA-IT, CA-RU). These are among the most important relations gowing and we should be working on pages for all the ones we don't currently have (sadly there are still some redlinks and others are just stubs), they should all get fairly high rating on the importance scale, and they are the ones to judges others against.

Also, going back into the past since the Republic of China and the Soviet Union both once had seats on the P5, their relations with the other P5 members also deserves attention.

6. Diputes, alliances, media coverage. If the popular press is highlighting a dispute or agreement between two states wether it is over something small like trade (e.g. Canada and Brazil), or big like nuclear weapons (e.g. Pakistan and North Korea) then it is notable by any definintion.

Most relations worth writting about will fullfill most or all of these criteria. Fulling just one probably isn't enough.

Comments.Kevlar67 (talk) 03:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Bilateral relations getting out of hand

This week has witnessed the creation of many articles that are probably not notable. For example Chinese-Maltese relations and Cyprus-Korean relations. Mostly by one user, Special:Contributions/Groubani. As I feared, without any guidlines everything seems to go. We need to tackle this. Kevlar67 (talk) 23:08, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Given that most of these are just saying whether or not the two countries have embassies in each other, maybe we can make one list for each country showing with whom they have relations. It would convey the information that the user wants to get out, while not having a sub for every possible combination of two states (of which there would be about 40,000). --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

What is wrong with these articles? I find it absurd and possibly even ignorant to suggest that the relationship between two nations with formal diplomatic ties is "non-notable", even if the relationship is relatively slight, or the nations don't seem important to you. (I guarantee they are important to the people living there.) One of the advantages of a non-paper encyclopedia is that we can document this. If Groubani wants to take the time to perform this work we should thank him for filling in gaps. If there are questions about accuracy that's another issue, but countering systemic bias encourages us not to say, oh these countries aren't important enough. And honestly, an example of foreign relations of China? It's the world's second largest economy. It's foreign relations are tremendously important to every country on the planet earth. Remember, short articles are not necessarily worthless. Some articles in Britannica are just a paragraph or two as well. --JayHenry (talk) 06:04, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The information is valuable, for sure, but if the vast majority of these are never going to get beyond two-sentence stubs, why not merge them all into something that can get FL? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 07:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with JayHenry in seeing nothing wrong with these articles. Indeed, I see no reason why they couldn't be expanded (if you dig deep enough, there are a lot more sources than you might think). These should not be reduced to a simple list. The only concern would be, who is going to watch all these articles? Actually, I could see a solution where we could agglomerate small articles together at pages like Foreign relations of Malta by country, but this would require some novel technical fixes to make it work.--Pharos (talk) 07:21, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see what technical fixes we would need, it could just be a list. I'm thinking that we could make a list of bilateral relations by country for each country in the world, and in any cases where we have more than a couple sentences on a relation, we could make an article for that relationship and link the list entry to it. This seems to me like an easier solution than having tens of thousands of sub article about every combination of bilateral relations of which we would have to keep track. The list format would give us the freedom to expand anything that warranted it. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 07:34, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

The technical fix we need is keeping Foreign relations of Malta by country in tune with Foreign relations of the People's Republic of China by country, so our information on bilateral relations does not grow hopelessly divergent. Really, the solution is transcluded Wikipedia:Subpages, though that's currently technically against policy. Now, if someone could figure out a way to transclude Chinese-Maltese relations as an redirect with accompanying text, then we could get around this.--Pharos (talk) 08:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that the two versions of the relations would have to stay exactly the same between lists. Each description could be from the appropriate country's perspective, focusing on issues most important to it. Of course, whenever a major change happened between those two countries, we would have to make sure that both were changed to reflect it. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 08:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

(←) Even with relatively minor relationships we can include information about which international treaties both nations are party to, the nature and volume of their economic ties, etc. For your top 20-30 countries in terms of GDP I would think that almost all those bilateral relations articles are worth having. In the most minor cases (Vanuatu-Burkina Faso) I can see how they could get tedious to create. One solution here would be having articles like Vanuatu-Africa relations or Burkina Faso-Oceania relations. --JayHenry (talk) 15:57, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I think my long list of requirement may have been off the mark. Think of them more as tools and suggestions. Let me refine my position, and hopefully we can find common ground. Firstly, the main criterion for notability (of any article) is the existance of reliable sources, preferably something academic and published in the English language but also including the mass media or a foreign language in a pinch. If we don't believe that an article can ever expand beyond a few sentences because there are no sources, then it should be deleted. If however you were able to find two or three books or articles on the foreign policy of PR China that all mentioned relations with Malta (or vice versa), then that would be notable and the article could be recreated. Kevlar67 (talk) 18:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, our friend Groubani got blocked. Not his (or her) fault of course, he was just creating artilce to fill a percieved need. The lack of guidelines allowed one administrator to decide unilaterally to block him to prevent the proliforation of new bilateral relations articles. We need to fix this problem so this won't happen to the next aspiring Gourbani. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 00:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Fortunately it was a short block and he's now allowed to continue building an encyclopedia. This was a completely invalid blocking rationale, even under current policy. Even had his articles been reviewed and persistently rejected by the community at AFD (not the case) and he continued to create them after repeated warnings, there is still no provision in the Blocking Policy for this absolutely absurd block. What's more, he is providing sources that show he's building accurate articles.

I don't understand what encyclopedias the people who always go on and on about "unencyclopedic" have read. Real encyclopedias have a great deal of brief articles. Where did this mentality that articles should never be short develop from? It should be long or deleted? Why? That's not a reason. Print references show this belief to have no basis in any traditional meaning of encyclopedic. Where does this reasoning come from and, if as I fear, how can one possibly appeal when it comes from no reasoning at all? --JayHenry (talk) 00:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Bilateral relations of Ireland

I found my way to this discussion after encountering some of the articles on bilateral relations of Ireland created by Groubani (talk · contribs), who I wanted to notify about a discussion I have just started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ireland#Bilateral_relations_of_Ireland. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there is much of consenus here, but I just thought I'd notify y'all anyway. So far as I can see, the options for permastubs such as Georgian-Irish relations are either deletion or merger to lists. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:18, 14 April 2008 (UTC)