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Category:Flag template shorthands has an RFC

Category:Flag template shorthands has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.

Greenland and Donald Trump

Can we get some more eyes on the inclusion of a section about Donald Trump in this article. Talk:Greenland#Donald Trump section. Moxy🍁 22:02, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

"Official" or "formal" when referring to full length country names

Currently most articles have something of the form Short Name, officially Full Name is a country in Region. For example China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia or Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa. This matches the way common/"short" names and "official" names are defined by (for example) the UK government, listed here.

The articles of both Austria and Sweden were changed by K1812 (talk · contribs) to use "formally" instead of "officially" (Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe and Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. This is based on how the UNGEGN defines the different names listed here (both "short" and "formal" names are "official" in this context).

Even using the UNGEGN list, there are some countries where "officially" would remain appropriate. For example Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America, the UNGEGN short name being Bolivia (Plurinational State of) as opposed to just Bolivia.

If the logic behind changing from "officially" to "formally" in the articles for Austria and Sweden is sound, then "formally" should become the norm for country lead sentences. Otherwise, the articles for Austria and Sweden should be reverted to using "officially".

MildlyLucid (talk) 11:10, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

At the moment, Sweden is used as an example for WP:COUNTRYLEAD and so formally appears there. This would need to be updated too if there is agreement to change this. Mellk (talk) 11:30, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Formal is likely better as short names are often also official, although generally I suspect the meaning is conveyed. CMD (talk) 11:51, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

Australia

Just looking for some generic input at Talk:Australia#Reverting without explanation. Is a hard article to update. Moxy🍁 00:49, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and continents

A perennial topic at Talk:Armenia and Talk:Georgia (country) (though apparently not so much at Talk:Azerbaijan, though Azerbaijan gets mentions in discussions at the first two) is the matter of how the leads of the respective articles should identify their locations—Eastern Europe, West Asia, both, or leave it at "the Caucasus". It is always pointed out that different sources put the boundary between Europe and Asia in different places. There are those who describe them as "culturally European", with the consequence that "in Europe" is correct, while others want what we say in the lead to be a purely geographical designation. And there are those who will point to inconsistencies between the way this is handled for Armenia and the way this is handled for Georgia (and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan), which could confuse readers.

This applies to the short descriptions as well.

Is there any interest in establishing uniform guidance regarding their respective assignment by Wikipedia to one continent or the other or both, synthesizing the relevant sources together as necessary, for all three countries in the interest of clarity and consistency? Largoplazo (talk) 12:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia used to "assign" them to Asia along the UN geoscheme lines, but by used to I mean decades ago. Since then the more flexible current consensus developed. There is no guidance that can be developed to stop this issue, as it is an issue stemming from real life, and is mostly lead-fixation. We generally should replace "culturally European" (vague) with something more to do with self-identity, as that better reflects why the issue exists, and partially why it is less prevalent for the Azerbaijan article. CMD (talk) 13:01, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we should get rid of "culturally European", a subjective buzzphrase with at least a whiff of cultural superiority behind it that has no place in Wikipedia voice. It's rather meaningless. I know (before anyone yells at me) that Armenian culture isn't Turkish culture, but is it closer to Norwegian or even Bulgarian culture than it is to Turkish culture? How close are Romanian and Norwegian culture to each other, that one can define a "European culture" that Armenian culture belongs to? Also, if it's culturally European, then isn't Australia too?

Anyway, I'm specifically talking about the lead. Regardless of the terminology chosen to convey it, the lead isn't the place for "And, in case you were thinking Armenians are like Asians, they would very much like you to know they'd prefer to be considered European." At least with regard to any mention of either Europe or Asia in the lead, let's stick to geography as we do with pretty much every country outside the Caucasus. Largoplazo (talk) 16:21, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Addendum I meant to add that I wonder whether this is worth holding an RFC over so that future debate on the respective talk pages can be forestalled by pointing to its outcome. Largoplazo (talk) 16:34, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Including Warming Stripes graphics in country articles in sections which relate to temperature and/or climate

Hi all

I wanted to see if we could come to some kind of consensus about adding Warming Stripes graphics to country articles in sections which talk about temperature and/or climate change. There was previously a discussion here but there didn't seem to be a consensus, only different opinions. I've Pinged the users who took part in the previous conversation in the table below. I want to restart this disucssion because I recently added to a few articles which Moxy reverted pointing to the previous conversation, but there doesn't appear to be a consensus.

About the graphics

The graphics are called Warming Stripes, there are two main versions, shown below. They are created by Professor Ed Hawkins at Reading University. More of an explatation is available here and on the Show Your Stripes website, there's a lot of other press about them as well by the BBC and others. The graphs are visual representations of the change in temperature as measured in each country, region or city over the past 100+ years. The data sources are Berkeley Earth & ERA5-Land, NOAA, UK Met Office, MeteoSwiss, DWD, SMHI, UoR & ZAMG. They have their own Wikipedia article here Warming stripes.

• 
  Temperature change in Afghanistan, each bar represents the average temperature over that year
• 
  Temperature change in Afghanistan, each bar represents the average temperature over that year

I've recently uploaded all versions of the graph for all countries and regions on Commons here.

Summary of previous discussion

Previous discussion

Note: I've tried to organise this summary into a structure that shows who supports which points, since some points were repeated by different people at different times in the discussion. Please excuse me if I have missunderstood or missed details in the summary. I've included a column for how this relates to existing rules, please feel free to add links there. There was also some technical discussion about the best way to display changes in temperature which I won't try to summarise because I don't understand it properly.

Reservations and requirements

No	Discussion point	Supporters	How this relates to Manual of Style etc
1	They need a scale Note: This is something which have both been addressed in these newest versions of the graph.	Moxy, Canterbury Tail, LaundryPizza03, EMsmile
2	There needed to be better descriptions of what the graphs represent. Note: This is something which has been addressed in these newest versions of the graph, could it be improved further?	Chipmunkdavis
3	They should be included when warming is talked about in the text Note: This	Canterbury Tail, Renerpho
4	They didn't represent the climate over a long enough time period.	JeffUK
5	No graphic to show an increase in temperature is 'required'	JeffUK

Quality of the graphics

No	Discussion point	Supporters	How this relates to Manual of Style etc
1	They were good overview over the temperature and a good complement to be used in the "geography/climate" sections of our country articles.	DiagramLover, EMsmile, RCraig09
2	They should be included in both country article and climate change by country articles	DiagramLover, EMsmile, RCraig09

Current discussion

One question, should we have a discussion below and update the tables above to try to maintain an easy to understand summary for people who want to take part?

Thanks for your time :)

John Cummings (talk) 16:50, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

For me this is simply a no go as per WP:COUNTRYCHARTS. For one its a scale of a change of 2 degrees (not mentioned in most articles) and for large countries its simply disiving ...for example Canadas Arctic region has been warming at three times the global average, thus these charts dont covay accurate info for a huge country with many regions. This type of info needs a good explanation in its parent article on climate to explain why and how 2 degres is relevent to make the chart informative. Also most articles currently have the "Köppen climate classification" (also added on mass longago) that would need to be removed to make room for climate chart because articles generaly only have 2-4 paragraphs (the normal size for a summary section) lacking room for more images. In my view the Köppen climate classification is clearly more educational. So basicly this is a talk about replacing the "Köppen climate maps". Side note not sure what the second chart is showing. Moxy🍁 17:07, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi Moxy, I'll let others discuss the utility of each chart type in different contexts and if one is more suitable than the other or if they are both useful for different things, perhaps DiagramLover has thoughts? For ease of this discussion, Köppen climate classification describes the kind of graphic you are talking about.

A few questions:

1. I'm struggling to find any Wikipedia policy that relates to rules around graphs and charts in articles, are you aware of any? I'm struggling to understand what prohibits having both if they both show different things.
2. Do you know how WP:COUNTRYCHARTS was written? Is there a community consensus to create it or was it written by someone, as you say, 'long ago'. My understanding is that guides on Wikiprojects are not policy, but maybe its just a policy contextualised for the context of country articles?

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 19:17, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Complicated statistical charts of this nature that need explanation fall under our policy of WP:NOTSTATS. These type of charts need a paragraph or two to explain their relevance and how these minimal numbers mean anything.... that in my view is best handled on the main topic of climate for each country or perhaps geography articles. You are correct that Wikiprojects are not policy.... however they are generally written based on existing policies/guidelines and general recognized style over a certain topic of articles. In this case our protocols are linked throughout our guideline to show where our thoughts on style and presentation come from. Moxy🍁 19:30, 8 April 2025 (UTC)