Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries

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WT:COUNTRIES

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Countries

This page is within the scope of WikiProject Countries, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of countries on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CountriesWikipedia:WikiProject CountriesTemplate:WikiProject Countriescountry

WikiProject Countries to-do list:

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Article requests : Check out the article alerts; see if anything catches your fancy.
Cleanup : clean-up listing for Countries
Stubs : de-stub articles in Category:Stubs by region.
Other : add {{WPCountries}} to talk pages of related articles, and assess.

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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)[reply]

"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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]