Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Former countries

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Perhaps we should come up with a comprehensive list on all the historical entities we need to apply the template on at Wikipedia:WikiProject Historical States/Status. Prussia does not seem to have this particular template applied, but seems so fine without it. The Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia articles on the other hand seem so lopsided and messy. Irish Free State looks neat, but listing all the heads of state would not be feasible if there were too many and the article covers mainly political aspects. Let's discuss what is so appropriate about the existing country templates when applied to defunct states.--Jiang 20:26, 6 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

For example, it won't be necessary to go into much detail about the geography, given that this doesn't change much over the course of time. We only need to specify the location and mention geography when it concerns other aspects, such as the economy. We should also use "economic history" instead of economy.
Agree Bwood 22:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
The current country articles don't have much transportation and communications. I suppose we won't find much for historical states either. Perhaps a section on techonological advances like at China (which very well resembles an entry on Imperial China)? --Jiang 20:34, 6 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Partially agree. Let's leave an option, for example, to discuss the development of the railroad. Perhaps including a table of when various lines were created. This is useful for knowing when RR transport was available for certain areas. In earlier times, canals were more important than in the modern world. Bwood 22:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the subpages inherited from the World Factbook should go. More attention should probably be paid to history, geopolitics, heritage/legacy, ... --Shallot 21:20, 6 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]
Also jurisdictional boundaries and their changes. Bwood 22:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]


I would prefer to allow for an approach that may be a little different than most. It gets to the matter of how strictly is WikiPedia a traditional encyclopedia. Using the Prussia page, as an example, note how it deals with several different historical states. You can see that they are all related and that the scope of "Prussia" waxed and waned. While on the one hand, I wouldn't advocate a separate article for every little border change. However, I would like to have separate articles for "obvious" major incarnations. So, in the Prussia case, I would like the Prussia article to remain as it is, and used as a "disambiguation" type page as an umbrella to at least two article pages. My personal agenda is to allow the ability to go into extensive detail about 1800s historical states, including a hierarchy of descendant articles, breaking the state into smaller civil jurisdictional units. For example, for Prussia in the time period of 1815 to 1871 (defeat of Napoleon to unification of Germany), Prussia was a Kingdom (sovereign, independant) that could be subdivided into these sublevels: province > admin. district > Kreis (county) > Standesamt dist. I've been working on incorporating this structure on the Province of Posen pages. I've already successfully defended two articles on the lowest level of this structure from "Vote for Deletion". See Standesamt Kolmar for example, and then work your way up the linked hierarchy to Kreis Kolmar, Bromberg Regierungsbezirk, Posen province. Once there, please note that the province article is just one of several for the same area, but for different time periods. I know most ppl would feel that this structure is too ambitious and detailed, but please refer to the vfd disscussions. We don't have to create the detailed articles for every historical state, but I'd like to have the blueprint ready when someone comes along with a desire to add the info. One of these days, the millions of online genealogists are going to discover Wikipedia, and will be able to contribute an incredible amount of info that they've researched about certain small areas. Let's give them a good working structure to use, instead of playing catch up. Bwood 23:06, 7 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Just finding this project. I don't know that I disagree with anything that's been said. By the way, Prussia remained a Kingdom that was at least quasi-sovereign until 1918, and after that was a state, with presumably the same district boundaries, until 1945. One thing that concerns me here is how to deal with states that exist now, as part of a larger entity, but were formerly independent (e.g. Bavaria, Tuscany), and how to deal with formerly existing states that share their name with current states (the only one I can think of at the moment is the Republic of China, which doesn't do a good job of talking about anything beyond the current incarnation on Taiwan). At any rate, I think this is a good idea. john 01:47, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

I would add that subdivisions can be highly problematic, since they change. john 02:03, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Furthermore: is such a strict structure as suggested in this article really necessarily a good idea? For instance, would we need such things for Kingdom of Great Britain? Surely these articles, beyond situating the subject geographically and perhaps identifying subdivisions (carefully...), should focus on the history of these states (as Prussia does, for instance. But note quasi-duplicate page at Kingdom of Prussia.) At any rate, I'm going to go to status and begin to list defunct states. john 02:16, 9 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

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