Commons:Territorial division of the World

This page holds a draft policy to be discussed before it can become an official guideline.

This page explains, for categorization purpose, how unequivocally to assign a given location to a territorial division of the World, otherwise to a body of water (sea or ocean).

DefinitionsEdit

Territory: The land and waters under the jurisdiction of a government.
- Country: A geographical entity, a territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation^[1]. This definition includes all sovereign states, but doesn't exclude autonomous dependencies of sovereign states and unrecognized de facto states. My suggestion is to include at least all sovereign states, unrecognized de facto countries and dependencies with self government.
  - Sub-divisions: a division of a country or another territory^[2]
- Dependency: a territory under sovereignity of a(nother) country without being considered (completely) part of that country.
- Neutral territory: A territory that is not an integral part of any country. Are there any examples except for Antarctica?
- Disputed territory: a geographical entity whose sovereignity is disputed
Non-territorial waters: Any sea area which is not part of internal waters or territorial waters of a country.

Entities can fall under various of these defintions.

PrinciplesEdit

A location in non-territorial waters is assigned to a body of water (sea or ocean).
Other locations:
1. If possible, a location is assigned to the country which controls the matching area.
2. If possible, a location is assigned to a neutral territory.
3. Otherwise, the location is assigned to a named territory or area; this territory or area is conventionally assigned to an existing country, according to international consensus (with the English Wikipedia as a reference).

You may not categorize pages so that countries could be confused with other entities, as former states, cultural entities, ethnic areas, geographical regions, and so on. Therefore, current items, like cities or subdivisions of countries, are never categorized in such entities. More, categorize as follows:

Former states => History of COUNTRY
Cultural entities => Culture of COUNTRY.
Ethnic areas => People of COUNTRY.
Geographical regions => Geography of COUNTRY.

Don't directly categorize these entities in the COUNTRY category.

Current (or currently used) subdivisions of a country are expected in categories “Subdivisions of COUNTRY”. So, categorizing Gallia Aquitania, a ancient province of the Roman Empire, in Category:Subdivisions of France is not allowed, though presently this area is part of the French territory. That regards any types of contemporary country subdivisions, as listed subdivisions in w:Template:Types of country subdivision, therefore all assigned territories by application of the previous principles.

List of bodies of waterEdit

This is a non-exhaustive list of seas and oceans which can be used to categorize locations (non-territorial waters; therefore, no internal seas) :

Arctic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

Indian Ocean

Pacific Ocean

Southern Ocean

List of countriesEdit

This is the alphabetical and exhaustive list of the countries of the World for categorization purpose in Commons (Category:Categories by country).

This list can be discussed. See talk page.

Contrary to the English Wikipedia list of countries, the Commons Wikimedia list treats the word "country" as synonymous with “sovereign state”: so, it matches the list of states in list of sovereign states; the list includes:

193 states with general international recognition:
- 192 member states of the United Nations
- the Vatican City
a state with some international recognition, and sovereignty over parts of claimed territories:
- Taiwan (see Is Taiwan a Country?, web page of http://geography.about.com)

Checkup 194 (A 11 - B 17 - C 18 - D 4 - E 8 - F 3 - G 11 - H 3 - I 8 - J 3 - K 7 - L 9 - M 19 - N 9 - O 1 - P 9 - Q 1 - R 3 - S 25 - T 11 - U 7 - V 4 - Y 1 - Z 2)

Commons:Territorial division of the World

DefinitionsEdit

PrinciplesEdit

List of bodies of waterEdit

List of countriesEdit

AEdit

BEdit

CEdit

DEdit

EEdit

FEdit

GEdit

HEdit

IEdit

JEdit

KEdit

LEdit

MEdit

NEdit

OEdit

PEdit

QEdit

REdit

SEdit

TEdit

UEdit

VEdit

YEdit

ZEdit

Other territoriesEdit

De facto independent statesEdit

Dependent territoriesEdit

Continents of the WorldEdit

AfricaEdit

North AmericaEdit

South AmericaEdit

AntarcticaEdit

AsiaEdit

EuropeEdit

OceaniaEdit

Oceanic islandsEdit

Notes and referencesEdit