Category talk:Nations

Criteria for inclusion/exclusion

Can the criteria for inclusion in Category:Nations be documented on the category page and in Help:Writing an article about a place?

Additionally:

Should the articles categorized in Category:Historical nations also be categorized in Category:Nations, or is the subcategorization of Category:Historical nations in Category:Nations sufficient?
- If not, a bot job should remove all nations that are in both categories from Category:Nations, except for oddballs like Eurythnia and Edasseril that genuinely do belong in both as revived historical nations.
Does a higher-level category, such as Category:Polities or Category:Territorial entities, need to exist to encompass things like city-states, colonies, and stateless settlements that aren't clearly categorizable as Category:Nations?

If not:

Should the articles categorized in Category:City-states also be categorized in Category:Nations?
Should Category:Colonies be categorized in Category:Nations?

-Oznogon (talk) 17:23, 25 February 2025 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Here are my personal opinions on this matter:

The criteria for an article to be included in Category:Nations is to be explicitly referred to as a nation and/or have a nation statblock listed in any 1E or 2E canon source.
All nations within Category:Historical nations should also be listed in Category:Nations, because having a single category containing all nations there have ever been seems appropriate. However, I would support the creation of an additional Category:Current nations category for exclusively categorizing nations that still exist.
All articles categorized in Category:City-states should also be listed in Category:Nations, for the same reason mentioned in the previous point.
The Category:Colonies itself can be categorized in Category:Nations, as colonies do represent a part of separate nations, however, individual colony articles do not belong in the nation category.

Rexert (talk) 18:25, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As there appears to be little activity regarding this matter, I've added the following sentence to Help:Writing an article about a place:

All nations mentioned in any canon source should be listed in Category:Nations, including city-states like Alkenstar, historical nations that no longer exist like Ghol-Gan, and retroactively removed nations like Sarkoris Scar (nation).

Feel free to edit or revert this change if it seems inappropriate. I also didn't address stateless settlements in my previous response, which I think should be listed within their own separate category. That category should likely be categorized under nations too, to compile all nation-related categories in one place alongside categories like Category:Colonies. --Rexert (talk) 19:31, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The Sarkoris Scar is a sufficiently exceptional situation (a nation statblock representing a region that wasn't a polity, and was subsequently retconned into a geographical feature that also re-established a historical nation) that I don't think it's useful as guidance for anything else. Sarkoris Scar (nation) in particular shouldn't exist; the Scar as a nation statblock is an entirely real-world construct that can be captured on Meta:Sarkoris Scar without creating a third article that's not referenced by any other article and confusingly redundant with both Sarkoris Scar and Sarkoris. -Oznogon (talk) 20:18, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply[reply]

With the Sarkoris Scar (nation) resolved, I'd like to proceed with implementing standardization for the Category:Nations category to explicitly include all nation articles, including city-states, historical nations, and retroactively removed nations in the form of a redirect if an article isn't suitable like in this case.

I'm open to creating an additional category specifically for present-day nations which could exclude historical and retconned nations, although excluding city-state nations doesn't make much sense in this case.

Additionally, I'd like to implement the previously proposed stateless settlement category to clarify when a city doesn't belong to any nation. Standardized practice for explaining this in the infobox, such as listing (Stateless) or something similar in the nation parameter would alleviate a lot of confusion, at least for me personally, as I keep running into stateless settlements and attempting to find which nation they belong to, assuming the article's creator forgot to fill in the parameter.

I think both the Category:Colonies and Category:Stateless settlements categories should be categorized under Category:Nations, but none of their subcategories should.

If all of these suggestions seem agreeable, I'd love to see them documented in Help:Writing an article about a place, thanks. --Rexert (talk) 07:57, 19 April 2025 (UTC)Reply[reply]