Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of non-sovereign countries

List of non-sovereign countries

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There is no definition of a 'non-sovereign country'. Therefore such a list cannot exist, it is WP:OR. If there is a source that 'non-sovereign country' means dependent territory then I could redirect there. Privybst (talk) 07:54, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and Lists. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 10:16, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Shortly after this list's creation, issues with it were raised on Talk:List of non-sovereign countries. They remain unresolved. Put simply, this list is a WP:SYNTH compilation of vastly different entities based on finding particular semantics in a source. (Two different semantics since "nations" were added to the list and are apparently different.) A month on from creation, not a single secondary source has been found for the topic. The phrase "recognised as countries" shows one of the key issues with this list, as there is no "country" status that can be recognised. The list misleading presents this term as a specific category of thing, when it's simply a term applied to some entities sometimes, and an arbitrary one at that. There is very little linking Indian tribes with Scotland. There is no reason with some British Overseas Territories are here and others aren't. That there is a Varied terminology subsection is odd, as that would apply to every entity on this list. CMD (talk) 11:18, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep (or move/re-defined) . It's important to be clear about the two headings currently used in the article, "non-sovereign country" and "non-sovereign nations". Scotland for example is a "country' according to ISO and the tribal nations of the USA are referred to as "nations", both clear definitions.
  
  It may be more appropriate to discuss a potential re-definitions of headings or a move to "Non-sovereign states" as discussed in: https://www.thoughtco.com/country-state-and-nation-1433559 for example, rather than just deleting the entire page. Titus Gold (talk) 11:49, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  Those are not definitions, those are names/labels. This page lacks any definitions. As for the link discussed (not that it appears to be that high quality a source), we already have articles for those topics at Country, State (polity), and Nation. Any rename of this article would face the same issue of SYNTH, the issue is not the title per se. CMD (talk) 12:29, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete. Article is pure WP:OR, and is impossible to recreate without OR. As CMD says, the phrases defining the list, recognised as countries by their respective sovereign states and non-sovereign "nations" that are recognised as such either by their respective sovereign state or internationally are essentially meaningless. There is no "country" or "nation" status that exists in any sense that can meaningfully be applied internationally, except that of a sovereign state. The statuses of the entities in the list are not at all the same, while entities that do have the same status are not treated as parallel. It's a bit like making a list of Indians that includes both Mahatma Gandhi and Pocahontas, but excludes both Sacagawea and Srinivasa Ramanujan as insufficiently "Indian".

It is worth considering that there are many other entities called "countries", but they are generally different things in different places. For example, all States of Germany and all States of Austria are formally referred to in German as "countries" or "federal countries". For example, France has a concept of a "country" that is a small cultural region. All of these statuses are different. Essentially the only point of commonality between these entities is that some Wikipedian has found some document that happened to describe them with the word "country". Kahastok talk 13:55, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Given this edit, I feel I should mention for the benefit of the closer that, while I have been contributing to the wider topic editor for many years, I was not aware of this article before I was pinged to this discussion. I am not aware of having had any other previous contact with the nominator. Kahastok talk 19:25, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've pinged two random editors who I've seen from the page's history have made major contributions to this topic for many years. Privybst (talk) 19:36, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete -- The concept is ill-defined. England is part of the United Kingdom (and included), but why are Texas and California, which were independent polities incorporated into the United States not included? Peterkingiron (talk) 19:01, 19 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Any evidence that California or Texas or Florida or Massachusetts are called or described as countries? 124.217.188.170 (talk) 12:41, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Delete A very oxymoronic concept. I'd imagine that anything here is an administrative subdivision, or belongs at Dependent territory. See also Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_September_19#Category:Non-sovereign_countries. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 04:54, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Strong delete per nom and discussion. TNstingray (talk) 16:43, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Commemt: Why are there countries which are "non-sovereign"? 124.217.188.170 (talk) 12:41, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]