Talk:Subregion

This makes absolutely no sense to me. 205.174.22.28 05:20, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

This looks pretty much like original research. --Shallot 20:42, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Defining the extent and limits of an exotic region

Hm.. the more I click my way around on these pages, the more I come to realize that perspectives and understandnings on all these exotic regions and continents vary and are highly subjective and even biased. Perhaps the English usage is much more inconsistent, unprecise and overlapping than the native-speakers' usage. If so, this is similar to other vaguely-defined regions that are found in the minds of distant groups of people and mean different things to them. See also Talk:Siberia, Talk:Latin America, Talk:Scandinavia, Talk:Middle East and Talk:Balkans, and also exonym versus autonym for similar discussions of namings and meanings. //Big Adamsky 18:09, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but this isn't limited to mere English usage/mastery. I'm finding much of the content based on uncited, unverifiable points-of-view. That's why I've been so adamant in making various (some unilateral) editions that are precisely rooted in the opposite and consistent with Wp policies. If I can be of assistance, please let me know. E Pluribus Anthony 07:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree. This article should not be a list of proposed countries and Kurdistan is a proposed country. --Cool Cat^Talk|@ 15:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Nomenclature: Congo Region and Middle Africa

Today I created the article Congo (region) mainly because I felt that it was missing from Template:Regions of the world. Only afterwards did I discover that Congo already exists, but that this article seems to restrict itself to dealing solely with the two Congos, and not the wider, vaguer subregion. What is the preferred option now: should Congo me merged with Congo (region) and redirect to Congo (disambiguation) instead? Please have your say here. Thanks.

And a related issue: I would argue that the UN designation Middle Africa - which currently redirects to Central Africa - is the least ambiguous name for the region, as listed at Template:Africa, just like Southern Africa is used to effectively disambiguate from South Africa. Please respond here. Thanks! // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 10:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Mexico

Where is Mexico? I can't find it in Central America. Has it been moved into the newly designated UN subregion of Central America (subregion)?

I know that Mexicans don't consider norteamericano to refer to them or their country. Maybe that's why the UN created subregions, to be politically correct. But this is (a) an encyclopedia (b) for English-speaking people.

And some of us would like to know what continent Mexico is in. Is it in North America or South America or America (continent) or what? --Uncle Ed 15:45, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Answering my own question: Mexico is in the UN sub-region of Central America (UN sub-region).

The continent of North America (003) comprises Northern America (021), Caribbean (029), and Central America (013). [1]

Interesting how every continent other than "Americas" has its component parts listed alphabetically. The UN statistics folks figured out a way of putting the United States where you'd have a hard time finding it, since "Northern America" isn't listed alphabetically. I guess somebody decided it was time to bring Americans off their high horse. Ole! --Uncle Ed 16:48, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Restoring succinct list

I've restored the prior list of subregions and nixed the atomic list of territories in them. I'm all for using the UN scheme of sub/regions but, as conceptual constructs, other (admittedly tenuous) subregional schemes exist, as exhibited (e.g.) in any clutch of dictionaries/compendiums or the CIA World Fact Book that note cardinal directions when describing countries. Moreover, there was no order to the list of subregions/territories and it lacked structure; it perhaps would be better to amalgamate the two or create a dedicated article/list of UN subregions that lists territories in them. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 18:49, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Let's figure out some way to work on this together. I'm interesed in a list of the world's countries, organized by UN sub-region. You know more geography than I do; I'm willing to paste in the names and format them. How about you take the lead, and I do the leg work? :-)

Great; give me a day or two. I think an article entitled List of territories by subregion (1st choice; like similar lists), List of territories by UN subregion, or similar (as a list or table) would do. I use territories to include areas that might'nt be countries nor states; moreover, in Wp let's deprecate use of the hyphen (e.g., sub-region), since it's somewhat unnecessary. :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 19:25, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree to all that. Let's try to get it done this week. --Uncle Ed 23:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Eastern Europe???

the map on this page shows siberia as part of eastern europe. does anyone have a better map which shows the ural line dividing russia into its european and asian segments gunslotsofguns 11:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The whole thing is the point of view of an agency of the United Nations, and therefore needs no justification. It's their dime, they can say what they want. If they want to declare Russia to be part of Eastern Europe (UN sub-region), that's their right.

Wikipedia needn't adopt the latest vote of the General Assembly, because this is not a UN encyclopedia. Our contributors answer to no political authority whatsoever. We are earnest seekers of truth! Uncle Ed 13:34, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Why not? The UN scheme is for organisational and statistical purposes, hence the simplicity of including Russia – whose capital, bulk of population and economy is in Europe – in one and not both; the source for the map is clearly noted in its caption. Just as well here. Arguably the same said can be said of other transcontinental nations; however, content in said articles equitably deals with this: in devising the tables for each of the continents, notes and provisos clearly indicate and accommodate for such duality. For exammple for Asia, it would seem rather obvious to include the Asian portion of Russia in Eastern Europe so a proviso was included that indicates it in Northern Asia, as Encyclopædia Britannica does, instead.

Feel free to add another map regarding subregions – good luck in finding one that's neutral yet agreeable. In any event and in absence of anything else, I see little reason to obviate something which is verifiable for a hodge-podge that may change with the user or wind.

I'll also note that the above response seems to contradict indications in the section immediately above it. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 13:45, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I misunderstood. Is the "Subregion" article intended to describe the UN scheme of organizing countries by subregion? If so, I think it would be a good idea to:

1. List each UN sub-region
2. List the countries the UN classes into each subregion

If you agree with this, I can help you. I'm good with lists. --Uncle Ed 14:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we're on the same page, but on a different paragraph. :) The subregion article is intended to describe any notions regarding subregions, including those delineated by the UN and not: it is a concept not limited to the UN. I fully support creation of a list of UN sub/regions (as above) and will do so shortly; however we should NOT be creating forks in the form of [[xxxx (UN sub-region)]] and instead link to the pre-existing articles about those regions already, all of which are in Wp, and (ideally) treat the UN topic within them. Many already contain this information: Central America, Northern America, Southern Asia, et al. Improvements can be made to others, but creating forks is unnecessary. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 14:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Conventional usage and the United Nations scheme

To make an great article about geographical classifications like continents, regions or subregions, it would help if we first wrote an article (or series) which was just about the UN subregion scheme. The current articles are trying to do too much at once.

I vote that we create one page per subregion (a dozen or more), simply listing the countries which the UN statistics office has classed in each subregion. Then we can but them together, or turn them into templates or merge them.

I wish you would stop simply turning my work into redirects. We could be helping each other here. --Uncle Ed 11:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I support creating a list/article about the UN subregions (and will work on this; I'm on a wikibreak of sorts). However, as above, dedicated articles for each UN subregion are unnecessary forks and rather redundant. Each of the sub/regional articles already treat the UN subregions in-text and (if necessary) compare and contrast with other or usual reckonings that may differ from them. Forks help no-one, nor do their continued addition. In fact, it seems that you should probably be considering the addition of particular categories instead. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 16:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Stats for UN subregions

You mean something like this? BigAdamsky|TALK|EDITS| 23:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Stats for UN subregions

Source: GeoHive.com

UN subregion	# of entities*	Area in km²	Estimated population in 2005
Eastern Africa	19	6,384,904	275,928,000
Middle Africa	9	6,613,253	106,435,000
Northern Africa	7	8,524,700	199,064,000
Southern Africa	5	2,693,418	51,056,000
Western Africa	17	6,144,013	254,741,000
Caribbean	24	235,175	38,678,000
Central America	8	2,496,330	147,338,000
South America	14	17,818,508	371,274,000
Northern America	5	21,771,612	328,668,000
Eastern Asia	8	11,795,912	1,538,099,000
South-central Asia	14	10,779,140	1,594,572,000
South-eastern Asia	11	4,510,560	571,337,000
Western Asia	18	4,541,686	206,758,000
Eastern Europe	10	18,802,179	299,696,000
Northern Europe	16	1,813,189	96,531,000
Southern Europe	15	1,315,570	147,176,000
Western Europe	9	1,103,983	186,068,000
Australia and New Zealand	3	7,955,565	24,128,000
Melanesia	5	540,820	7,399,000
Micronesia	7	3,199	553,000
Polynesia	10	8,915	671,000

*Incl. non-sovereign entities

Weird geographical hierarchy - rename article

The hierarchy principally seems to be: Continent - Subregion - Country - Region. How can subregion be 2 levels above region? The Middle East is mentioned as both a subregion and a region in the respective articles. Let's face it - region is a generic term and subregion is derivative and even more generic. If this article (really just a list) is to stay, I suggest it should renamed. Superregion perhaps - no just kidding. Maybe Region could be renamed subsubregion - sorry, still kidding. Seriously, maybe List of continental regions. As for that dreadful region article - dreadful intro at least - I hope someone moves it to wiktionary or does something with it. Nurg 11:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better to have a separate article on the UN geoscheme, which uses "voted-on" definitions for macro and micro regions. This curious scheme has the effect of putting the United States dead last in the Western Hemisphere, due to a trick of alphabetical ordering. That ought to teach those arrogant Americans (USA) their place! ;-) --Wing Nut 13:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Well that is certainly a much more specific title which is good. But I feel that duplicating info that is in this article is a backward step. And it does nothing to solve the problem with this article. Nurg 11:25, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I also find this page confusing. A "subregion" is simply a part of a region, and a region can be any area. The City of Edmonds is a subregion of the Seattle Metropolitan region, the Nebraska Sand Hills is a subregion of the Great Plains, the Cascadia subduction zone is a subregion of the Pacific Ring of Fire, Belgium is a subregion of Benelux, Armenia is a subregion of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Atlantic coastal pine barrens is a subregion of the Temperate coniferous forests biome region, etc etc etc.

I agree with this article's first half sentence, "A subregion is a conceptual unit which derives from a larger region." But everything else seems more regional than subregional. Just because a region is part of a continent doesn't mean it isn't simply a region. Continents are subregions of the planet after all. Regional hierarchies are arbitrary. What makes something a subregion rather than a region is just a matter of one's scope of interest. So I don't understand why this page is called subregion instead of just region -- or if it is mostly about subregions as defined by the UN, why the page isn't called "Subregions as defined by the UN" or something.

In fact, now that I found it, the UN geoscheme seems to say the same things this page does, but much clearer. The only thing this page seems to offer in addition is lists of regions defined as subregions of continents, which seems arbitrary and confusing. Pfly 06:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Eastern Europe

No way that Eastern Eruope goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean. That's absurd and false. Clean this article up. In addition, North Africa does not entail the entire country of Sudan. This article seems to be more about legitimizing racial status-quo than anything else. Eastern Europe is basically based on Russian territory, while Sudan being a Muslim nation is considered wholly a part of the North African (Muslim/Arab) structure. This article should conform more to historical/cultural/physical regions and not nationalistic and political. --68.60.55.162 07:10, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

"Subregion" in Hungary (or Hungarian)

I only got this by clicking "Random page" but with luck someone here may be able to solve a bit of a problem for me. From time to time the missus and I translate Hungarian geographical articles. Indeed, I have made {{Infobox Hungarian settlement}} and various templates (in Category:Hungary geographical name conversion templates) to assist this.

Subregions of Hungary (kistérségek), sing. kistérség) are divisions of counties. I would prefer to translate it as "district", but that seems to be the terminology in use generally, and is how at least 1 native Hungarian naturally translates it, even though she lives in the UK where we would term such a thing a district or borough.

My difficulty here is I would like to include that as some kind of disambiguation in this article, but obviously since it generally is referring to much larger areas, it does not seem to deserve a section, and to put it as a hatnote may also give it undue prominence (and could open a can of worms about ever other kind of subregion in the world). Leaving aside any argument about whether this particular kind of subregion is the primary topic, what is the best to do here? Even a "See also" seems less than useful if someone is stubling towards its meaning for Hungarian articles and finds themselves confronted with these large areas, I think they would be more likely to click away than scroll down to the see also (and anyway its purpose is not to disambiguate but to lead to related information).

Any opinions, suggestions? Thanks. Si Trew (talk) 19:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Merge with United Nations geoscheme?

In the broad sense, the term "subregion" simply means a subdivision of a region. And the term "region" has a broad meaning with many usages across many fields. But this page, called "subregion", seems to be solely about the United Nations geoscheme. This is hardly the only way the term "subregion" is used. So, I don't see why this page even exists, at least in its present form. It is a "non-exhaustive list of [UN geoscheme] subregions", yet the United Nations geoscheme already provides a non-exhaustive list and links to exhaustive lists of regions and subregions within the UN geoscheme (like United Nations geoscheme for Africa and United Nations geoscheme for the Americas). It seems to me this page should be merged with the UN geoscheme page, if there is anything here that isn't also there. Otherwise it should either be deleted as redundant, or rewritten. No? Pfly (talk) 09:00, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

It should be deleted since it's redundant, I agree with you. This page was created as a POV fork years ago by a user who used lots of sockpuppets (some of them E Pluribus Anthony and Quizimodo are listed in the article history). So this page should be deleted. AlexCovarrubias ^{( Talk? )} 16:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - Subregions are not exclusive to the U.N. geoscheme, and their is global usage of the term. The article just needs to be re-written to explain what a subregion is (definitions, purposes, uses, etc.) and then link to lists of subregions, such as the United Nations geoscheme. 08OceanBeach^S.D. 02:34, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

  But at the moment article is mainly about the subregion in U.N. geoscheme: but the first two, (although very introductive, vague and general) and items in subregion list. Only the U.N. geoscheme regions are defined. The other itmes in the lists are not defined at all. So, if we want to have two separate articles, we need to improve this one a lot. --87.2.140.179 (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

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MISLEADING ARTICLE!!! Rework top to bottom!

Ed Poor warned of it 18 years ago and nobody paid attention.

The UN geoscheme is a tool of the UN statistics dept. An internal tool built for a specific purpose under specific UN constraints. It has little to do with geography per se.

No geographer will use this scheme, and it has major oddities from a geographic pov: numerous countries added or left out from any definition of (sub)regions used in GEOGRAPHY, as opposed to: in UN statistics. The UN scheme never intended to set a GEOGRAPHIC standard.

The article now, with its title and definition (presented, as always, in the lead), MISLEADS users into believing that this is a geography article; it is NOT, it's a Wiki publicising effort of an obscure, specific UN Statistics Department working tool, which became far too visible on Wiki (proliferation of spin-off articles, lots of cross-refs by Wikilinks, too general titles) due to editors misunderstanding the topic themselves. Even the UN has more than one scheme, each used by another department. Warning for sticklers looking for UN sources explicitly making my point: You won't find a document stating for lay people that this or that UN scheme is not meant for general geographic use, because that's self-evident to all those it's actually meant for, i.e. the UN clerks. Wiki editors fundamentally misunderstood it for close to two decades, and it mushroomed into an entire cluster of misleading articles. They must now be sorted out, or else the user is f***ed!

I propose uniting them into one article (nothing new, see 11-years-old proposal here-above - hi Pfly!), huge or not, so that they become less likely to mislead.

As a minimum, this article should add to its title and definition (lead's 1st paragraph) "for UN statistical use only" or alike. Maybe rename as "UN statistical subregions", with the definition (at top of lead) containing the phrase "for use by UN Statistics Department".

If one insists on RS proof, look at UN's FAQ page here. Examples: the UN subregions take into consideration state borders: with the breakup of the USSR, they are changed. Not the physical geography has changed, just the political one! So these UN statistical subregions are constantly changing, depending on changes to state borders; impermanent, unlike physical geography. There has even been a subregion "USSR"! Also: there are additional bureaucratic subsets, only misleading if mistaken to relate to physical (or even political) geography, as well as in terms of the plain meaning of their names: see "Northern America" and "North America" subregions (latter one contains Caribbean and Central Am. w. Mexico; former one does not).

"Make the Wiki encyclopedia better for the benefit of the user", the No. 1 overriding obligation we have, asks that we undo this mess. Arminden (talk) 11:21, 16 February 2024 (UTC)