Talk:Islands

I doubt the usefulness of the Islands part of this page if it means listing every single island or island group. (WT-en) D.D. 13:26, 9 Aug 2003 (PDT)


 * The idea wasn't to list every island anywhere in the world. It was to catch all the countries that aren't on one of the other 7 continents. A better name may be in order. "Island Nations"? -- (WT-en) Evan 15:58, 9 Aug 2003 (PDT)


 * I'd list all the MAJOR island groups and islands that people are likely to want to visit for tourism... the way I see it, these pages are purely indexes and a little redundancy doesn't hurt - they should be as comprehensive and logical as possible. No need to list Fred Nerk Island (size 5 acres) here, but I'd list places like Fraser Island (in Queensland) because it's a world heritage area...


 * No, no, no, please don't. I've changed the name of this article to "Island Nations" so we get away from that idea. We don't need a list of all lakes in the world, all statues in the world, all Irish pubs in the world, and we don't really need a list of all oceans and islands mixed up together. -- (WT-en) Evan 06:52, 11 Aug 2003 (PDT)

Hierarchy
I'd like to restructure the "islands" hierarchy somewhat. In particular, the North Atlantic islands and South Atlantic islands division doesn't work for me. Why subtropical Cape Verde should be grouped with Iceland, but nigh-equatorial Ascension with frigid South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands escapes me. There's also some annoying overlap involving the Southern Ocean. I'd like to adjust the categories a bit, the main difference being to shift the fringe Atlantic islands into the Arctic/Southern/Caribbean groups and combine the rest of the Atlantic into a single group. So we'd have: This would put all the icy-cold islands in their own two groups, and the sunny-warm islands in groups based on which ocean (and perhaps geocultural group) they're in. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 22:52, 1 June 2006 (EDT)
 * Arctic - as it is now, plus Iceland: all the non-continental islands in/near the Arctic Circle.
 * Southern - expanded to about 45&deg;S: every island that's closer to the South Pole than New Zealand or the tip of South America is (it already pretty much does this, but some of these are also classified as South-Atlantic or Indian).
 * Atlantic Ocean - everything from the Azores to Gough Island: the Atlantic islands near(ish) Africa.
 * Caribbean - as it is now, plus Bermuda: the Atlantic islands near the Americas.
 * Oceania - as it is now: every speck of coral or lava in the Pacific between the 45th and 45th parallels.
 * Polynesia - as is.
 * Micronesia - as is.
 * Melanesia - as is.
 * Australasia - as is.
 * Indian - pretty much as it now, but without the near-Antarctic islands: all the places that were briefly underwater on Boxing Day 2004.

Oceania
I have removed the oceania sub-categories from the Oceania (Pacific) grouping, due to the fact that the sub-categories are moving to Oceania. This doesn't really appear to be a significant change to this article. --(WT-en) Inas 02:03, 18 November 2008 (EST)

Newfoundland
Does the Dominion of Newfoundland (1907-1949) qualify? It's primarily an island, but it includes Labrador which is on the mainland. K7L (talk) 01:18, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * No, the Dominion of Newfoundland (1907-1948) would not qualify because we have artificially restricted the ambit of this article to those island nations that do not have a portion of their national territory on a continental mass. (Thus excluding such "nations" as Equatorial Guinea.)
 * However, I have visited some of the outports of Newfoundland and their accents are unintelligible to mainlanders ( I actually had to act as an interpreter to my Albertan companion who had not had the benefit of studying Elizabethan English playwrights). Newfoundland Colony would have qualified and there is currently an independence movement of about the same seriousness of purpose as the South Island Independence movement of New Zealand. I'd like to hear from any Newfies as to whether they regard themselves as any less a nation than some of the rather modern and artificial constructs that have seats in New York
 * It's for this reason that I intend to remove the part added in parentheses to "Labrador" after I recently started to expand this article today: "(1907-1949 Commonwealth Dominion, boundary includes Labrador on mainland)" and also internally de-link it from our article on the current Canadian province....-- A l i c e ✉ 03:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Perfidious Albion
Whether a nation has achieved either de jure or de facto recognition as a state or is internally self governing or not is largely irrelevant for the purposes of this article. That means that, although Scotland is clearly a nation, it is not included in these lists (since it shares the partly Scots island of Great Britain with the "home nations" of England and Wales and neither is the United Kingdom since it does not have a distinct national identity separate from its constituent parts. Neither the UK nor Great Britain issues their own banknotes; nor possess a single, separate legal or judicial system; have either a single distinctive national costume or multiple ones peculiar to the whole sub-division; don't have discrete languages from their neighbours; possess long-standing historically or naturally defined borders. For these reasons I intend to remove Great Britain, which although one of the larger islands of the world is not a nation within the meaning of this article. -- A l i c e ✉ 03:33, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * This is a top-level navigation page, that makes sure islands can be found that are not listed under any continent. Globe-trotter (talk) 03:47, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * After 9 years you've just decided that have you? I see that you've slapped a disambiguation template on the article after you nuked the up-to-date content too. So you've unilaterally decided it's NOT a travel topic? -- A l i c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 04:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * We're not telepathic you know, why don't you discuss abusing your nuclear admin tools before you come up with such a (for this article's discussion page at least) novel suggestion?

Re-locating archaic and obsolete content to new article "Islands"
The Globe-triped&trade; new content has now been re-located to User:Alice/Kitchen/Island nations if anyone wishes to develop a "Travel Topic" in peace...-- <font color="#0000DD">A <font color="#0066FF">l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 04:14, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
 * If the historic stub article was intended to serve the purpose GT describes in the section above, then it would have been better for GT to spell out on this discussion page that the current title of Island nations needed changing, the lead needed nuking, and that this was not a travel topic but a necessary disambiguation page that should NOT have "Island Nations" listed.
 * Now that GT and I have had further polite discussion on his user talk page I instead propose moving the historical content (that GT recently block reverted to) into a new article of Islands, which I assume would better and less ambiguously serve the real purpose GT describes above, and then reverting to the more appropriate content for a travel topic article entitled Island nations contained here:


 * What do folks think - should we have a disambiguation page called Islands and another, different travel topic article called Island nations ? -- <font color="#0000DD">A <font color="#0066FF">l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 23:51, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it would just lead to confusion, and that it would be a better use of time to post more content on the pages of particular island nations. Not all well-written passages are actually useful to travellers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Agree, let's leave it as is – cacahuate   talk 02:49, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with keeping it like it was (sorry, Alice). However, this page would probably be better as simply "Islands" with a redirect from "Island nations" and serve more as a category than travel topic. The biggest reason being that not all islands included are nations, yet every single island in each ocean isn't listed...only countries & territories/dependencies are listed. Using just "Islands" allows the geographical hierarchy to make more sense. Island nations > Islands of the Southern Ocean > French Southern and Antarctic Lands for French Southern and Antarctic Lands doesn't make sense, but Islands > Islands of the Southern Ocean > French Southern and Antarctic Lands does. AHeneen (talk) 03:34, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Azores & Canaries
When and why did we move the Azores and the Canary Islands out of Portugal and Spain in the regional hierarchy? I frankly think it's pretty ridiculous to have them listed as Island Nations in the the breadcrumbs. And why then, is the Faroe Islands not an island nation but grouped with Scandinavia? They are more independent than these two countries ever were, not to mention Iceland. Not that I for a second would agree that they should be moved out of Scandinavia, just pointing out weird inconsistencies. Sertmann (talk) 16:07, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * You are not wrong to point out the inconsistencies that will always exist with our hierarchies (and, at least until technical improvements mean we can have more than one breadcrumb trail at the top of an article, with the consequent breadcrumbs).


 * I would welcome your edits at my draft here: User:Alice/Kitchen/Island nations -- <font color="#0000DD">A <font color="#0066FF">l <font color="#0099FF">i <font color="#00CCFF">c <font color="#00EEFF">e <font color="#FF3333">✉ 23:14, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Extraregion
Shouldn't this be an extraregion instead of a region as it kinda defies geographical boundaries and classifications?Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:50, 27 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I think a travel topic is fine. An Extra region would indicate 'the planet' right? :) --Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:58, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

Not really nations
This article is about islands, of which a very few constitute island nations. An island nation would be something like Polynesia (many islands in one nation), Taiwan, UK, Japan, etc.

Can we just rename Islands ? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 02:01, 10 March 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll rename tomorrow if no one objects Andrewssi2 (talk) 21:41, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree. ϒpsilon (talk) 10:06, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Southern ocean/Antarctic islands
Should we include a link to islands of the southern ocean or antarctic islands here? Marathonian (talk) 22:26, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess we could. Of course, you could consider the Antarctic Islands to be part of Antarctica, rather than just islands in an ocean. But, in my view, simply the term "continent" shouldn't mean any islands, even if they're near the coast.
 * But that's unrelated.
 * Add the link if you want, I won't object. --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 22:45, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I added it, unless wikivoyage is less about completeness and more about logical flow. Just out of curiosity, I might need a geography lesson but any idea why Diomede islands are singled out here? Why not aleutian islands? Marathonian (talk) 04:53, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but I had to adjust. You see, Islands of the Southern Ocean is a disambiguation page, and we try to avoid links to disambiguation pages. Also, yes, there are probably some islands that could be added to the list, but haven't been. Quite possibly Evan's choice (see first discussion this page). --Comment by <font color="Olive">Selfie City  ( talk | <font color="Olive">contributions ) 13:06, 27 December 2018 (UTC)