Talk:Council of Europe

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Although the COE is not part of the European Union I thought that it might be useful to put the European Union template on this page. --Drdan 21:28, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Erm, I would be against incorporating any EU template as the CoE suffers from being confused with the EU and this would only make it worse! rlongstaff 21:56, Oct 17 2005 (UTC)
I thought about that as well. But only having it on the Talk-page could be OK. I am not going to force this, so if you think that it confuses those coming to the talk-page I am open to remove it. --Drdan 07:34, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


WHAT "With the exception of Belarus and Kazakhstan all European states have acceded to the Council of Europe"

Kazakhstan is NOT AT ALL A EUROPEAN COUNTRY. For crying out loud, it lies on the Central Asian steppes - yes, it isnt a member, but neither is Uganda, and thats prolly as European as Kazakhstan. Someone please explain why Kazakhstan should be a European country???????? >>Err. Western end of Kazakhstan is considered part of Europe. Not a huge part, maybe 20% of the country, but it's considered European nevertheless. I'm sure there are many sites here that can show that to you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.233.252.71 (talk) 21:50, August 24, 2007 (UTC)


FYROM,the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,as Republic of Macedonia is fabrik for forgery Greek history,Greek culture,Greek geography and Greek symbols Macedonians!See Greek Macedonian symbol "Vergina Sun",Philip II king of Macedonia and Alexander the Great king of Macedonia !!! Vergina 19:43, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I still fail to see how "F.Y.R.O. Macedonia" fails to meet your standards, while the expanded acronym does -- the difference seems negligible to me. You can impose the conflict in the name to a point, but if you overstate it, you're not doing the readers a favor. Note also that the RoM link is a pipe link, avoiding a needless redirect. --Shallot 20:25, 6 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Jiang's version even now says "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", it just doesn't link the whole name, so I don't see what the issue is really. --Delirium 09:05, Nov 18, 2003 (UTC)

This is Propaganda !! Vergina 09:08, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Should not the name here reflect exactly the English equivalent of what the COE lists as the name? That should prevail over any POV. This is the COE article and nothing more. There should be no arguing here about it - Marshman 04:12, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The problem is only with Vergina who seems to believe that we need to display the ridiculously long name and link to the respective redirect. While the former could be explained with accuracy and honoring the dispute, the latter is really pointless. --Shallot 18:07, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Hmmm, I see no problem with the long name if that is the name under COE. Link should never go to a redirect; that would be a bit POV - Marshman 19:26, 20 Nov 2003 (UTC) I looked it up on the COE website and Jaing is essentially correct: "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" — Wikipedia should reflect the COE terminolgy on the COE article page. - Marshman

Contents

[edit] New Macedonia¤-related poll

It has been proposed that uses of terms Macedonia¤, Macedonian¤, and Macedonians¤ in articles mentioning the Republic of Macedonia¤ should be accompanied with the following disclaimer:

{{macedonian naming dispute}}Template about to be deleted per TfD consensus.-Splash 02:42, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

In particular, this article will be affected, among some others. If you happen to have an opinion for or against this proposition, please vote on it at Talk:Macedonian¤ denar/Vote. Thank you. -- Naive cynic 16:31, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Contradiction

The article itself and the graphic contradict about which observer status the US and Israel have. Tfine80 21:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Greenland

Anon changed:

to

I do not believe this is the case; indeed, I think the anon is getting the Council of Europe confused with the European Union. I am reverting this change until such time as they provide a source for their assertion. --SJK 12:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Montenegro

How did Montenegro join in 2004, when it was still part of Serbia and Montenegro? john k 18:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It didn't, and the article doesn't claim it did, either... Where did you get that impression from? —Nightstallion (?) 10:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Main Country

I heard that Serbia will be the next Head country of the CE, but I failed to see any mention that there is a leading country in the article at all. --PaxEquilibrium 23:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What does the Council actually do?

Maybe this is a naive question, but I would expect to come away from the article understanding something about what the Council of Europe actually does - and I don't. Perhaps a summary of its various activities would be more useful than the list of partial agreements and Committees - worthy though these may well be. This reads as though written by someone who knows so much about the Council that these simple references are enough to explain; but to the outsider, they aren't. Raggio 21:50, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Notice to editors from organisations in Strasbourg

It is starting to become clear that there are a number of people and/or organisations (mainly of a European nature based in Strasbourg) are writing and editing articles about themselves. I would like to remind them that although new content is welcome, it is against Wikipedia's policy to write about yourself, your company, your organisations, your colleges and so on.

In many cases the information is needed, which is why I haven't made a fuss however some pages are starting to sound like promotional items. If you are such an editor please consider using citations for everything you write if it is direly needed. Otherwise inform others of information and sources via the talk page so an independent editor can write the article. Thank you for your attention. - J Logan t: 18:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Country naming convention

Following the FYROM issue is that we should refer to countries with a sensible convention, such as (1) their name according to the CoE, (2) their official name, or (3) their common name.

  1. According to this vaguely official page, Russia should be "Russian Federation", "Bosnia-Herzegovina" should be "Bosnia and Herzegovina", and Slovakia should be "Slovak Republic". Another page uses "Slovakia", and also mentions "the Republic of Serbia" in a footnote, though it doesn't refer to it anywhere else. Unless someone can find an official document that gives countries' names, this probably isn't the way to go. Using "The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" in the table (it includes the quotes too!) would also make the column really wide.
  2. For a start, there's The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Hellenic Republic (anyone recognise that?). There's the same problem with Slovakia and Russia. Then there's a lot of Republic of _ [1], _ Republic [2], Kingdom of _ [3], Principality of _ [4]. For uniqueness, there's a Most Serene Republic of _ [5], a Federal Republic of _ [6], a Grand Duchy of _ [7], and a _ Confederation [8]. Only four countries have their common name as their official name [9]. For the most part, the official names are far, far too long. [1] Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey [2] Portugese, Italian, French, Slovak [3] Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Norway [4] Liechtenstein, Andorra, Monaco [5] San Marino [6] Germany [7] Luzembourg [8] Swiss [9] Ukraine, (The) Netherlands, Ireland ("Republic of" may be used to distinguish it as a country, but is not its official name), Romania
  3. We'd have to keep Bosnia-Herzegovina (since plain "Bosnia" probably wouldn't be acceptable to people living there), and "Czech Republic" (since nobody calls it Czech or Czecho). It would also mean using "Macedonia".

I'm looking for either an official list of country names according to the CoE, or a good reason not to call it "Macedonia" and remove footnote b (or add a footnote for every country which is referred to as something else by the CoE). ⇌Elektron 01:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that it is also a province in Greece. They would be the same name for two different places. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Radio Guy (talk • contribs) 01:18, August 30, 2007 (UTC)
It's a place in other neighbouring countries too, but they don't kick up a fuss. And "America" is two continents. But that's not the point — we should have a consistent way of naming the countries on the list, and we don't. Please sign your posts. ⇌Elektron 02:04, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh the FYROM issue again, I'm quite sure this whole problem was designed for the sole pourpose of annoying Wikipedians. There is a list of members at the CoE website here and that is all semi formal. Elektron is quite right in that it is hardly unique and people are hardly going to think Greek Macedonia is a CoE member. However as it is the name used by the CoE I think we ought to stick to FYROM - less chance of people changing it all the time. Its annoying and I just call it Macedonia, everyone does, but while this dispute is still going on we should stick to FYROM. People know what it means either way, esp. with the flag. - J Logan t: 07:58, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

There's more than one list on the site, both in my post, and they are not consistent (Slovakia/Slovak Republic). Neither do we care about the CoE designations for other countries (Russian Federation) — it seems that anyone bothered enough to edit it only cares what Macedonia is named. I'm happy to have it as TfYROM, but only if we agree that CoE designations should be used in the table, someone justifies the really long country name, and someone finds something more official than two lists which contradict each other. Nobody's got it right either ("the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", including quotes). Compromises like "shorten it to FYROM" may be politically correct, but are wrong (it's not the CoE designation and probably insults Macedonians), and there is no "change it to whatever-name to stop edit wars" policy (e.g. Aluminium). ⇌Elektron 15:50, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Okay, problem. The MoS for Macedonia states we use what subject uses - we use what the CoE uses. So I've gone through trying to find the official term, I think the closest we get is their treaty office here, as that should show what it signed up as: [1]. All I can see on here is the former Yugoslav name (not suprising as Greece no doubt would not allow it to join under anything else. But if you can find a contradition in these pages, we'll have to find some other source to use. - J Logan t: 16:31, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I can't find any documents about Macedonia joining though, but even Macedonia's CoE site has FYROM with quotes. The treaty site doesn't include quotes, so it's hard to say what the official position for the quotes is. It might be sensible to adopt a shortest-name-used-by-the-CoE policy, with an exception for Macedonia ("FYR Macedonia") and an accompanying footnote, so we don't have to make the table column too wide. ⇌Elektron 15:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
It has it under the statues, number one on the Council of Europe. All signatures to the statue are listed and it uses the extended term. The chances of the constitutional name being used when Greece is a member is slim and according to Wikipedia policy we have to follow the subject of the article. However if it is in a footnote because we don't want to make the table too wide, that ought to be fit okay. - J Logan t: 18:21, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Done. The article no longer mentions "Macedonia" outside of the FYROM context. I'm tempted to add quotes to the Template:Council of Europe too (and perhaps lowercasing), but that may be going a bit far. ⇌Elektron 21:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Good work. I think the template might be a bit far, but I don't think it would do it any damage to tinker with it a bit. - J Logan t: 08:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Map

The map on the right side of the screen is helpful, but the color key is ridiculously small and, for me at least, illegible. Could someone please duplicate the map in the body of the article where the key might be made bigger? -Laikalynx (talk) 02:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed! As the font size was calculated at less than 9pt on Mac, 'greeking' was used. The requirement is thus to adjust it to 9pt or higher. The 'legend' style is set wiki-wide to 90%. A previous editor had tried to allow for this by wrapping the legend in a div with font-size 110%. However, 114% was need to get the font to round to 9pt on Mac. This may behave differently on other operating systems.Ferg2k (talk) 07:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Potential for unnecessary confusion: position of flag and logo in infobox

Hi all,

After reviewing the article on the Council, it seems that the potential for confusion with institutions of the European Union is recognised, yet does little to alleviate it. For instance, the flag of Europe, simultaneously flag of the Council and the EU, is placed before the Council's logo and unproportionately bigger. IMO, this only reinforces common misconceptions. Would it be possible to amend the placement and scale? CoEComm (talk) 10:18, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the flag of Europe from the infobox (it remains in the body of the article), until a better solution can be foundCoEComm (talk) 08:56, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Its the flag of the Council! Yes its confusing but the situation itself is like that, we can't change reality because its confusing.- J Logan t: 09:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it is the flag of the Council. And I am not proposing to remove it completely (I resorted to the maybe slightly rash measure of removing it temporarily (!) to attract attention to the problem). I know that the confusion is inherent in the emblems of the Council. Therefore it shouldn't be made worse by having the flag first and much larger than the logo, which was specifically designed and adopted to counteract the confusion. All I would like is for the presentation to be as unambiguous as possible, especially since the infobox is the first thing readers look at. Can the placement and the size of the flag be changed?CoEComm (talk) 09:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
The idea is people read the article. We shouldn't change a standard used throughout wikipedia being people can't be arsed to read the first line of the article - or indeed the title. By changing the infobox standard it would only create confusion rather than get rid of it - standards are there for a reason. If people confuse the Council of Europe with the European Union because of one image then they should stick to reading the Simple English Wikipedia so its spelled out nice and clear.- J Logan t: 19:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Such a reductive view of Wikipedia readers was certainly not the motivation. The general observation still stands, however, the current arrangement taints the overall quality of the article. Well short of changing standards of the template all over Wikipedia, it should be possible to find a specific solution to this article, especially since only minor changes would lead to visible improvement. CoEComm (talk) 09:45, 27 February 2008 (UTC)