Talk:List of sovereign states and dependent territories by population density/Archive 1

Archive 1

MALTA

Why is Malta ranked so low? The figures suggest a higher ranking.

DISPUTED

• World population as shown is 6,464,750,000, but if you add up the populations of the individual countries, you get 6,487,168,702
• For Grenada, the table shows 260, but calculations give 299
• For Poland, the table shows 119, but calculations give 123
• For Turks and Caicos, the table shows 61, but calculations give 63
• The data is supposedly from the UNWPPR, but trying to get data out of that website is like pulling teeth. You're only allowed to get the population of five countries at a time, so I can't check to see if there are really gross discrepancies, but when I did a random check on Hungary, they show the population as 10998000, not 10997730. Everything is in multiples of 1000, which means that the data did NOT come from there.

According to Wikipedia policy, (Wikipedia:Verifiability),

“ Information on Wikipedia must be reliable and verifiable. Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in articles if they have already been published by reliable and reputable sources. Articles should cite these sources whenever possible. Any unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ”

Since there is NOTHING in that article that is backed up by Wikipedia:Reliable Sources, that means that ANY EDITOR can come in and BLANK THE ENTIRE ARTICLE and be fully in compliance with Wikipedia policy. The burden of showing that content is verifiable lies not with the editor who wants to delete it, but with the editor who wants to include it.

Disreputable articles like this don't belong in Wikipedia. If someone else wants to upgrade this article to meet Wikipedia standards within the next few days, fine. If it doesn't happen, I will write a script to extract the appropriate information from the CIA World Factbook (which IS a readily-available reliable source) and automatically generate a new article. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 07:31, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Unrounded figures are available at the UN Common Database. There are possibly errors. I will check out those you indicated. But if you see other errors, please change them instead of wholesale saying that the whole thing is wrong. Thanks for your help. --Polaron | Talk 13:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Added note about calculated figures inconsistent with UN tabulated values. --Polaron | Talk 13:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Sealand

Why is The Principality of Sealand not listed, the wiki page for it lists its pop density as 3.6 million/sq km, which is by far number 1 --Pollard666 22:09, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Older discussions

Can we add a mi/sq column? For us stupid Americans, it's hard to compare this list to others without it.

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Cantus could you stop reverting good changes to this page please? I've been looking at the list, and you've been reverting quite a few edits that shouldn't have been reverted because they were improvements -- Diadem

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Q: Are these numbers population by km/sq or mi/sq ?

km/sq.

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It would be nice to know the source for these figures.

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Many of these figures appear to be wrong. For example, I checked our article on Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and the population is nearly 7000 in 240 square kilometers. Yet the population density listed here is considerably less than 1.00.

Using commas instead of decimal points seems odd --- something that maybe they do in French and not in English. Or is that yet another of those conventions that the British have recently imported from the Continent and forgotten that they ever did otherwise? -- Mike Hardy

No, that was a mistake, sorry. Patrick 01:49 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

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A handful of these are *not* countries (ex. Jersey and Puerto Rico) and should be removed. Kingturtle 03:37 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

This is based on the CIA World Factbook, which treats these as countries. - Patrick 08:11 Apr 4, 2003 (UTC)

But they aren't countries. The CIA World Factbook seems to have articles on sub-national regions as well. --Delirium 02:45, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

Some sub-regions are certainly interesting, like the European Union, or Asia (though the latter isn't in the list), but not all of them. For example what was Jersey doing in the list? What's so interesting about a small isle off the coast of France? I suspect that whoever put it in the list actually meant New Jersey. But there already is a List of U.S. states by population density. Anyway I removed Jersey.

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Is there a missing zero in the area of Western Sahara? -- Zoe

No, I corrected the commas. - Patrick 08:08 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

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I removed "align=right" because the file got too large, but I think it is unfortunate to have to do this. Is there a way to put "align=right" only once, or another way to format without this excessive duplication? If not it may be better to get rid of the html-table again and preformat by starting lines with a space. - Patrick 08:08 May 1, 2003 (UTC)

You may be able to use align=right in tr tags, but other than that, I don't think there's a way to do this. Which comes back to an idea I've had for a while (since I stole it from someone else) that HTML tables should be organized in columns rather than rows. -Smack 23:47 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I re-added them and removed the optional closing tags instead .. hope you like the result --User:Docu

Very good, thanks. - Patrick 08:05 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

population of Aruba

The actual population by far exceeds the population of Aruba stated in the "list of countries by population density". The last time the Minister of Justice mentioned the number it was already above 100,000. The exact number is not known because of the growth of the illegal immigration.

Rosalinda Boekhoudt-van den Ham, Aruba

Total Area

I noticed that the total area of the world was listed as about 14 million. However, this is smaller than Russia, let alone the world. Is this intentional?

Fixed.--Patrick 10:35, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

countries

a lot of these, not merely a "handful" , are not countries but are dependencies or territories, and should be removed; whatever the idiotic cia handbook may call them. also a much better idea of how crowded a country actually is would be given by using only the land area for calculations; this would also square them with the individual country articles.

Agreed, but then, can we just delete them? I mean, for instance, did the figure for China include Taiwan and Tibet in the first place? We'd need to find out. --[[User:Valmi|Valmi ✒]] 04:27, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

These are all countries. Countries need not be independent states. It doesn't make sense to remove Hong Kong and Macau when the figures for "China" include only mainland China. I reverted the deletions. Either recalulate these figures to include these non-soveriegn areas or have the separate represented (as is done here). Another alternative is to use the format at List of countries by area. --Jiang 05:16, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'm adding notices of which state that's in fact controlling the actual country/administative area, in line with for example the Spanish and Japanese page... --himasaram 19:31, 11 May 2005 (CET)

Now User:Cantus has made a counter-edit, revoking my edit - except from PRC for Hong Kong and Macau, which is quite inconsistent. Also, he removed numbering of non-independent states, which is an interesting though controversial edit. I think this needs more discussion. Some sort of combination of my and his edit would be appropriate. --himasaram 21:33, 15 May 2005 (CET)

Fractional densities

I've put the fractional densities back in for the bottom three countries - please note that a density of 0.2 persons per sq km does not imply that one person has been chopped up and spread over a wide area. :) Listing both the Falklands and Greenland as "0" fails to show that one is 10 times more dense than the other. sjorford:// 14:30, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I put in a request to have fractional densities added to all table entries, with a population density under 100, rounded to 1/10ths of a person. Many countries including, but not limited to, Angola (8.97 represented as 8), Mauritania (2.995 represented as 2), and Mongolia (1.785 represented as 1) don't correctly portray their population densities. Angola and Mauritania are so close to 9 and 3, respectively, that they might be rounded up. Mongolia has almost twice the population density as displayed. Glancing at the table's right-hand column, you'd think that Western Sahara and Mongolia have about the same density, but Mongolia has about 75% higher density than Western Sahara. For higher densities this isn't much of a problem. --Farnkerl 09:02, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate article

There is a duplicate version of this article here: List_of_countries_by_population_density/temp -Himasaram 11:00, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

UK data

I think you should include data on individual UK countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Although part of the UK they are individual countries (with their own flags, anthems, identities, even rugby and soccer teams). However they should be included separately mostly beacause there is such a huge difference in density - England has 382 people /sqkm making it one of the most densley populated in the world, while Scotland has only 64. The data for each (2001/2002 census data) is as follows:

England 130,326 sqkm pop: 49,855,700 = 382 people/km²

Scotland 83,859 sqkm pop: 5,683,062 = 64 people/km²

Wales 20,779 sqkm pop: 2,918,700 = 140 people/km²

Northern Ireland 14,139 sqkm pop: 1,702,600 = 120 people/km²

I concur, and further more i think it is only technically accurate to include the "constituent countries" of the UK in the "List of countries by population density" and i think they should take prominence over the UK witch is technicaly a kingdom. If possible figures should also be displayed for Berwick upon Tweed as it is given separate status form the UK much the same as the Isle of Man, though this may prove difficult. Zippokovich 00:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I had changed this but it was changed back with no reason given, so how come it was changed back? What are the arguments against having them separately?

Christmas Island

Christmas Island population information appears wrong. It currently says 396 in 135 sq. kms (2.x people/km^2). However, their demographic section says 1508 as of 2001 and ~1600 as of 2005, which would put it at about 11.x people/km^2. I'm not sure what the policy for updating the table is so I figure I should check here first. --Farnkerl 08:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion: give all population densities to correct number of significant figures

Currently, all except the last four entries are given with no decimal places (and as far as I can tell, always rounded down!), and the last four are given with two decimal places. A list like this, which is based on the division of the two prior numbers, should not be given according to decimal places, but according to significant figures. I recently made a very conservative change -- to make all those below 10 people/km^2 give exactly 2 significant figures, which seems somewhat more reasonable. However, my edit was reverted by Cantus. Cantus, please explain why you reverted this, and give reasons why you think the current way is better. I believe we should go much further, and give every value with its own correct number of significant figures, according to significance arithmetic, calculated as the minimum of the number of significant figures in the population and the area columns. I am awaiting replies from those interested in making or not making this change. ralmin 08:53, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

Hello: I am not familiar with this page, but suspect that there has been vandalism of the population data on Lebanon by User: 198.7.245.79. Please see edit log.—Gaff ^talk 04:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

population density

--208.63.166.175 22:18, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Israel population update May 2006

As in every year on the eve of the Israeli Independence day the Israeli Bureau of statistics released updated estimates of Israeli population. The numbers I updated were taken from http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/newhodaot/hodaa_template.html?hodaa=200611092 (Hebrew). An English version of the announcement is supposed to be available at http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/newhodaot/tables_template_eng.html?hodaa=200611092 but I can't open it. Maybe because I use Firefox on Linux. The Hebrew announcement contains a disclaimer that the number does not include a population of foreiners leaving in Israel, which as of end of 2004 was estimated to be 179,000 people, some of them lived less than a year in Israel. These are temporary numbers released especially for the Independence day. If this update breaks some rules about this page then please let me know so I won't repeat the mistake.

Penedo 07:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Precision in numbers

Related to the prior post on significant figures... I realize that in the articles (and in data presented elsewhere) on individual countries it is apparently standard to give the population down to a single person--something that seems utterly ridiculous to me even for a small city--but isn't it terribly imprudent to give the world population with such accuracy? Given the difficulty of counting every person in the world simultaneously it just seems silly. --213.47.116.40 00:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Source for data

What exactly is the source for this data? Yes, I know it says at the bottom of the page, and those articles seem to have trustworthy, reliable, and recent data. The accuracy of the population and area data was argued on those talk pages and I don't wish to rehash the discussion here. But, checking the largest countries in area, I have come to Sudan (#10) before getting anything close to the correct figure. I would guess that area does not change much year by year, so it is quite unusual that the first 9 countries are off by, in some cases, hundreds of square kilometers. Is coastal erosion that much of a factor that the area of a country would change by that much before wikipedians can keep up with the updates? Kazakhstan does not border an ocean, but the land area may decrease or increase based on the rise or fall of the Caspian Sea. But, Kyrgyzstan, for instance, a landlocked country, has different values for area in both lists. I would propose that this article be updated based on the data from the sources given. When new annual population data is issued from the same source (UN), then it could be update. Any thoughts? Or can somebody help me understand the reason(s) for the discrepancies? Thanks. Ufwuct 04:09, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll make changes soon according to the sources within the other Wikipedia articles if no one has any objections. Thanks. Ufwuct 04:14, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

The numbers for this article are supposed to be derived from the List of countries by area and List of countries by population. However, when the data for those two lists were updated to use UN figures, this list was not updated. Polaron | Talk 04:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Is the information in this article true?

I wonder if the information presented in this article is really correct? The intro of this article says the following: Only sovereign states are numbered, but non-sovereign territories are also included for purposes of comparison. But the list includes for example Hong Kong, Macau, Puerto Rico, and so on. None of these countries, states or territories are sovereign countries. Yet they are numbered. I will put the template disputed in this article until this matter is resolved. /M.O (u) (t) 19:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Density data was recently changed to UN tabulated values. Listed "countries" are what is in the UN World Population Prospects Report with the addition of Taiwan. Polaron | Talk 19:39, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

You don't seem to understand. This article is about countries, not territories. Hong Kong is not a country, it is a chinese city or province, and China is already listed. Besides, do not remove a the disputed template just because you feel that the information you added is correct. I will put this template back in place. /M.O (u) (t) 19:45, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Hong Kong is not a city or a province. It is a special administrative region. The word country has multiple meanings. It may be synonymous with sovereign state, while much more often it refers to sovereign states plus some entities that are not sovereign states (e.g. Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Aruba, etc.). — Instantnood 21:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

But the density data for the sovereign states excludes the listed dependent territories. There is no overlap in this list. Polaron | Talk —20:07, July 9, 2006 (UTC) [1]

Here's an example - After you made changes to this list, Russia is ranked as #210 on this list. There aren't that many countries in the world, but closer to 190-200. According to this list, there are 230 countries. /M.O (u) (t) 20:16, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes that is the number of entities recognized as "countries" (not the same as sovereign states) by the United Nations. Again, there is no overlapping definition in this list. Data for dependent territories are not included in the sovereign state they are associated with. Polaron | Talk 20:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, List of countries has 243 entities listed, which are even more than what the UN recognizes. It's not like the list is called List of sovereign states by population density so I don't see the problem here. I fixed the introduction so that it is now consistent with what entries are listed (and ranked). Polaron | Talk 20:37, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I put de facto note in front of the sovereign states. The UN may not recognize some states as sovereign, but some are de facto and the UN cannot do anything about it. The UN's view is not always NPOV. Heilme 23:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

All those included in the list of countries, except unrecognised states (e.g. TRNC, Somaliland, Abkhazia), should be ranked. — Instantnood 21:03, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Link

Is anyone else having trouble with the link? Or is it just me? Thanks. Ufwuct 01:24, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Precision

Would anyone have any objection if I added another digit (sig. fig.) in the people/km^2 column to countries with, say, below 40 per km^2, just to differentiate some of the countries at that end of the scale? Ufwuct 01:27, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I've just gone ahead and made the changes. I'm thinking of adding a sig fig up to ~50 (or 60). Ufwuct 16:27, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

America?

where is america?Mirddes 07:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

New topic

You cant add places like Hong Kong to the list and consider it as an own country when the list just includes COUNTRIES by population density —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.229.43.108 (talk • contribs)

This point has been brought up before and I believe it was decided to use the UN data. Just because these are all referred to as "countries" doesn't mean they are all "states". (The UN definitions differ from the U.S. interpretation of these two terms). Thanks. Ufwuct 14:03, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

It has been brought up, that is correct, but I can't remember that any concensus was reached in this matter. In the current state of this list, countries can basicly be compared to themselves, since no distinction are being made between countries/states and special administrative regions. Hong Kong is a part of China, and so is Macau. But they are each listed as separate "countries". This article doesn't even mention that they are provinces or regions that are a part of another country. I maintain that the changes made to this list have significantly lowered the quality of the information presented in this article, since it previously listed the same countries and territories as of now, but only countries/states was included in the comparison count [2], and that was earlier one of the purposes of this list. The source is official UN data, that is correct. But that doesn't, mean that the information should be added right of, without being reviewed or edited. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and information added to it should be reviewed and edited before being added. Encyclopedias present information, not data. /M.O (u) (t) 15:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Sovereign states are a subset of countries so that should not be a problem. But non-sovereign states should definitely be clearly indicated. I'll try and work on that when I have time. --Polaron | Talk 15:32, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with this version, in fact I'd prefer it because non-states aren't given their own ranking but are still placed appropriately on the list.

"But that doesn't, mean that the information should be added right of, without"

I don't understand.

"Encyclopedias present information, not data."

I don't understand what point you're to make with that. The data provided has context, a source, and is used appropriately. That makes it information.

Why exclude certain areas from the sovereign state they are under the sovereignty of? If we do make a list of sovereign states, all territory of that sovereign state should be included, otherwise we are excluding a non-trivial amount of inhabited land. --Polaron | Talk 17:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, but I can't devote full attention to this right now. I'll get back to you later, perhaps later in the day. Thanks. Ufwuct 18:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the italicizing might make sense also. I'll have to think about it. Ufwuct 18:17, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's a related question. If we were to make this a list of sovereign states only. Should all territory under the sovereignty of that state be included or not. If not, why should certain areas be excluded? --Polaron | Talk 15:34, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

So we Wikipedians would be making this decision? Would Taiwan be considered a separate country? West Bank (much of it still occupied by Israel)? Gaza strip (evacuated by Israel)? Would these areas be left off the list (and therefore out of the article) or be merged into different countries? (e.g. PRC, Israel)? Maybe the original inclusion but non-ranking, as noted above by me and Magore[3], might be the way to go? Ufwuct 18:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Forgot to check this page recently - Anyway, to mark out countries and regions that aren't sovereign states with italic text is a step in the right direction, IMO. I would also like take it a step further and remove the count in the left-hand column, to aviod the confusion we might create with for example the China-vs-Hong Kong-vs-Macau-comparison. I haven't figured out how to solve this in a practical manner, though, since just removing the count right away would or might upset the comparison in other ways. Perhaps a more detailed entry for each country, where we include the special regions, protectorates, provinces, etc that are now listed as separate countries? We would have to recalculate some figures. As for example (X.XXX = Population figure):

- China: X.XXX.XXX.XXX

- Mainland China (or China proper, etc): X.XXX.XXX.XXX

- Hong Kong: XX.XXX.XXX

- Macau: X.XXX.XXX

I would personally not consider this original research or anything else that would violate any policies and guidelines on Wikipedia, but rather a way of compiling figures, data and information that we've gotten from official and reliable sources. Comments, anybody? /M.O (u) (t) 14:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

The title of this article is "List of countries by population density", and the ranking is important for the countries. Rankings are used in such places as Demographics of Japan#Population density and other articles as well. Don't just delete them!

You may, however, remove the rankings for the regions while counting only the countries. That's the way it was before in this article.--Endroit 15:18, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

If we are going to rank only sovereign states, all territory of each sovereign state must be included in the figure. If a territory is considered part of a sovereign state, then it must not be excluded from calculating the density of that sovereign entity. --Polaron | Talk 15:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Either way is fine. Please just don't delete them, because we use them in other articles.--Endroit 15:31, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Population density

population density shouldn't be calculated as population/total land area. It should be calculated by population/arable land area. Otherwise it isn't really telling us much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.111.106.33 (talk • contribs)

Au contraire. It's telling how crowded the country is. You've never heard of sowing salt? It turns arable land into nonarable land. You've never heard of irrigation? It's turned parts of California from waste desert to some of the most productive land on earth. The real problem with this article is that the numbers cannot be trusted. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 03:02, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, whilst density may tell you how crowded the country is as a whole, it neglects urban area. For instance, Australia is the 6th largest country in the world. Most of the landmass is dominated by desert. The population of 20.5 million tends to stay on the temperate eastern coastline. The population of Sydney is 4.5 million with a density of 345.7 persons per square kilometre. Quite a jump from Australia's density of 2.6 persons per square kilometre.--Just James 22:11, 11 October 2006 (GMT+10:00)

Does a higher population density mean people live closer together? That's what I think, not what I know. 66.191.115.61 17:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)Cbsteffen

Updated Israel population Sept 2006

According to this source, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics has published updated data about Israel's population. According to the official data, 6,990,700 Israeli citizens are living in Israel and 178,000 non-citizens are living in Israel. I used this official information to update the list and the densiti calculation. If there is any problem with it, please let me know. Daniel 13:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Saint-Pierre and Miquelon

Why is Saint-Pierre and Miquelon on this list? They're not a sovereign country, and they're not on some lists, like List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita. Would anyone object to their removal? Foobaz·o< 03:42, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

All entries on the list (with the addition of Taiwan) are those listed by the UN as countries (i.e. with their own ISO-3166 code). Sovereign states are only a subset of the list of countries. See List of countries. --Polaron | Talk 05:59, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. Foobaz·o< 17:20, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Rankings of non-sovereign city-states and islands

Why are non-sovereign states (i.e. Hong Kong, Channel Islands, etc.) given rankings? I don't mind including them on the list as a comparison but this is supposed to be a list of countries by population density, so why are territories that are not recognized as countries given rankings? Jagged 09:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

But they are listed as separate countries by the UN. They are given their own country codes and top-level internet domains. Would you rather include them in the figures for sovereign states? Sovereign states are only a subset of countries. --Polaron | Talk 13:30, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Area of Singapore

In the Singapore article, it says in the infobox that Singapore's area is 699 km². Here, it's 683. Can someone please clarify? (I can't because I'm confused enough what with other sources saying 639 etc.) Littleghostboo[ talk ] 02:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think 699 is the current official area as listed by the Singapore government. The number used here is the one listed by the UN and I think is the number from the 2000 census. I believe there have been some new land reclamations since then that have increased the area. --Polaron | Talk 02:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. So which figure do we generally use in articles? Littleghostboo[ talk ] 09:00, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorting

I provisionally added sorting. See m:Help:Sorting and the example Kingdom_of_the_Netherlands#Population.2C_area_and_currency for making it fully work.--Patrick 17:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

See also South_America#Territories.--Patrick 00:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

These worked before, but now they don't, due to a change in the Javascript code.--Patrick 17:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorting works fine now on User:Patrick/list of countries in combination with improved Javascript for sorting, now at the lower part of User:Patrick/myskin.js. Only minor adjustments of the table were needed, see [4]. We could put the new Javascript in MediaWiki:Common.js or replace http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/sorttable.js . See also m:Help talk:Sorting.--Patrick 17:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

The sort by population option at least seems to be going alphabetically as opposed to numerically.. -blahquabats

I have the feeling sorting by number doesn't work correctly (over orders of magnitude). don't know js, can't fix it.

According to m:Help:Sorting (specifically m:Help:Sorting#Making_variable-length_numbers_with_thousands_separators_sortable), sorting by number will NOT work with thousands separators, unless you do some slighly painful workarounds.

One such would be to left pad the numbers with &nbsp; codes. You would still need something to force the <1000 numbers into being sorted as characters. I'd recommend putting <span style="display:none">x</span> at the end of the number. Thus, for a list where the largest number is on the order of 100,000:

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;10<span style="display:none">x</span>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;300<span style="display:none">x</span>
&nbsp;&nbsp;1,010
304,002

The above should sort in numeric order, even though it is being sorted as character data, and yet look like decently formatted numerical data.

I adapted MediaWiki:Common.js and put the footnotes in a separate column. Sorting works fine now. As a result, the page name List of countries by population density is now too modest, it is also a List of countries by population and a List of countries by area. These pages could perhaps be merged.--Patrick 14:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

De facto sovereign state

The into states that the list includes de facto sovereign states so we can safely add those that are listed on List of countries and List of sovereign states. I'll handle Transnistria but we should also add the others as well. For comparison purposes, the more information the list had, the better it is for researchers. - Mauco 20:00, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I hadn't read this post of yours, but I happen to have just done this. sephia karta 16:35, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

ranking for unrecognized countries

The population and area for unrecognized states has already been factored in the figures for their "parent" countries. For example, the 2002 Census population of Georgia (rounded to 1000) is 4,372,000. The linear estimate for 2002 from the UN report is 4,622,000. There is thus an additional 250,000 added to the Georgia Census population. Also the area used is 69,700 sq km which includes Abhkazia and South Ossetia. Please don't rank these entries as this leads to double counting. --Polaron | Talk 15:18, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Channel Islands?

Why do we have a listing for "Channel Islands"? The Channel Islands are not a country, they are two separate crown dependencies, Jersey and Guernsey. The listing ought to be separated. john k 16:00, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

The UN World Population Prospects report lists them this way. If there is an alternate source, we can separate them making clear the figures are from a different source. --Polaron | Talk 16:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Huh, weird. It ought to be easy enough to derive a population density using the well known populations and areas of each crown dependency. Doing basic arithmetic does not constitute original research. john k 16:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It is true that Jersey and Guernsey are two separate crown dependencies and should be listed separately. Note, though, that Alderney and Sark are considered part of Bailiwick of Guernsey. Antipoeten 21:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Republic of China

For the Republic of China, its abbreviation is ROC, but it reads PRC (which is mainland china) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.206.196.204 (talk) 17:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC).

I changed it, I guess there was an idiot who still thinks that Taiwan belongs to PRC

Ranking

What, if anything, is the rationale for ranking or not ranking overseas territories and similar things? I can't really see why St. Martin and Mayotte are not ranked, while Hong Kong, Macau, Gibraltar, Bermuda, Aruba and even Martinique (which is a French overseas department, not - like St. Martin and Mayotte - an overseas collectivity, so I'd think it would be more logical to not rank Martinique than to not rank St. Martin and Mayotte). Ucucha 06:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Entries are what the UN World Population Prospects has individual data for. St. Martin is new so it is still included in Guadeloupe. Mayotte is considered by the UN as part of Comoros for statistical purposes. Including all the overseas territories in their parent sovereign state is one option but we should not exclude any inhabited self-governing territories from the list. --Polaron | Talk 12:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Gross versus Net Density

Gross density is practically useless. Also, there are cities or semi autonomous entities here being compared to to countries; that's kind of comparing apples to oranges. Shouldn't this list be 1) of Net Density and 2)be separated to countries and cities?

EU in lists

DSuser and I have drafted a complete analysis of why it would be a good or a bad idea to include the EU in lists of countries in some form (either directly in the list or as a special note outside the list). We'd kindly invite all editors who are interested in the EU and/or lists of countries to take a look at Talk:European Union/inclusion in lists of countries, read all of the arguments presented and then state their opinion on what a sensible compromise might look like. Thanks! —Nightstallion 09:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)