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Category:Flag template shorthands has an RFC

Category:Flag template shorthands has an RFC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you.

Vocals in national anthem in the infobox

Why should only the instrumental versions of national anthems appear on their respective countries' infoboxes? I noticed that an invisible comment in the infobox for Turkey states "Please do not replace this with the vocal version. In order to keep continuity with other Wikipedia pages on modern countries, the instrumental version should be used." The only reason that the anthems have no vocals in these infoboxes is because the majority of free-content recordings come from the US army band, which does only provides the instrumental versions. The lyrics are especially important to understanding how the song is supposed to sung in the native language. I propose that the following passage should be amended from:

National anthem; the name of the National anthem and a link to the article about it.

to:

National anthem; the name of the National anthem, a sound recording of the anthem (featuring vocals in the native language if possible), and a link to the article about it. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 16:04, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Turkey is a bad example of a country article....But there is no rule of thumb......most have no voice because there is no point because the majority are non-english countries and words would be pointless. Moxy🍁 21:47, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

For one, words would be useful to know how the albums are sung in the language. It can help readers identify the song later on when they listen to it in other contexts, or if they just hear someone singing it the lyrics. Although even English-speaking countries (Australia, UK, US) don't have vocals in their sound files. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 21:58, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Agree most dont....only reason I can give...I have had limited interaction in these conversations in the past many years...anthems are contentious in nature..... most can never agree on the type/who's voice..... thus most default to no voice at all. Moxy🍁 22:06, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't see how the voice specifically would be controversial, or any more controversial than the people performing the music itself (Keep in mind, for most of these recordings are performed by the US military). But I think if an uncontroversial vocal performance for a particular country can be decided on, then that recording should be used. We should not limit all countries to a musical performance because some find vocals controversial in their specific cases. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 22:16, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

They are just contentious in nature.....if you look at Canada we have an American version to the detriment of most Canadians because the tone and pace are off to what we're use to. But the RFC I assume attracted many Americans that like the current version. On a side note Canada is one of the only country articles that actually discusses the anthem in the article. Moxy🍁 22:28, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

There was a time when the addition of the sound recordings themselves was a bit unsure, but they seem to have spread like the multi-image infobox. I have not observed however consistent discussion on the question of vocals, nor do I want to get into the weeds of defining "the native language". CMD (talk) 01:08, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

There is also the potential complication of layering on yet more copyrights needing to be cleared. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:22, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Thankfully, the music/lyrics to many of these anthems were written long enough ago that copyright doesn't apply, and many governments have even willingly released them into the public domain. If in the case of lyrics or music, an issue of copyright arises, then we will use the version of a song which does not infringe, whether vocal or instrumental. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:28, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I do not mean the native language of the entire country, that would be impractical, difficult, controversial question to settle. I mean the lyrics of the anthem that is currently approved by the government of that country. So the Turkish national anthem would be in Turkish as the government has only approved the Turkish-language version of the song. South Africa's national anthem is currently in many different languages, so we'll use that version. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:23, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The RFC discussion was 6 years ago, and it appears to have been ignored as the US army band music has been re-added to the infobox...

Regardless, I have now realized this question is much more complex than I thought so I will revise my original amendment. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:39, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

What I have suggested here will clearly not be applicable to every country's article, therefore I propose the following instead, which I hope is far more agreeable:

National anthem; the name of the National anthem, a sound recording of the anthem (with or without vocals, according to local consensus), and a link to the article about it

I hope that these kinds of discussions can be made at the individual country pages themselves, since each will have a different discussion on what exactly should be placed in the article. I do not want so-called "consistency" to prevent some articles from being forced to have no vocals. ―Howard • 🌽³³ 09:43, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for England

England has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 20:47, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Women in Green's October 2024 edit-a-thon

Hello WikiProject Countries:

WikiProject Women in Green is holding a month-long Good Article Edit-a-thon event in October 2024!

Running from October 1 to 31, 2024, WikiProject Women in Green (WiG) is hosting a Good Article (GA) edit-a-thon event with the theme Around the World in 31 Days! All experience levels welcome. Never worked on a GA project before? We'll teach you how to get started. Or maybe you're an old hand at GAs – we'd love to have you involved! Participants are invited to work on nominating and/or reviewing GA submissions related to women and women's works (e.g., books, films) during the event period. We hope to collectively cover article subjects from at least 31 countries (or broader international articles) by month's end. GA resources and one-on-one support will be provided by experienced GA editors, and participants will have the opportunity to earn a special WiG barnstar for their efforts.

We hope to see you there!

Grnrchst (talk) 09:53, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Section size comparison table

 Courtesy link: WP:WikiProject Countries/Common section size

See the link for a table of comparative section sizes of the seven common sections in country articles: the lead, History, Geography, Politics, Economy, Demographics, and Culture, for 24 countries. This is in part intended as helpful informational background for this project, and in part as a demo of new features like displaying section size information that was not easily available before a recent upgrade to Module:Section sizes and creation of a convenience template to invoke it. This table is quite dense (15 statistics per row) and can take some seconds to load; see the table at this project subpage.

Another thing that is relatively easy to do now and was almost impossible before, is to add a brief, comparative analysis of section size in order to support a comment in a Talk page discussion, like the following: imagine someone complaining about excessive lead size in some country articles, and including this Talk page post:

Compare the relative size of the lead in France (7.42%%), Germany (6.43%%), and Italy (8.72%%), with Belgium: (14.31%%)...

This would have been so tedious previously as to make such a comment very unlikely, but it is now doable, using this new feature.

Hopefully this illustrate some of the power of the new section size feature, and will lead to new ideas for tracking country article characteristics. These new features could be used by any WikiProject to compare article characteristics, but the Country project sprang to mind as one that might have clear benefits due to the common section structure among many of the country articles.

Feedback is welcome; you can leave general comments or bug reports about the {{section length}} template at Template talk:Section length, and specific comments about how to use it with this project below. I'd be especially interested to hear new ideas about how you might want to use this new capability. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 10:40, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

What is field 'native_name' for in Infobox country?

A discussion is going on about the intended use of the |native_name= parameter in template {{Infobox country}}. Your feedback would be welcome at Template talk:Infobox country#What is |native_name= for?. Mathglot (talk) 23:55, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should the infobox template for countries be expanded to include greenhouse gas emissions? See the request at Template talk:Infobox country#Request for comment on greenhouse emissions

20WattSphere (talk) 12:09, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:LGBT rights by country or territory#Requested move 30 September 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:LGBT rights by country or territory#Requested move 30 September 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. --MikutoH ^talk! 22:46, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Czech_Republic#Requested_move_1_October_2024

For the interested. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:40, 1 October 2024 (UTC)