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Talk:Netherlands

Should this not perhaps be on The Netherlands?

Probably.

Yes I think so. The term The Netherlands describes the historically grown unity of the Low Lands Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Utrecht and other provinces. In Dutch the name has a singular form "Nederland', but in Englisch and French (Les Pays- Bas) the plural form. I suppose this stems from the the term "The Republic of the United Netherlands; in the 17th and 18th century the country was officially called that way.

Is 'democratic monarchy' the usual term? I'm more familiar with 'constitutional monarchy' to imply an elected government under a monarch. --MichaelTinkler

'Constitutional monarchy' is also the common term in The Netherlands. I've changed it in the text. -- Tsja

What about the artists and football?

"The Dutch are known as a tolerant people."

I know that "the Dutch like to see themselves as a tolerant people", but does the rest of the world really know the Dutch to be tolerant? I am not even sure that a native speaker of English would have even thought of the term 'tolerant'. Instead, they would probably be wondering 'tolerant to what?'.--branko

I've tried to bring more structure in this article, making the loose prhases a little more coherent, adding a short facts table, and referring to the respective subpages. Mabye we could do this for the other pages for countries as well, so feel free to comment. jheijmans

I like the idea of the table with basic information and have tried to do something similar with a few of the articles on the United States. My vote is definitely to do that for the other countries as well. On the other hand, the inclusion of People and Geography on the main page, when there already are separate articles for them, can be confusing. I think it can be solved though, because the individual pages taken from the CIA Fact Book contain basic statistical information, which could also be incorporated into a chart, leavieng the rest of the articles to discuss the issue further in depth. Danny

Major improvement! I especially like the table of data. This is similar to what I have done for the Beryllium article and plan on doing for all the elements (as soon as I am satisfied with the organization of the table). Both reorganizations need a lot of thought due to the fact that so many articles will be changed over (more so for the countries than the elements). Perhaps Netherlands can be a prototype that we can work on? I will look this over later and give some more specific feedback. --maveric149

I think it's great, but one thing we should consider is possibly putting sq. miles alongside kilometers. Danny

Since table width for those rows are not an issue I definitely agree. We should use some type of convention on what units are used first and second. In this and in most cases we should list kilometers first and have miles in parenthesis right after. For the States it should be the opposite though. Are there any countries other than the US that don?t use some version of the metric system officially? --maveric149

My attempt was indeed also inspired by the work on the Beryllium article, but also by the fact that most country articles are still mostly based around the World Factbook and a collection of short phrases about the country. The subpages-idea can work pretty well, although some page are less likely to be worked on (military, transnational issues) for most countries.

I would really appreciate commentary on the plans, which I'll outline below (so you have more than just the article):

Introduction - name of the country (also local name), location in the world, bordering countries, seas, etc.
Flag - national flag (maybe there should be some standard here for the size and source of the flag? Mabye [Flags of the World (http://www.fotw.ca)]?

May I suggest that flags will always have a single pixel wide border, of a shade about 50% darker than the original pixel? This will help to distinguish especially flags with a white border from the page's background colour. The border would be laid over the original flag, rather than being drawn around it. See Aruba or Quebec for an example.

Also, the size need not be very large, as people can always go to FOTW.--branko

Facts - table with some basic facts, to avoid short sentences with this information. Right now, I have
- Official name - in English, also in local language(s) if different
- Capital city - the capital city or cities (explain differences)
- Land area - area of the country in sq km and sq miles
- Inhabitants - number of inhabitants (this should also include the date of this estimation, if any)
- Population density - the number of inhabitants per sq km/sq mile
- Currency - local currency (no exchange rates), maybe subdivisions should be mentioned too (like dollar (=100 cents)
- Time zone - don't know the standard here, I've used GMT, but I think there's another one around as well - maybe daylight saving time should also be mentiond
- National anthem - link to article about it
- Maybe we can get some more data from the World Factbook entries
History - brief outline of the major events in the country's history, a paragraphy on the current events going on there, a link to the article with the detailed story
Politics - short overview, including current governmental system, possibly previous forms, some short notes on the parliament. Link to article.
Geography - quick description of the countries main features, climate, administrative divisions. Maybe there should be a separate page with a list of these divisions, like Provinces of the Netherlands, or States of the United States of America[?]. Link to article.
People - Languages spoken, major religions, some well known properties of them. Link to article.
Culture - Not sure about this, this is right only a list of names, and therefore not really useful yet. Should be more storylike.
Other topics - a list of other related articles

Wow! Sounds like you already have things well thought-out -- Believe it or not but I can't think of anything major to add at the moment. For the people section, though, I did happen upon some additional 2000 demographic data from the US Census you might want to take a look at. Here is the link: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbsum and here is an example of what information is presented: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum?cty=NL We could either simply link to these census data from the "People of" sub-articles, update the CIA data, and/or add the population pyramids to the sub-articles (which I think are a great way to graphically show the age distribution of a country). I should probably get to bed before the sun rises, so I've got to go now. --maveric149

Great work so far, it would indeed be a good idea to move away from the CIA factbook format and create something particular to Wikipedia. For the remaining CIA factbook sections, perhaps there could be another major section beside those you listed, namely one offering a brief description of the Economy and a link to a greater overview (maybe Communications and Transportation could be lumped in here as well). Military might be filed under the overview for Politics and Transnational Issues most often contains only uninteresting drug-related info, which might also go under Politics if necessary. As far as the table goes, maybe adding the two and three letter country codes would be a suggestion? I'm more than willing to aid in contributing to the geography and history sections, but I'm still new, so I'm not sure what to do when two people are simultaneously intending to edit articles. Should I perhaps let jheijmans finish his work first? -Scipius

Scipius, if you think you can contribute and you want to do it - don't hesitate! If two people are editing simultaneously, you'll see an edit conflict, and you can then act accordingly to accomodate all changes. If you have any additions to history/geography besides the basic information (I think the current text about says all, but that's my opinion), look at the respective articles. History of the Netherlands is already quite good, but also lacks a little structure, and many part are missing. Geography of the Netherlands isn't even a real article, so you can just play around there.

As for the abbreviations, that might be useful, though there are a lot of abbreviations you may want to mention (see http://home.t-online.de/home/flaggenarchiv/countr~1.htm).

The World Factbook data should be not be removed, but be presented in useful tables or text, I think jheijmans

I certainly agree that the Factbook info should not be removed when the choice is between it and nothing ;) It's just a bit of a shame that Wikipedia often has to depend on this outside source completely, however good it is. -Scipius

I like the idea of having the flag in the table, however this does create a lot of white space. Perhaps we can also have the national seal and/or a world or regional locator map? The locator maps should be easy enough to make. --maveric149

Opps! Looks like align right was killed with the addition of the coat of arms. Please bring it back. --maveric149

I didn't remove it - ap changed it like this; don't like it either. jheijmans

I've edited the table a bit to separate the images, it's not very elegant with all the &nbsp, but it works. Also added a dark line. Feel free to change it if it's not to anyone's liking, I wasn't too sure myself ;). This also goes for the new suggested title. I've added just the TLD country code as a new entry, I would think this is a bit of information one could generally associate with a country or might be wondering about, or is it not really that relevant? -Scipius

How about using "Historical Overview" instead of "History" as a heading since there is a separete "History of" article? --maveric149

Sounds OK, though the other subheadings should also be updated (there's a page on politics, and the other pages should become something too - eventually). jheijmans

Looks like we will have to put some more thought into this. I will contemplate this myself ("Political Overview" doesn't work for me and neither does the somewhat forced "Geographical Overiew"). --maveric149

The table looks great at XGA+ but is way too wide for low res screens now. How about having a separate row for the official native language title and reduce the amount of text and the text size of the image info rows so that they are no longer than any other row. --maveric149

I've narrowed it a bit (with even more &nbsp padding) and gave some of the data its own cell. I'm not sure if we should make this as table as small as possible, we will likely have to account for some room as other countries could need even more space. -Scipius

Hi, like what you've done to the place! Table looks much better in this way. Only thing I'm not sure about is the Internet TLD entry; should it really be in there? And I think you can remove the (s) in the local name(s) and language(s), and make city cities.

Oh yeah, and Frisian is an official language as well, I'll add it to the table. jheijmans

I've updated the population count to those mentioned at http://www.cbs.nl/en/figures/popclock/popclocknl.asp (the counter has probably already increased...) jheijmans

I kinda like the TLD entry - its not particuraly useful but is an interesting fact for an online encyclopedia to note. Less useful perhaps, is mentioning the particular coinage, which is already a link or two away through the Euro article and is another thing making the table too wide (better than it was though). I will go ahead and take a stab at decreasing the width of the table (mostly by placing the "seat of government" note is a notes row). Change anything you don't like. --maveric149

The link to the Dutch coinage article isn't easy to find from Euro so I just moved the note about the former currency to a notes row. The font size of the text descriptions for the images could also be reduced to -1 size. In addition to further reducing the width of the table I think this would look better. I will do this too if nobody objects. --maveric149

I've tried your suggestion, and I think this is probably as small as the table can be or perhaps should be. I've also implemented a better way to separate the images, a table in a table instead of all those &nbsp, which also means things look better in Cologne Blue, my theme, though it's still not perfect. -Scipius

I just switched from no theme to Cologne Blue (which is a very nice theme), but the page looks uglier. The font is bigger in the tables, and the text around the tables is not separated by any white space whatsoever. All in this in Netscape 6, btw. jheijmans

I know, I use CB / Mozilla1.0 myself, but the way CB treats tables is the one major disadvantage of that theme. It still looks better than it did with all the &nbsp though and since the majority of Wikipedians still use the normal theme and its "table-side manner" ;) (the "Print article" function itself does so to, even in CB), I thought it best to keep it optimised for them. Is there any way to alter this behaviour in CB? Is there a discussion on it somewhere? -Scipius

OK, this looks more like a bug/mis-feature with the Cologne Blue theme than with this table. I just switched to this theme and checked some other tables ? they all had huge fonts in comparison to regular text. If anything, I would like to have it the other way around: smaller fonts in tables. I don?t know why this theme automatically forces such a font size scheme down browser throats ? the humans working on article should decide what is best for the article ? not some computer code. --maveric149

Is the translation of the motto "Je maintiendrai" as "I will maintain" correct? "Maintain" in English is transitive, so it feels rather incomplete, like someone left a word out. For that matter, French "maintenir" is transitive as well... Trawling google results, some pages I find suggest translations along the lines of "I will persist", "I will last", "I will persevere" (which would fit well with "je me maintiendrai"), or nebulous "I will maintain", "I will uphold" sort of stuff. Is there an implied subject, like "I will maintain order" or "I will uphold the law" or something? --Brion VIBBER

The Dutch translation of "Je maintiendrai" is "Ik zal handhaven". If I'm correct, it is from a French verse in which William the Silent says he'll maintain virtue, his name, his belief, that kind of things. So yes, there is an implied subject here, but it is not "me". jheijmans

A little more; per http://dutchrevolt.leidenuniv.nl/Nederlands/spreuken/je%20maintiendrai.htm (in Dutch), the explanation is a follows. William the Silent (actually William of Orange-Nassau) got the right to the lands of this cousin René of Chalons, whose device was "Je maintiendrai Chalons", which William changed to "Je maintiendrai Nassau". He also used in once in a letter (as I mention above), in combination with other subjects. The "Nassau" later disappeared; since 1813 it is the official motto of the Netherlands. Another page mentions it was also used by William III of England (originally Dutch), "I will maintain England and the Protestant religion". jheijmans

Ahh, I see, thanks! Perhaps an explanatory note to this effect should appear in the text. --Brion VIBBER

I have edited the article to show some suggestions for the respective sections. The basic idea is to have six main topics, with the primary country page containing a short summary and vital statistics of those six and a prominent link to each main topic article, where the subject will be dealt with in depth. A further suggestion would be that those topic articles can be quite extensive, though still general in scope, with links to a third layer of articles dealing with the more important issues/events/aspects relating to that topic. I'd like to hear what others think about it at this stage. I have also slightly changed two topic titles, but I haven't moved the articles in question pending some feedback. -Scipius

I like the recent changes to the headings ? the previous ones where too large and the addition of simply saying ?Main article: X of the Netherlands[?]? right below the heading makes it very clear that the text below is a summary without having to change the text of the heading. Very organic. --maveric149

Headings look fine, though they're no longer real Wiki-headings now. Some points though:

why two links under politics?
I think the English name should come first in the table (that seems to be the case with most local names in Wikipedia)
Current head of state is here a little vague (I'd at least mention the prime-minister here) and it's already in the text, too.
Frisian is really an official language, even though it is only spoken in Friesland
I don't think removing the current political situation from history is a good idea; history now ends in 1948, so that should be more up to date, though it is true that that paragraph was mostly political.
I like people of X better than Demography (not everybody knows what that is)

jheijmans

Good points, I'll explain my motivations:

The intention is to have just Politics of the Netherlands, for consistency with the other main "X of the Netherlands" articles, plus that the article on Dutch politics will likely include its international position. I left the old article for the time being to allow some debate about it; it can be moved, but I wasn't sure if a simple renaming wouldn't be simpler, if that's possible?
I'm a little undecided about this one as well (funnily enough, it was your placing of the names in the Liechtenstein article that prompted me to make this change ;)). An English name is already used at the top and in the title, so that name would already be clear when entering this page. I thought that the proper local name could thus be given prominence in the context of the Facts table.
Take it more as a suggestion. I added it because the head of state would seem to me to be one of those principal facts, even if their function is often mostly ceremonial, they're still the primary human representative of a country. The head of government and the difference between the two would be best left in the main article on Politics to keep the table smaller. I consider the table to present just the most significant data of the various topics (with head of state representing Politics), I don't think it's bad that there's some overlapping, but I could be wrong.
I added the reference to Friesland to avoid the assumption that Frisian was an official language in all the Netherlands, which it isn't. AFAIK, the status of Frisian is territorial, i.e. confined to Friesland.
Politics and history are closely related as it is, and some history will inevitable creep in most articles, but info on the current administration really is best dealt with under Politics IMHO. Note also that the main article on History does not mention the current government. History should provide mostly background; it doesn't have to end in 1948 (it won't once I'm through with it ;)), but I think that the most recent political developments were best resectioned to Politics.
That's why I haven't copied it, see point 1. Demography does seem to me the better, more general term, since the topic will include more than just info on the population itself. Linguistics and religion and such topics, though ultimately about people, are a bit more general in nature. Some people may not immediately know what it means, but I think it would be clear from the summary following it. -Scipius

Just a couple minor comments: The English name really should come before the local one -- the table is not just another part of the article, it is also a thing onto itself and will be copied by many people who will not also copy the text. I also don't think listing the head of state will be particularly useful -- this term means different things in different countries and some countries don't use this terminology. In the United States, for example, the president is both head of state and head of government. And the term "head of state" means the person with executive powers needed to run and lead the country by forming policy and "head of government" means the person at the top of the bureaucracy. Before the current US Constitution was enacted, the president was the person who presided (hence president) over Congress and who was the head of the government (in charge of the day to day operations of government bureaucracy). But he couldn't make any policy decisions on his own, had to rely on Congress to make these decisions (Congress was the head of state) and then had to do the bidding of Congress through his role as head of government. Other countries view the reigning monarch as "head of state" -- but this is just an honorary title and the monarch only has power of influence (if that) and not any power to form policy. So these two terms really aren't meaningful in the larger context of things. Oh and I like the word "demography" much better than simply "people" -- it is more inclusive, follows the pattern set by the other sub-articles and shouldn't be a recognition problem for anybody familiar with the word demographics. But then "people of.. " isn't terrible either. --maveric149

OK, let's see:

"of the" - you're right, "in the" suggests it'll be only internal
I'm with maveric on the order of the names in the table
As maveric points out, head of state is at least a vague heading - maybe the entire concept is. This needs more explanation and is therefore more in place at the politics section
OK, you're right about Frisian, it isn't an official language in the entire country.
If you can write some lines on Post-WWII for the summary section on history, that'd be great.
Demography does sound more 'encyclopedic', so let's take it :-)

Some more: I think we can integrate all the miscelleanous topics with existing sections: Dutch football teams should be linked somewhere from sport, not from the main article (it's not that important), transnational issues belong either with history or politics. Military looks like a typical CIA entry. There could be an article Military of the Netherlands, linked from politics(?) jheijmans, Wednesday, June 26, 2002

I was aware of the distinction between the head of state and government, my primary motivation in suggesting it lay in mentioning the top of the political hierarchy of the land. As I said, it was just a thought, I have removed it in the table.

I still disagree on the issue of which name should come first though. I do see the table as just a part of the article it's included in and in this context there's no chance of confusion. Rather, I would think that its prominent display can serve to familiarise readers a little bit with the language and culture of the country they have come to find out about.

About other topics, yes jheijmans, that's what I had in mind as well (see above), but we'll see what topics can be treated sufficiently in the main article and which need their own "third layer" article. Military should indeed go under Politics in my view as well.

I have further added a population pyramid in the form of a table. Based on the US Census data presented above and more or less an experiment in table-building ;), I'd like to hear what others think of it (is it perhaps too big?). It's not quite finished yet (e.g. there's this extraneous > that keeps popping up). -Scipius

Cool HTML pyramid! Did that take long to make? If it did, we still might consider using US Census images (http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum?cty=NL) for this for countries - at least until someone gets around coding a table for each of the 140 or so countries in the world. I changed the first text line of the article to give the officially recognized English title. With that information there, I don't think it is that necessary to list the English title first in the table and may in fact be visually redundent for the article taken as a whole. --maveric149

The hardest part was figuring it out, but I estimate that future pyramids can use it as a template without too much trouble. After calculating the percentages, you can easily adjust the colspan="x" variables in each row. Western countries will look similar, third-world ones will need a broader base. You can do this by adding cells in the main block (at present 47 columns to a row) and adding their number to the colspan variables. Each cell represents 0.2% in this table, but others could use a different amount. I've looked for a copyright notice at the IDB for the images and came up empty, so I'm not sure if they could be copied. Even if they could, they are rather ugly IMHO ;). I also think percentages present a more manageable unit.

I'm also not sure about the new intro. Isn't this whole article just a summary for the main topic articles (or will be)? I agree with jheijmans that the first few lines should be short, and maybe simply serve to broadly position the country in a geograhical context. -Scipius

Like the pyramid (some work that'll have been?)! Don't really like the new introduction though. The information on independence is already too lengthy; I think the first sentence should be brief but informative. Also, the fact above how much of the country lies below sea-level is certainly not a well-established fact. One source says 1/4, another 1/2. This may also have to do with the fact that the area can be including water and excluding water. As about 1/5 of the total area of the country is water, this may give some differences in the numbers.

Maybe it would be a good idea to move year (or date) of independence to the table? Most countries will have a fixed date (all the former colonies/protectorates/etc.) for it, though we will have to differ between declared and recognised (not for all countries, but also for the USA, f.e.). It's information you may want to have quickly ("how long does this country exist?"), so the table is a good place IMO.

Maybe we can also add two entries to the table for: head of state and head of government (or one if there's only one). In this case that would be the queen and the prime minister (until the new pm comes, of course).

Any thoughts? jheijmans, Thursday, June 27, 2002

I think the table should have separate head of state and head of government entries -- they are different for a large percentage of countries (certaintly the majority of Western countries, all though the world's tinpot presidental dictatorship probably tip the overall balance in favour of the presidental system.) And independence date information is useful for the majority of the world's countries as well. The distinction between the head of state and head of government can be made clearly in most cases if it exists. If the information isn't relevant for a particularly country, just add "N/A" or don't include that field in the table for that particular country... -- SJK

I'd go for not including the entry. jheijmans, Thursday, June 27, 2002

I was the one who added the extra info to the definition paragraph due to the fact that introduction paragraphs should always give a good definition of what an article is about before going into the article. Oftentimes this information is a bit redundant, but is designed to give a reader a good general idea of what the topic is before going into it (similar to the definition paragraph in United States of America). I try to incorporate into these paragraphs what I feel is the most essential facts a person should get out of the entire article (a short executive summary if you will). As a matter of fact, I lifted much of the text from an old dictionary. Just keep this in mind when you edit the definition paragraph -- this is not something I am going to revert you on.

I think it would be nice to have dates of independence in the table -- but in many cases it will also be necessary to have this information in definition paragraphs (it really isn't needed in this case though -- too much to explain). If we do wish to list the leader(s) of nations in the table we should either use wording that has stable meanings across nations (such as the generic "[[Lists of incumbents|Leader]]") or use the titles that are recognized by that nation (such as "[[List of Dutch Heads of State|Head of State]]"). Notice the link to the lists. In some cases actual articles are written about a nation's leaders. In these cases I would suggest this format: [[President of the United States|President]]. I would prefer we used option 2 and keep these links local to the nation at hand and systematically add links to Lists of incumbents to each of the nation-specific leader lists/articles. --maveric149

I disagree. The terms "heads of state" and "head of government" can be applied to almost every nation on Earth, with a very few exceptions. For example:

the head of government of the US is the President, and the head of state of the US is also the President
the head of government of Germany is the Chancellor, and the head of state is the President
the head of government of France is the Prime Minister, and the head of state is the President

Each of these three countries represents the three main systems of government on earth -- the presidental, the parliamentary, and the semi-presidental. Just about every country on earth (as I said, Switzerland, San Marino and Andorra are exceptional) can be described using these two terms. Of course, I'd include the country specific term as well. But what if the reader doesn't know the meaning of the country specific terms, i.e. which one is the head of state and which one is the head of government? e.g.

The Republic of BlahBlah

Bablabo: John Blahnich

Blabliba: Sally Blahson

Faced with that hypothetical country, how is the reader supposed to know what a Bablabo and Blabliba are? But if we use "head of state" and "head of government":

The Republic of BlahBlah

Head of State: Bablabo John Blahnich

Head of Government: Babliba Sally Blahson

Now the reader knows what we are talking about... so I say lets include "head of state" and "head of government" in the table. If they are the same, we can just put "same as head of state" under "Head of Government" -- SJK

Before seeing SJK's remarks, I already acted on maveric's proposal. Added entries Queen and Prime Minister, which are well-accepted English terms. And even if they weren't (can only think of a few people might not know, such as sultan, emir, and even those are quite commonly known), there's always teh link to tell more.

I linked Queen to the article on Dutch Monarchy (which needs work as well, btw), there isn't a list of PMs yet (can be arranged).

Independence entries still need a day and month, didn't have them at hand (wait, the 1579 date should be in the Union of Utrecht article).

I also removed the colons in the table, which were quite superfluous, and the note about half the country being under sea level (see earlier remark). Comments/changes are welcome, of course. jheijmans, Thursday, June 27, 2002

On the definition paragraph: A person shouldn’t have to read the entire article to get at least a vague idea of what the subject of the article is (like my work on Barium and the other elements articles). That is why wikipedia articles are supposed to begin with a good definition. Not everyone has time or is willing to read an entire article just to get the bare basics. Oftentimes, people just read the first couple of sentences of an article to see if the article is something they want to read in whole. So, we should take this opportunity to grab a person’s attention up-front with something a little more than geographical orientation. See the definition paragraph at United States of America for an idea of what I am talking about. We should strive to approximate the essence (however inadequate) of the country in as few words as possible (and do it in an interesting to read manor). Like I said, the independence info is a bit much for this particular country due to the fact that it takes too much explaining (I had to add the parenthetical comment after I noticed the apparent contradiction and it was that addition that ruined the effect I was looking for). However, this should be replaced with some important fact (which I just did a stab at). --maveric149

I just changed the external link under the population pyramid to point directly to US Census population pyramids for the Netherlands for the years 2000, 2020 and 2050. When a country article template is made having a link to http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=__ (http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=__) will expedite data recovery (using the "Extract data" tab after replacing the "__" with the two letter country code -- like so: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=NL (http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbpyrs.pl?cty=NL). This is the same thing I've done with the template at Periodic table/Temp, and has helped me a lot in data acquisition. --maveric149

The new introduction is much, much, better in this way, good work! I'm not really sure about the EU links at the bottom. The European Union itself is already linked, so the other EU countries are just a click away; why not list all countries of Europe there, or all countries of the World? It looks a bit random to me. However, having some general links at the bottom is not a bad idea, I'd propose things like:

list of countries (or countries of the world, whatever it is called)
Europe (the continent we're in)
the most important international unions the country is involved in (EU, UN, NATO, Benelux, more?)
maybe links to the dependent areas (Aruba, Antilles here)

This will give the reader a much better overview of where he'd like to go to than just a "random" number of countries, I think. jheijmans, Thursday, June 27, 2002

Thanks. I din't put them there, but I kinda like the EU links at the bottom -- they integrate the article really nicely into the context of it being a member state of a very important larger entity. If this is done for all EU state's, then navigating them would be a cinch. Continent and list of contries would also be good but I don't know about listing international unions at the bottom of the main article. It would make more sense to me if these were listed in Politics of the Netherlands -- and probably not at the bottom there either. Same for dependent areas. --maveric149

I agree that is will be easier to navigate through the EU countries. But my point is - how many users want to navigate through the EU countries? Is that more likely to happen than users that want to navigate through all European countries, all the countries, all countries of NATO, the UN, ....? I haven't got a clue about it. For me, that means that _IF_ there's anything to be listed, it should not be the EU only. jheijmans, Friday, June 28, 2002

I'm the one who added the EU links. I thought it would be appropriate because the EU is of course not just any international organisation for the Netherlands and other members, it is a vital part of the economy, the legislature, politics, etc., and this will likely only increase in the future. I'm still not entirely sure of how the bottom bar should look like though, since at least a link to Countries of the world might be necessary as well.

I have further added a suggested seventh section. The provinces and dependencies are more of a geopolitical nature rather than strictly geographic, so it may be best to put it in between geography and politcs. I'm not sure about the name, possibly for other countires we could have the name of the local subdivison-name (US: States, Germany: Länder, etc). Obviously, only the major subdivisions should be listed, the smaller ones can be added under the respective major ones, i.e. the municipalities will be listed under the province they belong to.

Thirdly, a new map by my own hand to replace the minimalistic CIA Factbook map, showing the provinces and their capitals and the major waterways. There will be a larger one with more info as a supplement, but I haven't got time now ;) BTW, I'm having major problems connecting to the site over the past few days, am I the only one? -Scipius

I like the additons, but they really should probably belong in Geography of the Netherlands. There are two main types of geography, physical and political, and these two really should be in the same sub-article. The map is also nice, but probably too detailed for the main article -- great to have it in the geography sub-article. I like the CIA maps for their simplicity -- only showing the shape of the countries, their neighbors and largest cities. That is all that is needed in the main article. --maveric149, Sunday, June 30, 2002

I disagree. The Factbook map is what I would consider the bare minimum for a map and it's really nothing more than a sketch, with minimal information contained within it, sometimes somewhat irrelevant info too. To take the example of the Dutch map, for some inexplicable reason it included several small harbour towns like IJmuiden, Terneuzen or Delfzijl (but not Flushing, and Europoort is not even a town) and left provincial capitals like Middelburg, Lelystad and Den Bosch off of it, as well as stuff like the Houtribdijk. My intention is to have a different kind of map for the geography section, something displaying the geological morphology or types of landscape, in line with making that section "strictly" about physical geography. -Scipius

Like I said though, the province map has too much information for the main article -- whose focus is on the whole country not just the provinces. It would be great, however, to have your province map along with a morphology map in Geography of the Netherlands -- remembering that geography is two-fold at its largest scale, with physical and sociopolitical branches (if that sub-article gets too long, then the two types of geography can also be broken up). Sure, the CIA map has issues, but it does have the desired simplicity for the main article. It should be a cinch to whip up a map just of the country itself and major cities -- the province info is just too much for the eye to handle when trying to focus on the country in whole. Also remember, that this article is acting as a template for other coutry articles, and many countries have way too many states, provinces, counties to have on a map that would be appropriate for the main article. The whole idea of having a main article is to summarize data on a country and to go into detail in the sub-articles. --maveric149

Sorry, but I'm not convinced ;) You have a point about other countries possibly not being able to include the same amount of detail, but that's a question that needs to be seen on a case-to-case basis I would think. Some could include more than others, but anything's better than the Factbook maps which, to my mind, contain too little information, let alone their possible inaccuracies. You can see the now available larger version to see what I would think a basic map of the Netherlands should include (obviously this wouldn't fit into the small version). It would perhaps be interesting to hear what others think of this issue. -Scipius

Scipius, Maveric (and others): I haven't edited this page for a while, and I think this is pretty much what all the country pages should approximately look like. Of course, the article isn't finished (only to look at the economy section), but I think as a "template", this is a pretty good example. I will update the WikiProject page I made for countries with this information, and move the Liechtenstein/temp page to the real article; maybe even start over another country's page. I think the "template" could still change when editing new countries (there's always new things (and new authors) coming up), but that shouldn't be a problem in Wikipedia. Jheijmans 11:34 Jul 23, 2002 (PDT)

I hope you won't mind me tinkering further with the template, but I've added a new layout idea in the form of horizontal lines to separate the sections. Previously I had used a single space on a line to create more whitespace between them, but I've seen that this wasn't clear in other applications of the template, such as United States and Liechtenstein, where the sections crowd together a little. The horizontal lines IMHO neatly create a clear sectioning of the article and they adapt to various page sizes and tables/maps. The code is: <hr align="center" noshade size="2" width="75%">

I've further copied some of the Factbook info from the Economy article to the main article in order to fill things up a little for the mean time. Also, check out the bottom where more links have been added. Does anyone else like or dislike these ideas? -Scipius

I really do not like the lines -- in my browser they do not line up and are centered between the left edge and the table or between both edges, which in my opion is needlessly distracting. Furthermore the internal text of the article already has huge amount of HTML which only discourages editing by those unfamiliar with HTML. Please just add some added whitespace -- this is one article not a bunch of articles borged together. --mav 13:11 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)

I'm with mav; if you want to use horizontal lines, just use normal ones. The wiki syntax is as it always has been, a line with four dashes: ---- Brion VIBBER

I don't like the lines either, they look ugly. Also I'm against excessive use of HTML - I am already not too happy with the fact that our headers are not of the 2 x = format (or 3 or 4). Let's keep it simple, as far as that's possible with this table hanging 'round, not to mention the population pyramid. Jeronimo

Alright, those beautiful lines have been replaced by the bland spaces ;) The problem of them being an invisible addition remains however, but I suppose it could be pointed out in the WikiProject Countries page or even done by hand when articles appear. On the ---- though, I don't think I will continue using that, the solid line does look much better (just like it does in a table), especially in the new theme. -Scipius

May I comment that on my server, this page - like numerous others - has the diagrams overwriting the text. I tried to put it right by moving them around, but I see they've been put back. It particularly seems to be a problem when images are right-justified instead of left. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to alter it, but I can't believe I'm the only person experiencing this problem. Am I? --Deb

Looks fine to me (Linux/Konqueror 2.2.2 and Windows XP and Windows 2000/IE 6). Does this occur for all right justified tables? I have seen a similar problem on a Windows/IE 5.0 box at school but I was told that that browser must have been broken somehow. A screenshot might be good too. --mav

Here's what I get (sorry for the width): This may or may not be related. I use MSIE 5.0 on Win 98 SE.--user:Branko

But does the same problem exist for rendered tables? If it does then this does appear to be a problem with IE 5 and should be reported as a bug. --mav

I think the text added by 203.0.180.2 to this page and Holland might deserve a separate page, since this discussion has really not much to with the country itself. Jeronimo 08:28 Sep 17, 2002 (UTC)

This is the text, which I have removed for now: Some people consider this incorrect but, as against that, "Holland" is in fact the traditional English usage. Further, the term "the Netherlands" can also cause confusion - particularly when consulting historical materials - as it also refers to the whole geographical area of which only a part became independent under that name (the rest became independent later as Belgium, and was formerly the Austrian Netherlands or the Spanish Netherlands at various times). While using the term "Holland" may cause offence to some, this should be weighed against the possible offence to others from the irredentist connotations of the term "the Netherlands".

Once again 203.0.180.2, I'd prefer to move this issue to a SEPARATE ARTICLE instead of placing it here. Also, please talk about this here instead of relentlessly editing the pages (which I will then counter), which will bring both of us nowhere. Jeronimo

BTW, just to give some examples of how offended Belgians are by "the Netherlands": the names of the countries in Dutch (also spoken in half of Belgium) are Nederland and België. No Belgian EVER refers to his country as Netherlands, at best as the Low Countries, although even this is objected to by those living in the Ardennes. Jeronimo

I FULLY understand this perspective. However I consider that applying it simplistically leads to serious incompleteness. I have MYSELF met Belgians who objected to the nuance which is present in ENGLISH (they don't like the idea I once heard from a Dutchman that "there is no such place as Belgium"). Granted, it's been a while, but it happened. Further, the point that "usage does not make it right" - is wrong, in that traditionally English is descriptive rather than prescriptive like French (though Americans have grown prescriptive, and here in Australia it is mixed). See, for instance, Churchill complaining about people trying to call Leghorn "Livorno" when Leghorn was as traditional an English name as Rome or Venice. I am trying to place a usage that exists in English, and trying to give it a context. Since I note your objections, I am trying to find some brief formulation that will both accurately and objectively describe subjective feelings of all parties, yet respect actual English usage. I was prompted to this by the original incorrect claim that something that is a correct usage - is not. Now, how do we describe this actual and existing situation? I'm not trying to assert a "right/wrong", but to describe a range. Your suggestion of walking away from the article to be going on with has a defect. It entrenches an unresolved position, which is inappropriate unless the fact of being unresolved is itself indicated.

I should declare an interest. As a child, Belgian paratroops saved my life in Luluabourg.

Thanks for participating in the discussion, it makes it easier to get an end-result. My point is that while Holland is indeed the most frequently used way to refer to my country, it is (virtually) never done in official cases, for the simple reason that Holland does not refer to the entire Kingdom of the Netherlands. This can easily be compared with the use of (Great) Britain, which also used frequently, even though that does not include Northern Ireland - United Kingdom is the correct term. For that reason, we put the article about the Netherlands under that name, but refer to the usage of Holland in both articles. Of note, the word "Dutch" is in fact also "incorrectly" used. It originally referred to Germany (compare "deutsch" (German) and "duits" (Dutch)), but has become the adjective for The Netherlands.

While the correct usage of the name is interesting, no more than a few lines should be spent on it in these articles, there are more interesting things to say about the country. However, since the topic (apparently, given the amount of text spent on it) is interesting in itself, we could create a new article about this subject and link to it from Netherlands and Holland.

As for the debate itself again, it is true that the entire area currently made up by Belgium and the Netherlands were once together referred to as the Low Countries. The current division began in the 16th century, when 7 northern provinces and other lands owned by them declared independence of the Spanish rulers. The name Belgium as such was not used until 1830, when the Belgians declared themselves independent of the Kingdom of the Netherlands instituted after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Since the Belgians chose to separate from this nation, I would therefore consider Belgian anger over the continued use of the The Netherlands for the remaining part of the kingdom to be strange. Jeronimo

---

As the person who has been correcting the use of "Holland" in Wikipedia for some time now, I will share my view on the issue. The term "Holland" is, beside the name for a defunct county and province, also a colloquial name for the Netherlands as a whole and one that, like England is for the UK, is factually incorrect when used so. I strongly feel that we should strive for accuracy here and adopt the use of "Holland" to refer only to the county and province, and not the country. Think of it as an automatic disambiguation.

Regarding Belgians feeling insulted, this is IMHO nowhere near the issue you make it out to be. Let's examine the case in Dutch. The term "Netherlands" was originally a general name for the low-lying parts of the northwestern Holy Roman Empire and was naturally narrowed down when the Burgundian owned lands were put under a central government and became a separate entity in the HRE. This, as mentioned above, included present-day Belgium. Belgians do use the term "Netherlands" when discussing their country in this time-period, though often with the distinction "Southern-". After the split, this becomes the "Spanish" and then "Austrian" Netherlands, rather than just "Netherlands", because of the now existing United Provinces that would become the later Netherlands (the country). It is interesting to note that the full name of the next state, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, can more often, it seems, be found in Belgium then the Netherlands, where the "United" part is frequently left out.

In conclusion, Belgians don't use the term "Netherlands" to refer to themselves, unless in the 16th century and prior historical context and afterwards an effort is made to distinguish between the northern and southern Netherlands as separate entities, though this is made significantly easier in that the Dutch name for the Netherlands is "Nederland" (singular), rather than "Nederlanden" (plural). English, regrettably, does not make this distinction, leading to a potential confusion between the historic and modern "Netherlands". One solution is of course to use "Holland" to refer to the country.

However, one major problem with using "Holland" to refer to the whole country is that this takes away its proper, correct meaning (both geographically and politically), creating a need to disambiguate between Holland (the country) and Holland (the county/province). This is what I've been correcting. Texts dealing with the historic Low Countries often refer to Holland in the correct sense, i.e. the county, the county that played an important historic role in the region. In this context Holland is a different entity from Brabant, Flanders, Guelders, Utrecht, Frisia, etc. Though these counties and duchies no longer exist as such, there still remains a regional and historic identity that is negated when one uses "Holland" to refer to them all together and it too can lead to conflicting descriptions (such as Arnhem being the historic ducal capital of Guelders, but then also being in "Holland", which was a whole different county).

So, my view is this: "Netherlands" to be used for the country in any modern context, and only for the historic context when dealing with the 16th century and prior (even then a note in the text can probably make the difference sufficiently clear). In the 17th century there were two different Netherlands and they can be disambiguated accordingly. When talking of both together, 17th century or later, the term "Low Countries" could be used, or the term "Benelux" (though this one obviously only in a modern context). "Holland" remains as the name for the county/province, with a note at the top of the page making clear the country name is the "Netherlands".

The result is a convention that most closely resembles Dutch usage. Naturally, I'm not completely up-to-date on the history of the English usage and more than welcome any input, but I would guess it mirrors the Dutch to an extent (though the whole "Dutch" thing would be an example of English doing things differently). We don't need to remove every colloquial use of "Holland"; I've occasionally left it in when "Netherlands" was also used prominently in an article, but we shouldn't link "Holland" in such cases. There's no perfect solution, but IMHO this is as close as we can get.

As far as the colloquial use being preferable because it's supposedly more common in English, I think it's debatable. It may be, but so could be "England" for the UK, especially in everyday conversation (outside Britain of course). Consider however that most articles written about the Netherlands will be done by Dutchmen, who are more likely to use the "Netherlands" when referring to the country, so on Wikipedia at least "Netherlands" will probably outnumber "Holland" (even without my edits ;)).

Well, I hope I've been making some sense. Ask away if I haven't been. ;) Scipius 20:38 Sep 20, 2002 (UTC)

Yes I agree. Even if Holland is most often used to mean Netherlands (which I am not convinced of -- maybe 5 years ago) it is still too ambiguous for us to use here. Holland has its own particular historic significance and an article should be written about that at Holland. We have also agreed to use the conventional short form for nation names. --mav

The days of May, 4 and May, 5 are not holidays in the sense that people work normally. Should they be listed here? TeunSpaans 08:19 Nov 16, 2002 (UTC)

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