File talk:BlankMap-World-v2.png

This is a blank map of the world as of 2005, with country outlines; it uses the Robinson projection centered on the Greenwich Prime Meridian.

To aid in identification and when colourising, sovereign microstates less than 2 500 km² in area are depicted as circles:

Caribbean: Saint Kitts and Nevis (north/west) Antigua and Barbuda (north/east) (north → south) Dominica Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Grenada (south/west) Barbados (east) Europe (west → east): Andorra Monaco Liechtenstein San Marino Vatican City Malta Africa (west → east): São Tomé and Príncipe Comoros Seychelles Mauritius

Asia (west → east): Bahrain Maldives Singapore Macau (China) Hong Kong (China) Oceania: Palau (north/west) Federated States of Micronesia (north/centre) Marshall Islands (north/east) (north → south) Kiribati Nauru Tuvalu Samoa Tonga

Islands

This is a very useful map, but I have a few minor problems with some of the islands. Since the primary purpose of this map is to show countries, I do not think some minor islands which are not their own country should be shown. I have been bold here and changed it. I removed the islands north of Canada because these are really a nuisance when trying to shade in Canada. Newfoundland is probably alright separate though since it is fairly important. Also removed the island at the mouth of the amazon (which is really several islands anyway), and Hainan island near China (which could be confused with Taiwan and isnt really important in showing the area of China). Joined Tierra del Fuego with the mainland for convenience also. I didnt think that Majorca in the mediterranean or the dot which represents Saaremaa and Hiiumaa off Estonia, and Rhodes near Turkey were significant for a countries map so I removed them also. -- Astrokey44|talk 00:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I've reverted this – some changes are agreeable; others are not. I'll address point for point:

Based on commentary below, I've since uploaded a mildly tweaked map with the following revisions:

• One person's nuisance is another person's delight. Many of the islands in northern Canada (and others) are much larger than Newfoundland and many countries. Maps should not only be easy to use but, more or less, render territories accurately: the revised map is obvious in their absence. Moreover, they are not difficult to colour. Should we also eliminate Tasmania, Palawan, or Shikoku?
• I'm neither here nor there regarding Hainan, but see no reason to remove it if, for any reason, to contrast with Taiwan.
• I've no real problem with nixing Saaremaa and Hiiumaa off Estonia.

• Done. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 23:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• We could probably get away with joining Marajó (in the mouth of the Amazon) to mainland Brazil (though I'd prefer not to), as was done with Tierra del Fuego.

• Done, but Tierra del Fuego retained as separate (joint territory). E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 23:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• As for Rhodes, I wonder whether the template map was created to specifically include it given the inclusion of others in the Mediterranean: Sardinia, Corsica, Crete, and Majorca. Mind you, I wouldn't lose sleep in nixin just Rhodes or the other Balearic Islands.

• Done. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 23:42, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Also note that this map is based on another version (which includes all those island groups), which is even more common in Wp.

I will consider tweaking the map to remove minor islands noted, but I suggest discussion of changes beforehand or upload an entirely new map. :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 02:26, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I still feel the islands to the north of Canada are unnecessary - similar islands of Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya and New Siberian Islands to the north of Russia are not shown for instance. I also think that the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad should be removed because they look like a separate countries. The thing I really like about this map is Denmark - the way that you can colour the country in one click in MS paint even though there are separate islands. I wouldnt really mind if that sort of logic was used to the whole map - even at the expense of showing separate islands (I get sick of colouring in Indonesia and the Philipenes!) Perhaps I will make a version which does this, but I will load it as a separate map since it would be too different to this one). -- Astrokey44|talk 03:26, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

There has to be a trade-off between ease of colouring and accuracy. I'm far more concerned with rendering territories more or less accurately. I think this map is pretty much there on both fronts. Maps have educational value, and how can they do this if we conjoin territories that are truly discrete (geographically and/or politically)?

That being said, I don't disagree with one-click colouring; however, if a Wikipedian is going to spend the time to colour a map, it's not going to rock the world to spend a little extra time (at least to me) to colour the territories that require scrutiny. And this is nothing a legend (as above)/legend map can't rectify. None of the altases in my possession obliterates the islands of northern Canada or the larger islands of Indonesia, and the European enclaves are sizeable enough that their absence would be obvious. Besides: patience is a virtue. :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 00:30, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok Ive put together Image:BlankMap-World-v2 one click countries.PNG. Maybe I was going too far with French Guiana and Greenland but some of the other areas look ok -- Astrokey44|talk 04:00, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind lines (ones on my forehead notwithstanding!) but I'd be cautious about using this map – there are any number of territories (e.g., in the Caribbean, Oceania) that might require lines to the their parent countries. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 00:30, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I took out the cross-continental lines for this reason, and also it would be impossible to link all the countries with their colonies since the lines could not cross each other for the one click thing to work -- Astrokey44|talk 23:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed ... MUCH better! I would not hesitate to use this map. :) Thanks again! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 23:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I've made three very minor tweaks to the map:

• (1) I corrected (I think) the interlining of Bougainville Island, which is part of Papua New Guinea, not the Solomon Islands.
• (2) I've tweaked the interlining of Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada (parallel with its southern border). I was also going to reconnect what I thought might be the Queen Charlotte Islands due to their westerly distance from the North American Pacific coast; however, due to their northern position, it is arguably (as was/is now) Prince of Wales Island, Alaska in the Alexander Archipelago.
• (3) I've restored the separate enclave of Nakhichevan. Kaliningrad is different since its interlining with Russia is, distinctly, in the Baltic Sea. However, interlinings on land (with the one colour) give the impression that N. is connected with Azerbaijan on land when it isn't.

Make sense? Again, great work! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 23:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

ok 1 and 2 are fine, but Nakhichevan really bugs me. I think it should be removed completely - the map is not supposed to be totally geographically accurate to the last detail but give a general idea of where countries are for the purposes of showing statistics etc. There are some maps of the world which dont show it at all such as [1]. Its also smaller than currently depicted - its less than 1/5 the size of armenia and only 1/15 the size of azerbaijan (5500 km2 compared to 29,800km2 for armenia and 86,600km2 for azerbaijan) - I think since the map sets out to be a 'one click' map people would understand that its not shown. -- Astrokey44|talk 00:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Great; noted. On the one hand, it's just one more click like an island and N. is larger than the microstates encircled (>=2 500 km²); given the above, on the other hand, I'd support nixing N. from the map. If it remains, though, it should be separate and not connected/interlined to A. I'm sure someone will note N.'s exclusion – I once got into a discussion about the unity of Denmark on the map, ironically – but you can't please everyone all the time! :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

One last thing: I'd suggest renaming it something simpler – like Image:BlankMap-World-v3.png – and placing it. :) E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 00:01, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The new name sounds good but images cant be moved on commons to a different name can they? -- Astrokey44|talk 00:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you can – I wish! You might just want to reupload the map and tag the prior one for speedy deletion (or similar) as a dupe. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok Ive done this and also removed N. from the map, and also copied part of this discussion over to [2] -- Astrokey44|talk 02:24, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Great! There are a whole lot or redlinks in the commons text, though. I'll correct later. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 02:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Cape Verde

I know it doesn't qualify on the stated criteria of area alone (they aren't < 2500 km²) but I think the map would be improved significantly if we added another circle to stand for the group of Cape Verde islands. They're currently nearly invisible even when colored. And they're hell to color on the first place.

On a related point (one that I'm not myself so sure about) perhaps we should also have such circles for countries like Luxembourg or Brunei which on the map currently *look* smaller than the microstates depicted. Aris Katsaris 20:53, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. A reasonable threshold of 2 500 km² was established to properly account for microstates. We could increase the area threshold to 5 000 km² (which would include Cape Verde, Luxembourg, Samoa, but not Brunei), but I'm unsure of the utility in doing that. These territories appear fine to me. Besides: a similar (and recently devised) map exists for one-click colouring: Image:BlankMap-World-v3.png. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 21:10, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue is less about real-life area, I think, and more about the countries' size on the map itself. The microstate circles contain 18 pixels. So perhaps it makes sense that those countries that (though bigger in real life) are represented with less than 18 pixels are also increased to that size. Aris Katsaris 00:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

As stated above, I do not feel this is necessary and an alternate map is available for one-click colouring. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:00, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not about one-click colouring (I shouldn't have even brought that up), it's about visibility. But okay, I won't insist on it. I could always upload an alternate map after all. Aris Katsaris 01:29, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to load an alternate map, you should show how you intend to do this. Different world maps are better for different reasons and it is nice to have several blank world maps to choose from -- Astrokey44|talk 01:50, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Please see Image:BlankMap-World-v4.png. Aris Katsaris 06:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Nice, I have made a version of this using thin lines again to join land owned by the same country Image:BlankMap-World-v5.png -- Astrokey44|talk 08:20, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:52, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Islands between Samoa and Tonga?

The islands *west* of Tonga are the Fiji. But what are the islands lying halfway between Tonga and Samoa? Are they a continuation of the Tonga series of isles? Aris Katsaris 12:10, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe you are correct: they appear to be islands belonging to Tonga (carried over from Vardion's original map); I wonder if they were misplaced, somehow meant to be American Samoa (United States), Niue or the Cook Islands (New Zealand). E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 02:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)