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	Europe was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result February 26, 2008 Peer review Reviewed March 5, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed
Current status: Former good article nominee

This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

To-do list for Europe: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2023-02-26 To get to good article level Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Fix the area of Turkey in List of states and territories. Should be 783,356 and not 23,764 (from the Turkey article). Verify : ADD inline citations - particularly geography to biology sections and for statistics throughout the article

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Europe article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

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Newgrange

Still no answer on why it is not listed, someone simply deleted my comment --Ire2500 (talk) 13:42, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Turkey is not Europe

Turkey is not Europe and any references must be deleted from the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.33.251.173 (talk) 20:12, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Economy of Europe

I think this would be in the economy section: Europe has a long history as the world's richest and most productive part of the world. At the time of Christ's birth is estimated western European output per capita was approximately 30% higher than the world average. Year 1500 had this advantage increased to 40%. After the development of science and the Industrial Revolution in Europe grew its lead quickly, in 1700 produced an average European almost 70% more than world's average population, and in 1850 was taken over the entire 150%. Around the year 1900 was Western Europe's leading role as the world's most productive area has been taken over by the former European colony of the United States, but Europe has continued to belong to the world's richest, most productive and knowledge-producing regions.

Edit request from 118.93.209.184, 8 August 2011

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In the religion section, please removed the (east) from Germany (east). Germany is not divided anymore.

118.93.209.184 (talk) 07:41, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Decline. By no means does the statement imply that Germany is still divided. It merely clarifies the territory to which the claim made applies. The claim does not apply to Germany as a whole, and therefore the qualifier cannot be removed. Tomeasy _{T C} 17:38, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Map is ridiculous

Why does the map in the infobox have no borders? I find that very weird. Is there a reason for that? Jørgen88 (talk) 16:22, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Because the map in the infobox is meant to show where Europe is, and a map of that size could not show borders and countries sensibly. The map showing borders and country names is further down. --Boson (talk) 18:56, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

With borders it makes more sense, without borders its just a green spot on the globe. Jørgen88 (talk) 20:19, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't see what the borders add with no country names. Ít would just tell you that Europe is divided into several bits, which we know anyway.--Boson (talk) 20:24, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear. The whole point of the EU is that we all club together like one big band of brothers, not squabbling over our boundaries so that we can compete with others such as the USA, China and Russia. On the global locator maps it certainly makes more sense to have it as a big EuroBlob. The second map does indeed have the country boundaries and would be silly to repeat that. And yes, some of the other locator maps do not follow the same style, but they do not have countries as small as the Vatican City, Monaco, Gibraltar, San Marino, Guernsey, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Malta, Andorra, and the Isle of Man. Chaosdruid (talk) 00:43, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Please do try to soapbox less. --Saddhiyama (talk) 00:50, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Who are you talking to Saddhiyama? Chaosdruid (talk) 02:51, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

File:Raffael 058.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Raffael 058.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests September 2011 What should I do? Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so. If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Misplaced Pages (Commons does not allow fair use) If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 11:41, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Revision

Reading the article I found much incorrect information.

Some of sentences use vague term Western and Eastern Europe which we used during the cold war and now have as many definitions as many there are scholars. This goes to a ridiculous idea that a wolf is primarily found in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe (Scandinavia, Spain, etc.).extenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/File:Present_distribution_of_wolf_subspecies_eur.jpg. This can be changed with short 'Northern Europe and mountainous regions of the continent' which reflects it better. Even more hilarious is the European bison part: 'Once roaming the great temperate forests of Eurasia, European bison now live in nature preserves in Poland, Russia, and other parts of Eastern Europe]]' -> in fact it does in these areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Bison_bonasus_distribution.svg. This means that the information was clearly incorrect because these reserves are very limited in terms of size and they are on the border of Poland and Belarus, and Poland and the Ukraine, regions tending to be called Central rather than Eastern Europe after the Cold War not to mention unspecified 'Eastern Europe'. Consequently I decided to correct it.

Keeping in mind size of Europe, I thought it will be wiser to specify information so instead of using 'Central, Eastern, North-Western etc. I changed it into specific places in order to avoid confusion and disappointment. So instead of saying Western Europe, whatever that term covers, I specified countries by name to make it much clearer, comprehensible and visible. --Rejedef (talk) 15:37, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that kind of rewriting is in any way helpful. In this case attempts at "precision" are just confusing, particularly if they only refer to captions of images. Eastern, Northern, Southern, Western or Central Europe are not confusing terms. Mathsci (talk) 20:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Dear Mathsci - they are confusing terms because they have different meanings. You can see Western Europe as a bunch of non-communist countries... 22 years ago. CIA would say that Western Europe are France, the UK and the Low Countries. This is the confusion I make. And, after all, Europe is too small to separate it into regions. On the other hand, European nations tend to find differences rather than similarities between them. Instead of saying about regions, some of them are great, why not to specify, where possible, to make clear which country rather than telling that European Bison can be found in a region of Europe rather than mentioning that there are only 2 very tiny reserves in countries which we call nowadays Central (alternatively Central and Eastern Europe)? That was my motive to pursue changes. --Rejedef (talk) 23:13, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

The terms are mostly understandable, which is what we want. Your latest edit was better than your Central-Western-Northern-Southern and Central-Eastern-Northern Europe edit, but I do think you should have waited for a discussion with Mathsci before proceeding. Would you like to explain each terminological change? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 23:41, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I did explain my position and, it is not a personal view. It is just an observer view, as I live in Europe and I see how terms are being used in media, books, politics and in scholarly papers. To prove my point I searched for tens of links --Rejedef (talk) 23:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I still find these edits unhelpful, so I have reverted them. Rejdef seems to be pushing a very personal point of view: the assertion that Europe is too small to be divided into regions is not backed by reliable sources and is standard usage. The CIA's handbook has been updated. I have no idea what it said prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, or why that should be relevant. The current version, available on the web, is the one that is used as a source for various parts of the article. When talking about animals from prehistory, as in the image captions (those images and their captions are a little quirky and possibly we don't need either of them), geographical regions do make sense and should be adopted on wikipedia if used by the sources. (Anything else is original research.) There is an article on Western Europe, which includes the 2011 classification by the United Nations (please see the image). The terms are often used in a vaguer sense. Mathsci (talk) 00:12, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Rejedef used my user talk page to continue this discussion. Please could we keep discussions about the article on this talk page? As Chipmunkdavis has written on my talk page, I think that each separate change (there were several in quite different places) should be carefully justified—one-by-one, not as a package—with a realiable source in English that uses the same phraseology. When there are tricky points, the best thing is return to the sources; any general discussion is usually not appropriate. Mathsci (talk) 22:05, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Well, I did not make these sources. I'm not an owner of BBC or a boss of the European Union. Please check links below to see how the European perspective may very from an American perspective. By Europe is too small to divide I mean the President of the Europe, Jerzy Buzek's views. The fall of communism is significant because it challenged the East-West divide. New sub-divisions emerged and many old ones were revived. This is why it is relevant. It also enabled the European Union, the most important international organisation in Europe, to grow. Alss, European Bison is not an animal from prehistory as it is not extinct. Wee can agree in disagree that there was a sub-divvision of Europe suggested by the United nations but it isschallenged in Europe itself. I gave you resources to check it, if you don't trust me or you believe that you are right. --Rejedef (talk) 23:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Why shall we name countries instead of whole regions when writing about Europe

European Subdivision is a very vague topic: Eastern, Western, Central Europe change meanings quite relatively. This has to deal with many reasons. At the end these divisions are vague. Between the 1945-1990 it was relatively easy, still Turkey, Greece, Cyprus and Malta were confusing but we had Western and Eastern Europe for some time. Nowadays subdivisions very that much: http://en.wikipedia.org/Central_Europe (at least 5 similar definitions); http://en.wikipedia.org/Eastern_Europe (again, at least 5 different definitions) http://en.wikipedia.org/Western_Europe (at least 5 different definitions) http://en.wikipedia.org/Southern_Europe (at least 5 different definitions) http://en.wikipedia.org/Northern_Europe (at least 5 different definitions) http://en.wikipedia.org/Southeast_Europe (at least 2 definitions) As you see, all of them are context dependent. It doesn't help that there are also old subdivisions (which we tend to bring back to life as they reflect the continent's complexity more): http://fc00.deviantart.com/fs42/f/2009/122/f/7/Europe_Division_by_JJohnson1701.png; http://en.wikipedia.org/File:Central_Europe,_814.jpg; http://historyoftheancientworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/17th-century-map-of-Europe.jpg Although this model (http://commons.wikimedia.org/File:Grossgliederung_Europas-en.svg) is pursued much in media: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/1035212.stm (see Switzerland as a part of Central Europe and compare to other countries); http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2002/aug/26/naturaldisasters.climatechange; and European Institutions: http://www.ceinet.org/; http://en.wikipedia.org/Central_European_Initiative and Un institutions: http://www.grid.unep.ch/product/map/index.php Nowadays there are Unitarian tendencies in Europe: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0020-2754.2000.00409.x/abstract As a European I can tell you that geographical adjective has a derogatory meaning, like Eastern Europe, hence it tends to be not used, especially after the Fall of Communism in the continent. In addition to all that we have the Western Civilisation concept: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Clash_of_Civilizations_map.png As well as religions (yet influential to some extent): http://westciv2.umwblogs.org/files/2010/01/Europe_religion_map_en6-1024x833.png Now I hope you will not delete my revisions. I hope I explained well my position :) As you can see, the Fall of Communism brought not only new opportunities butt also re-discovery to Europeans after 45 years of separation. Of course I understand that outside Europe you use old sub-divisions, even these Cold war ones.

At glance: -there are no clearly defined regions in Europe: all of them may vary a lot; -naming a country helps to avoid misunderstandings and over-interpretation --Rejedef (talk) 23:24, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

If you are claiming that we can't use the phrase "Eastern Europe" in this article, I suspect that you might find that you could be subject to ArbCom restrictions which apply to contentious edits made in articles related to Eastern Europe. At the moment you have edited warred (3 reverts) and used this page as a SOAPBOX, citing blogs and news articles. You have mentioned a series of other wikipedia articles that apparently you do not like. You have not justified your edits using reliable sources, in this case books or academic articles. You have not responded to the requests of Chipmunkdavis and me. Please could you do so? This is a top level article which at the moment you are editing in a disruptive and contentious way. Mathsci (talk) 02:26, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

These are resources for which you asked.

Number 1. European Bison habitat: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-4642.2011.00849.x/full http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/2814/0/full http://www.iucnredlist.org/apps/redlist/details/2814/0/rangemap

Number 2. Europe new subdivision in use: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LHm1BSGiudAC&pg=PT127&dq=europe+regions+central+northern+europe&hl=en&ei=wgCwTtCtHsiA8wOq653FAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=europe%20regions%20central%20northern%20europe&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=o48LPwiQkzIC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=europe+regions&ots=xxgLcz2eEf&sig=zk-5IA-T7ivZVlKgqki53n8zyi4#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1Tk5O1G7tWcC&pg=PA1&dq=europe+regions+central+northern+europe&hl=en&ei=wgCwTtCtHsiA8wOq653FAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=europe%20regions%20central%20northern%20europe&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_BW0Ehau6oMC&pg=PA36&dq=europe+regions+central+northern+europe&hl=en&ei=wgCwTtCtHsiA8wOq653FAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=x4gbSgAACAAJ&dq=europe+regions+central+northern+europe&hl=en&ei=wgCwTtCtHsiA8wOq653FAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA http://www.springerlink.com/content/l722418262211497/ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2011.01730.x/full http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=6301140&jid=RIS&volumeId=20&issueId=01&aid=6301132 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0327.00018/abstract http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168192301002337

Please also see to have an insight into problems with defining regions itself by numberous scholars: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=uZBhwij5Y24C&printsec=frontcover&dq=defining+regions+europe&hl=en&ei=vQKwTqnVBYrh8AOcudiuAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0491.00200/abstract http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09595237400185111 http://publius.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/4/141.short http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y-1fwix23zMC&pg=PA5&dq=defining+regions+europe&hl=en&ei=vQKwTqnVBYrh8AOcudiuAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Central%20Europe&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rejedef (talk • contribs) 14:39, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Edits by Rejedef

I was quite happy with this edit by Rejedef (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) . Without any explanation, Rejedef very recently decided to revert his own edit. As I have written before, if Rejedef has decided that "Eastern Europe" or "Western Europe", etc, are not valid terms in sources, he will probably be topic-banned from a large range of articles on wikipedia under WP:AE. Mathsci (talk) 22:14, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

? I revised the article changing its vaguely defined terms which are used in a different way or omitted. Instead, I gave more specific information. I also quoted tens of resources: academic, political and medial. If you see any error in my edits, please change parts you do not like. Please, do not revert everything. Also, please prove why you think my edits are wrong. --Rejedef (talk) 02:41, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Proposing deletion of eastern, western, central,

1. They are obsolete: Western-Eastern divide goes back to the cold war which finished by 1993. Using them in modern Europe is confusing and even offensive in post-communist countries.

2. Their definitions are very vague and very highly depending on a source: CIA defines European Regions differently than UNESCO (just one continent), the World Bank (one continent+Central Asia), the UN or even the BBC. Not to mention the region of Central Europe defined by the Central European Initiative. (Drake, Miriam A. (2005) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, CRC Press)

3. Using names of countries rather than whole region will make the article better in terms of quality because.

4. Using western and eastern terms is neglecting the diversity of great individualism of European countries and their cultural differences putting them into one, rather confusing basket: the UK and Sweden are in Northern Europe but Sweden is an ethnically homogeneous country while the UK is a melting spot; Romania and Bulgaria are in south eastern Europe but Romania speaks a Romance language while Bulgaria speaks a Slavonic language. France and the Netherlands are in Western Europe but France speaks a Romance language and is a Catholic country while the Netherlands is a predominantly protestant and speaking a Germanic language. Latvia and Russia are considered to be eastern European but Latvia speaks a Baltic language and is protestant and Russia speaks many languages, mainly the Slavonic Russian and is Orthodox.

5. Using regional terms we also fall into confusion: without specifying a country we may think that it is really about one region. Usually it is one or two countries declining and others in the region begun increase their power as power in Europe was always very fluid.

6. In his book 'Europe, a Political Profile : An American Companion to European Politics'http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=V1uzkNq8xfIC&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=political+subdivision+europe&ots=_Lj0Nu59s6&sig=frYx0LKN03SVlm2SFByVmmFdv9E#v=onepage&q=central%20europe&f=false Hans Slomp — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rejedef (talk • contribs) 04:22, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Rejedef, your edits to this article now appear to have become non-neutral, unbalanced and essay-like, with POV-pushing from a very personal perspective. If you continue making edits of this kind, using this talk page as some kind of WP:FORUM or WP:SOAPBOX to veto the use of terms like Eastern Europe, a request for arbitration enforcement under WP:DIGWUREN will be made, which could restrict your editing on this article, related articles and their talk pages. Mathsci (talk) 07:05, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Recent additions

Two editors, Rejedef and Lguipontes, recently made changes which very much skewed the article. The extensive introduction of material on ethnic groups of Europe in one edit by Lguipontes seemed undue; extra material on Portuguese colonization could be added if properly sourced. The new section on human rights seemed quite unbalanced and appeared to be written from a Polish perspective. There is already an article Human rights in Europe, which is anodyne and neutral. If any material is warranted in this article on that topic, it would normally not be expected to diverge significantly from what can be found in the main article (although that article could not be used as a source). Cherrypicking sentences from sources to add WP:UNDUE content is not the way to write a wikipedia article. Personally I don't see the need for a section on human rights. Mathsci (talk) 06:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

1. ^ Madisson, Angus (2009). [http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_09-2008.xls Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2006 AD].

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