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I created this page yesterday using material from Countries of the world. There are a number of minor typos to correct in the links. However, whenever I have tried to edit the page today, the source code that shows up in the editor is full of all sorts of garbage that wasn't there yesterday -- strings of single quotes, nowiki tags, exposed table row specs, and so on. This has happened both at home and at the library, using a total of three different computers, my satellite connection and two different in-town wireless connections. If I were to open this page for editing right now, then save the page without making any changes, it would look very different and very messed up. I'm guessing that this may be a temporary problem with the Wikia server; whatever it is, I hope it clears up soon so I can go in there, spiff it up and add more material. I'd be interested to know if anyone else is having this problem. The weird thing is, it didn't happen with the Europe page; I was able to edit that easily. --KathleenSeidel 19:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Adding separate entries for territories[]

I think it would be useful to create individual entries for inhabited territories and dependencies that are geographically distant from the countries with which they are associated. Most of these are islands in the South Pacific and the Caribbean. Additions to the Oceania page would include:

Lord knows the inhabitants of these islands have historically sustained serious casualties from imported diseases -- or, on the other hand, few at all if border restrictions were put in place, as occurred in American Samoa in 1918.

--KathleenSeidel 19:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. And/but it could be better to give them their own pages first. Perfect precedent is the separate page for Hawaii (Hawai`i). Won't change the Countries page (unless there are links to create) but separate listings here would be fine once you have a "/info" subpage to template and have sorted the equivalent of "countrydata/flag" templates. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 23:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Individual pages[]

Copy Afghanistan; modify two words; copy the result[]

Copy from its edit box (click here), of course. Then click on any red country link that represents a country in the south-west of this continent and paste your copy into the page, then change the continent name in the second line and the second category. Copy the result and (after saving the page you are on) use that copy for the rest of the continent.

Each country may need some modification to the first part of the second line. You may want an atlas handy so as to give readers a useful indication of where the country is.

On pre-existing country pages, merge any existing material into the new structure; delete none of what you pasted in, except that any country description may replace the standard short version that you pasted in. Check existing links; I found one that was faulty because a closing parenthesis got included in it.

The link under "Authorities" points you to the yet-to-be-created "/info" subpage and will be miraculously replaced (visually) with the subpage contents (used as a template) when there are some.

Copy Kathleen's links into subpages[]

Then, or in batches later, do to Countries of the world or the continent list (whichever has the later version if they differ) what I did to the New Zealand row in Oceania and the countries page: copy the block of links into the country subpage.

The stuff at the top of New Zealand/info is a non-urgent extra, which does not show in any transclusion of the links list onto another page. There should be no "newline"/"carriage return" between it and the first link. For convenience of finding, here's a copy of it:

<noinclude>(''Note that this page is used as a template on other pages.)
[[Category:authorities]][[Category:{{BASEPAGENAME}}|Info]]</noinclude>

After any country has its subpage containing the latest version, any changes should be made only to that subpage, not to the cells on the continent or countries pages. If changes are needed, those multi-country version cells must be replaced, as described below.

Replace original links lists with template calls that transclude each country subpage[]

Much easier than it may sound! Each of the "Column 3" cells in the multi-country versions can then be replaced, at leisure (or as soon as amendments are made), with :

{{:/info}}

plus the country name dragged across or down (or copied exactly from the country page if different) to sit between the colon and the slash. That too will display the links from the subpage.

I'm sorry I didn't think of this before Kathleen created the continent pages.

Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

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