Template talk:Territories of the British Empire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] (Difficult to read)

This template is pretty much impossible to read. Could it be replaced with a graphic or something? Eleland 15:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Have imported format tried in {{Portuguese overseas empire}}. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 16:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links in template

I changed the link from "Commonwealth of Nations" to "Commonwealth Realms" because the latter is more precise. That is, if the second link is "Commonwealth of Nations", then "British overseas territories" is redundant, as the Overseas Territories are also members of the Commonwealth, albeit with a different status to the realms. "British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations" would also be accurate and would not involve an overlap, as the latter is the historical successor of the former. Grant | Talk 06:21, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

How is the latter more precise? If anything it is too precise in that it excludes members of the Commonwealth, which are not Realms. What's the point of having the flag of the Commonwealth and having links to territories that are still in the Commonwealth if the title only reflects the Realms? Also having only the Realms in the title also misses the important point that the Commonwealth of Nations (and not just the Commonwealth Realms) is the historical successor to the British Empire. The term Commonwealth of Nations is not redundant because of the term "British overseas territories". If the term "British overseas territories" is redundant then it is mainly because of the term "British empire" not "Commonwealth of Nations". Anyway, why the fuss over the title? It was fine before, so if it isn't broken why fix it? The title is only reflecting the gradual change from the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and the remnant British overseas territories (which are remnants of the Empire) as seen from the perspective of the UK (and to a lesser extent the world). The template makes no attempt to show Australia's or New Zealand's overseas territories although they are just as much a legacy of the British empire as the current overseas territories. Nobody today uses the term British empire to refer to the overseas territories, but likewise neither does anyone use the term Commonwealth of Nations to refer to these same territories. The template would be better served by coming up with a way to show not just the Commonwealth Realms but other Commonwealth countries (for example underlining...hmmm...I think, I'll do just that). Look on the British and Commonwealth citizenship template. It uses the term British and Commonwealth to refer to the fact that before the Commonwealth all the laws concerning citizenship were just British, but it doesn't attempt to discriminate only in favour of the Realms.72.27.77.144 20:11, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Formatting

Recently David Kernow attempted an overhaul of the format. The categories and other languages sections did need an overhaul and perhaps a better format can be found for the template as a whole. However the format David used....(see below)...

Font legend
Current territory  ·  Former territory  ·  Former territory now a Commonwealth Realm · now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations

.....while simple and easy to use it doesn't adequately distinguish the categories. It uses capital letters to show both current territories and Commonwealth Realms (which indirectly implies that the Commonwealth realms are also current territories, cf. with older format (to which I reverted excepting for the categories and other languages):

Current territory  ·  Former territory  ·  Former territory now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations  ·  Former territory now a Commonwealth Realm

This format shows that there are:

• "Current territories" and...
• "Former territories", with the former territories being further categorized/formatted into:
  • "Commonwealth members", which are then further subdivided/categorized into:
    • "Commonwealth members that are Commonwealth Realms"

with each format being distinct for a country's specific status and there being no re-use of any one format except insofar as all current Commonwealth members are also former territories and all Commonwealth Realms are also Commonwealth members and former territories (and thus their formats must necessarily branch from each other in that order).72.27.85.108 18:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

• Per the edit summary I've just left, I've substituted a leading asterisk in place of underlining former territories now Commonwealth Realms, as the underlining seemed to draw undue attention. Using the asterisk to identify Realms rather than Commonwealth of Nations members seemed to make more sense given your analysis above. Thanks for spotting the original ambiguity!  David Kernow (talk) 02:46, 4 March 2007 (UTC)