Which countries should be added to the database ?

Phaseolus · Post by **Phaseolus** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 9:45 pm

Please note that Montenegro is written Crno Gora in their national language...
I am fully in agreement with this perspective... But maybe for the new entered bills. Indeed, when registered, the name of the Country was FYR (Former Yugoslavian Republic)...

Gauss · Post by **Gauss** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:48 pm

If we continue with the policy about UN membership etc. then we'll have a few more weeks for such changes. After all, why should we be faster than diplomats?

alex77r · Post by **alex77r** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:30 pm

No flag for Marshall Islands

Gauss · Post by **Gauss** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 3:33 pm

Yes, the flag is there, but misnamed (http://www.eurobilltracker.eu/img/flags ... slands.gif). The flag of Cote d'Ivoire may suffer from a similar problem.

avij · Post by **avij** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 4:14 pm

Those flags should be ok now.

Fons · Post by **Fons** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 11:22 pm

Philippines is Filipijnen in Dutch, and not Filippijnen...

Gauss · Post by **Gauss** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 11:32 pm

You should probably contact a translator for Dutch about such matters; they are listed in the Credits section. It was recently pointed out that two FAQ texts aren't translated yet into Dutch at all.

Licht & Feuer · Post by **Licht & Feuer** » Tue Jun 13, 2006 5:43 pm

Here is the flag for Montenegro:

It's hard to make the eagle not look like a dot in this format so I've enlarged it a little bit

PS:

German Wikipedia wrote:Montenegro is considered as center of the international cigarette smuggling. Italy and Germany runs determinations against the prime minister Đukanović because of cigarette smuggling. The opposition sees therein also a reason for Ðukanovićs independence campaign: As a head of the government of a sovereign state he would be protected against prosecution.

eddydevries · Post by **eddydevries** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 7:47 pm

alex77r wrote:No flag for Marshall Islands

I missed the flag of Greenland.

The Euro-countries as "smiley", the other countries as images in http://www.eurobilltracker.eu/img/flags. Only Greenland I haven't found here. Although it belongs to Denmark it is rather independent. For example Greenland is no member of the EU, while Denmark is.

I have made the Greenland-flag (.gif, ca. 1kB), but I don't know how this can be uploaded to http://www.eurobilltracker.com so this can be used by anyone. Gor the time being I have uploaded it to imageshack.us but they changed the name from Greenland.gif to greenland8kf.gif. It would be much easier if it would be on http://www.eurobilltracker.eu/img/flags like the other flags.

Can you tell me how to upload this flag? Or should I sent this to someone, who can put it on the site?

Gauss · Post by **Gauss** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 3:37 pm

eddydevries wrote:I missed the flag of Greenland.

Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat, Grønland) is a self-governed territory within the Kongeriget Danmark (Kingdom of Denmark). The website of the Greenland Home Rule, the government of Greenland, links to a factsheet (hosted on the website of the royal danish ministry for foreign affairs), which specifies: "Government type: Home rule in national union with Denmark".

eddydevries wrote:Although it belongs to Denmark it is rather independent. For example Greenland is no member of the EU, while Denmark is.

That is true, but ultimately not relevant.

As described above, the criterion for a country to be in the list on EBT will usually be UN membership.
There are many regions in this world with various forms of autonomy, semi- or factual independance - Greenland being one of them -, and some of those been discussed earlier in this thread. In some cases (such as, for example, Greenland and the Netherlands Antilles), autonomous regions commonly use a flag different from the corresponding UN member (Denmark, Netherlands, respectively). This means that entries from there will appear with a somewhat incorrect flag. That's unfortunate but we can't do anything about it. The alternative is to abolish the flags altogether, and I'm sure nobody seriously wants that. No system is absolutely perfect. Sorry.

Jaja · Post by **Jaja** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 5:46 pm

I don't understand... why do we have to be so strict in everything?? It's not about life and death, UN-membership etc blah, why can't we do things the way normal people would

klapotec · Post by **klapotec** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 6:05 pm

Jaja wrote:I don't understand... why do we have to be so strict in everything?? It's not about life and death, UN-membership etc blah, why can't we do things the way normal people would

Because there has to be some criteria. If we're not strict, we can also admit the flag of Åland, because it's relatively independent of Finland, and the Faroe Islands, and shouldn't we also consider Nunavut, etc. etc. It would never end.

alex77r · Post by **alex77r** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 9:35 pm

Jaja wrote:I don't understand... why do we have to be so strict in everything?? It's not about life and death, UN-membership etc blah, why can't we do things the way normal people would

'Cause a country is a country and if I want to have my own, I can make one...and choose a nice name, then create a flag for EBT...etc.

Moreover, not everyone agree to recognize some country, for example Kosovo, Tibet...

So I think that it is a good idea to use the UN' list

eddydevries · Post by **eddydevries** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 10:02 pm

alex77r wrote:
Jaja wrote:I don't understand... why do we have to be so strict in everything?? It's not about life and death, UN-membership etc blah, why can't we do things the way normal people would
'Cause a country is a country and if I want to have my own, I can make one...and choose a nice name, then create a flag for EBT...etc.

Moreover, not everyone agree to recognize some country, for example Kosovo, Tibet...

So I think that it is a good idea to use the UN' list

I agree on this rule. It is always better to be clear than to leave the rules vague.

To enter notes I always use the official countries (although in my case these are only Belgium and the Netherlands) but on the topic of "How many countries have you visited? (Ranking)" I have added Greenland to my list. I wanted to add it's flag (that was the reason to ask for the flag to be added to http://www.eurobilltracker.eu/img/flags) but now I use the flag I have uploaded to imageshack.us.

Gauss · Post by **Gauss** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 8:30 pm

klapotec wrote:
Jaja wrote:I don't understand... why do we have to be so strict in everything?? It's not about life and death, UN-membership etc blah, why can't we do things the way normal people would
Because there has to be some criteria. If we're not strict, we can also admit the flag of Åland, because it's relatively independent of Finland, and the Faroe Islands, and shouldn't we also consider Nunavut, etc. etc. It would never end.

Well, at least I get usually criticised for being too lenient ... and I admit I've lobbied for the final adoption of the policy "UN members" which earlier evolved only gradually. Reasons:

1) As klapotec points out very correctly, there has to be some criterion, and this criterion must be objective in nature. The question "Which territorial entities are accepted as countries?" tends to be political and highly emotional, and we've had numerous hints in the four years of EBT about possible tensions.
In addition to that, the word "country" / "nation" has various translations in different languages which sometimes bear different connotations so that the definition which entries will be on the list must be universal and language-independent. If you don't believe me I'll put you in contact with a Scottish acquaintance of mine who will be happy to discuss with you the question "Is Scotland a country?"

2) Certainly the list of UN member states is not the only possible reference list. The following three have been suggested over the time:
(a) The countries where the Euro is official (or unofficial, but predominantly used) currency.
(b) Wikipedia's List of countries.
(c) ISO 3166.

3) The idea (a) was the original policy. The whole system was designed under the assumption that the list would never be much longer than, say, 20-25 items. Any additional item made it more difficult to find the right country in the list until the list was re-arranged to list the Eurozone countries first (June 2005). Still, the administrative complexity increased, for example because the coordinate system is still hierarchically organised by country so that it's necessary to look regularly at n separate lists (where n is the number of admissible countries). This is likely to change soon, but still an issue.
The policy (a) was silently relaxed already during the first year (and effectively abolished later). Observe that EBT is the only major tracking site that invites entries from all over the world. Where's George (USA), Where's Willy (Canada), Canadian Money Tracker, DoshTracker (UK), Money Tracker (Australia) are essentially limited to their respective country.

4) As for (b), in short: Wikipedia exemplifies how we don't want to handle such sensitive issues. Their list is now mostly undisputed within their community but it was a painful process, and the looong discussion page shows only the outer surface of it. EBT is a hobby about banknotes and not a discussion forum on political-philosophical-national conflicts. See also above under 1) why we need an objective criterion.
The problem with the Wikipedia list is its potential volatility. Besides, it is not really practical. It lists 243 "entities considered to be countries", subdivided into 202 "souvereign states", 36 "inhabited dependent territories" and 5 "areas of special sovereignty" (and each of these sections is further subdivided into up to three further levels); the list is accompanied by 39 footnotes and an annex which outlines 21 further classes of entities which are expressly not considered "countries". I guess these figures are subject to change regularly.

5) ISO 3361 is more stable. It lists currently 240 countries, and the decision between this one and the list of UN members was ultimately arbitrary.
The preference was given to the shortest list which still represents in best approximation all land area where Euronotes could reasonably be obtained. This led to the (slightly amended) list of UN member states. An additional nice aspect of the UN list is that we as Europeans show some support for international/supranational organisations, in line with the European Union. Without the EU we wouldn't be here, and the UN has been formed originally in a similar spirit.

Need I say more?