Category talk:Turkey

Regionalization
Historically, this country was listed in all three regions Europe, Asia, and Middle East. Perhaps it was included in Europe too because of its geographical extent, which includes some land in the continent of Asia and some in the continent of Europe, or perhaps all three regions were taking into account cultural/political ties. At any rate, in early 2010 brianmc removed it from Europe, then a few weeks later Rana added Europe back and removed Middle East. And that's how it's been ever since. Given that most Middle East countries are not considered to be part of the Asia news region, it would seem that if we added it to Middle East we probably ought to remove it from Asia (and Europe). I'm aware that our arrangement of region categories, though it mostly works, gets a big frayed at the edges. Keeping things as-is would be the simplest approach from a decision-making standpoint; if we really want to raise the question, we ought to take a look at how many articles in Category:Turkey are, and are not, in each of the three region categories involved. --Pi zero (talk) 07:36, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * If Rana and Brian McNeil did that (Rana, just might have a CoI [in enwp's terms]) without providing any reason, anyone can add or remove any category on their wish. Put this under scrutiny, and everything else, and get a decisive conclusion. Just ignoring things and carrying on seems to be a shitty procedure, and should be avoided. Also, regarding your summary about Asia's cat not being a continent, but a geographical area: stop making stuff up. Really. This is: "whole world means this when they say Asia, but enwn means that." How about I did that for some other word, say "terrorist"? "And who is we?" •–• 10:50, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Some miscellaneous points.
 * Regardless of what did or didn't happen in early 2010 &mdash;we could speculate on Rana's or brianmc's motives but we don't actually know, not even whether or not there was consultation elsewhere before or after the fact&mdash; there is good reason not to befuddle the infrastructure by shuffling regionalization of country categories without thinking things out carefully in 2018.
 * It sounds as if my edit summaries were not altogether successful in conveying their meaning. In distinguishing between continents and regions, I've been using the term "geographical" for continents, because I consider continent primarily a concept describing the land rather than describing political, social, or organizational (such as bureaucratic) partitioning of areas.  News regions are an organizational arrangement, rather than a geographical one.  Another word that was evidently considered early on as an alternative to "region" (besides "continent", which was not the formal choice although it was sometimes informally, and rather sloppily, used) was "bureau".
 * I've already remarked, if we want to properly plan out how to do things, we should start by researching how many articles in our archives combine Turkey which each of the region categories. (I vividly recall going laboriously through the equivalent exercise for Afghanistan, carefully weighing historical practices and options.)  Keeping in mind, of course, that just because an article belongs to both Turkey, and, let's say, Europe, that doesn't necessarily mean that article was treating Turkey as belonging to the European region, since the article might have also involved some country in the European region; the categorization of an article doesn't really indicate a stance on whether Turkey gets the Europe region unless the article involves Turkey but not any other country that would pull the article into Europe. There is always time to do things right; and meanwhile, stability is desirable. --Pi zero (talk) 14:06, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Turkey has a city which is in both the continents, and when the football team is under UEFA, that means the government had actively made that decision, and UEFA allowing it, that completes the story. It is also a candidate country from the EU, which is a trade region, but a trade region of Europe. I don't see what could disqualify Turkey from being listed in Europe too. And, well, who exactly on enwn is deciding which country goes where? There should be someone whom we can pin-point to, in a news org, right? •–• 14:36, 22 November 2018 (UTC)