Talk:Q49

• Northern America (Q2017699) = United States of America (Q30) + Canada (Q16) + Bermuda (Q23635) (or Bermuda (Q21790413)?) + Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Q34617) + Greenland (Q4148644) (or Greenland (Q223)?)
• Northern America and Mexico (Q19464773) = Northern America (Q2017699) + Mexico (Q96)
• North America (Q49) = Northern America and Mexico (Q19464773) + Central America (Q27611) + Caribbean (Q664609)

We can add here also a table of some figures and maps to better distinguish these items. --Infovarius (talk) 19:01, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

North America vs northern North America

A few days ago I split off northern North America from this, but User:B1mbo just merged them back. My problem with having them merged is that some of the languages' Wikipedia links go to pages about northern North America, so their infoboxes need different data about land area and population. Merging them also raises a question about what data to put here; like does Central America border North America, or is it part of North America? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 15:39, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

• Seeing no comments after a month, I'm undoing this. --Arctic.gnome (talk) 15:30, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
• See also Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2015/06#North_America.

• • Given the archived discussion, I undid another merge. I'm not sure if the label of Q19464773 is ideal, but if I had a better solution, I'd change it. --- Jura 13:34, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Description: "northwest quadrant" vs. "northern (and western) hemisphere(s)" vs. "one of Earth's seven continents"

The description of North America being located on the planet's "northwest quadrant" relies on far too many arbitrary definitions for my liking. The division of the globe into Western and Eastern Hemispheres along the 0° and 180° lines of longitude is particularly problematic, as there is absolutely nothing save historical convention to imbue them with any significance whatsoever compared with every other line of longitude. On that basis alone I believe striking any mention of longitudinal positioning (in this case, west or western) is warranted here. The other issue confronting having west or western describing North America would be the Aleutian island chain off the coast of Alaska, part of which lies west of 180° longitude (necessitating those ridiculous squiggles in the International Date Line).

As for describing it as being located on Earth's Northern hemisphere I would personally also strike that means of description, but I concede that here the argument for inclusion also has several notably valid points. The name of the continent itself includes the word North, obviously, and to the best of my knowledge the acceptance that North refers to the uppermost portion of a map that depicts the equator (or a vector towards that portion) is essentially universal. The equator being unique as the longest line of latitude which can be drawn around the globe makes me much more comfortable with using it as a means of identifying relative locations than any of the identical lines of longitude. However this assumes one's interests are primarily geographic or cartographic, ignoring the geologic ones that would include how the Earth's magnetic field is produced and which have determined that at several periods in the past the magnetic poles were oriented in the reverse of their current positions and that North America was, in fact, located closest to Earth's southern Magnetic Pole and is likely to be so again in the future. I realize that argument might strike some as pedantic, but as reference data's usefulness is a function of its accuracy and unambiguity, I think it should be considered as seriously as any other.

My preference would be to change the description for this entry to read "one of Earth's seven major continental landmasses" or words to that effect. Failing to achieve consensus on that, I believe it should be changed to "a continent on Earth's northern hemisphere" or, likewise, words to that effect. I will allow some time to pass from the addition of this section to the talk page before making such an edit as I just described. 🐈⚞ℛogueScholar⚟^{🗨₨UserTalk} 23:45, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Merges and moves

@Vargenau: I undid some of your moves as these pages are explicitely exclude Central America and Caribbean (which are included in Q49, see some help above). I am not sure about n:en:Category:North America and n:nl:Categorie:Noord-Amerika. May be all other sitelinks here should be inspected too. --Infovarius (talk) 19:01, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

No issue, do as you think is better. Vargenau (talk) 08:15, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Continent or subcontinent

This concept should be defined as a subcontinent in all languages according to https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q828 - Americas and at the same level as https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q18 - South America Angoca (talk) 01:37, 24 March 2024 (UTC)