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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Asia article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

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The population density for Russia is incorrect. It should be 8.3 given the numbers included in the table. This would also bring it into agreement with the global geography entry which lists a population density for Russia of 8.3. I haven't had a chance to check the other numbers, someone probably ought to.

I think it is time to remove Georgia (country) from this honorable list of Asian countries as majority of its population does not consider itself Asian and the International Community recognizes it as European.^[1]

On the basis of the article Europe, I am surprised to see the removal of both the clickable map and the table of countries. These are very informative and I think there is a strong case for having them both in Asia and Geography of Asia, in this article perhaps not quite as they were displayed. The clickable map appears early on in Europe, where definitions and boundaries are discussed. So I would encourage the return of the table and the clickable map. I also would expect longer (summary) sections on both the geography and history of Asia, but that is another topic. Mathsci (talk) 16:03, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I was beginning to think these articles are totally dead in the water. I read your other comments about transcontinental and I pretty much agree with those. What transcontinental? Nobody much uses that concept.

Now, I continue to disagree with you about the table and the three maps. This is a large chunk of material; moreover, it is intended to be duplicated. I couldn't really accept it as it was. First, it was unfinished, with a lot of the formatting in but commented out because the editors could not get it working. In fact the template section (where the map is) drew an official tag of disapproval. The clickable map was unreadable and incorrectly formatted. I spent some time straightening that out. My only point here is that we really have to use the ones I got in Geography of Asia to fulfill the original intent and correct all the errors, many of which you yourself had pointed out. So, we don't want to use it the way it was before I started work on it. To modify that into something else by additional work, that is a different issue. If you have a different goal there perhaps you should consider a section in Asia based on it and done by you. In that way there would be no copy.

To copy what I will have (I'm not done), gee, I don't know. It is an awful big chunk of text. I thought the idea was to have different articles on different subjects. Right now the structure is so parallel that you could easily merge the two. In fact I was wondering why the geography was broken out into another article. Does anyone want to propose a merger? The problem I have with a merger is size - if we start expanding the sections you propose (as will probably happen) Asia will get get to be over 100 Kb, which I consider the absolute limit and only for gigantic topics. They usually put a tag on those suggesting they be broken up. I'm surprised at your surprise. Big articles almost always get broken up by offloading topics onto other articles. I suspect we got long way to go just to mention the topics covered by other encyclopedias. Now you want to put duplicated sections into a set of articles. I think a referece to another article is fine.

You might argue that the section in question should be in Asia not Geography of Asia. I considered that, but it is geography, you know. It would lengthen Asia by a lot, taking away space for other topics. The Asia article already has multiple offloads, so links to major material are not new there.

I can define a couple of questions out of this.

1. Should such a large chunk of text be simply be cut and pasted?
2. If not, which article should host it?

If we are speaking of modifying the old section into yet another section, I defer on that one. It could go in another direction, I do not deny. I however am not going to do it.

The forum is open. Please discuss and vote.

• Leave it the way it now is, with the section in Geography of Asia and a link to it in Asia.Dave (talk) 19:47, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Restore at least the table (per Europe, Africa and South America). The new geography section is embarassingly short. Again, on the basis of the other continents, I would expect a short summary of one or more paragraphs that is more informative than what is there at the moment. Mathsci (talk) 01:17, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Why don't we do something different there per the discussion above? You seemed to like a sortable table. We could take out the sections of the table I moved to geography, take out the date column, put a note in that the figures come from sources given in geography of asia, and make the table sortable. That way it will sort by area or population or alphabetically by country and yet offer something different from the one in geography.Dave (talk) 11:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Some definitions exclude Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia while only considering the Far East, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent to compose Asia,[11][12] especially in the United States after World War II.[13]"

This isn't true. One of these references is pay-per-view offered by the publisher so we can forget it. A second is not offering any preview but from what I can see they are only talking about western Asia. The one ref I can see is misinterpreted by the editor. There are a thousand agencies out there (large number) that deal with some locations in Asia. When they say Asia, they mean only that part where the jurisdiction of their agency extends. They do not mean that Asia is to be redefined to mean only their small chunk of it. I repeat, this is NOT a geographical redefinition but only a selection of some part in which the agency is involved. So, we can't present that as a serious definition of Asia; it is only a figure of speech. A bank that has an office only in Hong Kong might refer to its Asia office as Asia but that is not a geographical redefinition of Asia. Now the US reference cannot possibly mean that people in the US do not recognize the Middle East as Asian, which is what our statement asserts. I've never seen or heard of that in my entire life. The source appears to mean that Asians in the US only come from certain areas. None of this is developed in the article. We aren't interested here in the ethnic content of immigrants to the US from Asia or how they may be viewed. This is a geographical definition of Asia. So I'm going to shorten this to say what the one source I can see and don't have to pay for means, that agencies each have a functional definition of Asia that fits their activities. If you think that is wrong, may we have some development and some quotes on your apparent interpretation, that individual organizations redefine the general geographical definition of Asia?Dave (talk) 19:00, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, payperview sources are perfectly fine. One must WP:AGF that whoever provided the information is faithfully sourcing it unless conflicting information comes up. In this case however, it seems that the sentence is trying to say that in common usage asian referred to those from east asia or south asia, so doesn't constitute a definition for the area. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 19:56, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I do not think pay-per-view is fine. This is supposed to be a non-commercial encyclopedia. That means we do not buy and sell here. Pay-per-view is clearly selling, just as in Amazon and all the rest. The article can be referenced without selling it. That would have been fine. But, as you point out, the context was inappropriate anyway. If it had been appropriate I would have cited it without the link to pay-per-view. Pay-per-view is clearly sales on WP,especially given a choice of citations. We do not sell on WP, although in fact much sales gets done inadvertently. The public can easily find the pay sites with an Internet search. It is WP policy not to advertise openly for any sales agent. WP does not yet do commercials overtly. That is not to say it is not inadvertently commercial or editors do not make blatent use of the loopholes.Dave (talk) 16:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's just a reference. References don't even have to be online. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 00:53, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Right, right. Most references are not online. The reference has to be appropriate to the topic referenced and has to be encyclopedic in quality. Of course WP advertises itself and collects donation money under the banner of being non-commercial. The battle therefore goes forward over what is commercialism and what not. Of course WP "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" might as well have put a big target on its forehead with a sign that says "shoot me with commercials." No one likes hard sales material, which is what we would get by the ton if the rule were not there. Free publicity! Will wonders never cease? Why, you could sell or plug anything on here. Unless we make a move to stop them that is exactly what they will do. People have to decide what they want. No one likes TV commercials. But, some people have to have commercials. The cat feels sorry for the poor mouse he is at this very moment forced to swallow. There goes the tail. Naturally the line is sometimes hard to draw. Now, if a company puts up a sign, "pay per view", tells you the price, advertises the product, and lets you buy it online, that is commercialism. I can't see there is any other way to see it. What kind of WP do YOU want? I used to put up the Amazon site when I first started. Those were all taken off. The site I removed is not one whit different from that; in fact, Amazon, like Google, now lets you preview some books and Google sites are frequent, and Google sells books. I don't use them but others do. I would say, if you really want a non-commercial WP you are going to have to fight for it along with the rest of us, as the commercialists are editors also and they gang up on anti-commercialists to get their product sold. Is that YOU? If not, fight, don't argue with me!Dave (talk) 03:55, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"However, this etymology is considered doubtful, because it does not explain how the term "Asia" first came to be associated with Anatolia, which is west of the Semitic-speaking areas, unless they refer to the viewpoint of a Phoenician sailor sailing through the straits between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea."

You mean, you consider it doubtful? You're neglecting the Assyrian merchants and trading communities in Anatolia, which might even have preceded the Hittites. For that matter none of the explanations explain how Asia got to be associated with all Anatolia. There are just various theories needing further substantiation. I don't see any reason to select the Assyrian theory as less credible. Your theory, which is that Phoenician sailors used the term, is even worse. Phoenicians spoke Phoenician, not Assyrian.Dave (talk) 02:17, 30 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Ancient and medieval European maps depict the Asian continent as a "huge amorphous blob" extending eastward.^[1] It was presumed in antiquity to end with India—the Greek king Alexander the Great believing he would reach the "end of the world" upon his arrival in the East.^[1]"

The blob probably comes from modern representations of the earliest geographers, who put areas on their modern maps to represent statements such as "the east beyond there is unknown", or the north, or whatever. The geographers of the Roman Empire did not use blobs, they used coordinates, which were very much a matter of competitive zeal. Each one was trying to scoop his predecessors. Strabo, Ptolemy (centuries after Alexander), they had much information about Asia east of India, or shall we say the East Indies, going all the way to the Pacific. I used to read the generalizations myself concerning how the Romans and Chinese were ignorant of each other. The only ignoramuses were the authors of such statements. I first started learning anything different looking at Ptolemy. Much to my surprise there were nations Ptolemy should not have known a thing about. The geographers certainly knew of Ceylon, China, Japan and the East Indies. Their coordinates only roughly resembled the way it is, but then they had a similar distorted view of North Europe and Africa below the north. The map-makers, expeditioners, caravaneers and merchants by land or sea certainly knew of the East Indies. How much the ordinary citizens of Rome knew is a good question, but then they did not visit libraries or make maps. The ordinary people were not literate. I suppose they taught themselves to read signs and decrees or just left it up to someone who could read. I think we vastly overwork Reid here.Dave (talk) 10:52, 30 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was watching an old episode of What's My Line with Miyoshi Umeki ([24]), who was born in Japan. One of the questions by Miss Francis at 3:40 is "Where you born on the Asianic Continent?" to which Miyoshi's answer is no. I guess its possible that she didn't understand the question but the host of the show would have corrected such an obvious mistake if Asianic would include Japan. I'm finding very little reference to the word "Asianic" online and am just wondering what it really means. Is it just the adjective form of Asia or does it have more meaning than that? After reading the article about continents I guess I can see how it wouldn't include Japan, but I feel that if you asked most people now if Japan is on the Asianic continent, they would say yes. -- Suso (talk) 17:04, 2 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure the word used wasn't Asiatic instead or Asianic? Now we normally say Asian instead of Asiatic. By saying "Asiatic Continent", I take it they're excluding islands. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 15:45, 4 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

At no point of time in human history was China ever the wealthiest civilization. I think the sentence should be changed from "China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history, until the British Empire (excluding India) overtook it in the mid 19th century." to "India was the most largest economy on earth for much of recorded history, until it was annexed by the British Empire in the 18th century". Economic historian, Angus Maddison proves empirically in his book, "The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective", that India was the largest economy from the 1st through to the 18th century and throughout most of recorded history. There is absolutely no proof to suggest that China was the largest economy (or even one of the largest economies) in the world. India's wealth finds mention in ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian and Chinese literature. However there is no mention of China's wealth in any of the ancient texts, including China's! Please change this sentence. It brings down the credibility of Wikipedia. Thanks.

Jackiepurr (talk) 06:56, 5 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"However there is no mention of China's wealth in any of the ancient texts, including China's!" Really? You know this how, exactly? You read all of the ancient texts, including China's? Rikyu (talk) 02:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I absolutely agree with the fact that India was the richest country in much of the recorded history however it is wrong to say "no mention of China's wealth in any of the ancient texts". It is fact that China's economy was 2nd or 3rd largest but no way it was 'World largest'!! MrAryadeva (talk) 11:19, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://conference.asria.org/2011/images/ASrIA_Impax_Report_web.pdf. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 13:03, 11 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This encyclopedia entry is pretty dumb and ill informed about a very basic well documented topic. Although Wikipedia is useful sometimes, I'm starting to believe that the mentality or agenda for some of those who run it is one of true or purposeful ignorance.

It is very clear cut that the term "Asia" is the latinized translation of the Greek reference to Micro-asia, the smaller land mass that begins the entire continent of Asia as a whole continent when coming from the Aegean. This article even makes reference to this (three continent model)! Why are there so many contradictions on the entire Wikipedia website? (and on different versions[languages])

There is no uncertainty about the history, it is documented throughout almost every war or conquest that has occurred through recorded history. The fundamental information is just ignored or disregarded.

When ships whether Greek, Persian, Roman, Phoenician, etc. set sail, they were either navigated from or to the plotted path south of the Aegean toward land/port.

The etymology comes from a Greek word origin which is then flipped around when translated into to Latin. I would assume any linguist of moderate training would know this.

All the detractors of Hellenic civilization need to give up maligning what is already established historical fact. There will never be alternate explanations to replace written human history, disproving the impact of the legacy of Western Civilization as it has developed to date.

History cannot be revised and replaced with fantasy and those attempt to promote rhetoric and politics while rewriting the past will lose and look foolish in the eyes of anyone that is educated.

Asia, it's just obvious, it is on all the maps after all.

I just wanted read about some further details on the subject of Asia. I just get frustrated when I see this kind of stupid bias.