Category talk:Netherlands

Former Netherlands Antilles situation

I have been changing around the former Netherlands Antilles graticules.

Since 2010 the situation is as follows: Sint Maarten, Curaçao and Aruba (12,-70 and 12,-69) are independent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Saba, St. Eustatius and Bonaire (which is in the Curaçao graticule) have become 'special municipalities' within The Netherlands (The European country which is itself part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands).

Now, there are two subcategories to this category, Netherlands Antilles and Aruba (probably caused by the fact that Aruba has been an independent country within the Kingdom for longer than the others). If we were to keep this type of categorization, we either would have to make a category for Sint Maarten, one for Curaçao (both containing one page) and one for Aruba (containing two pages), and perhaps make a category for the special municipalities, or leave them within the main Netherlands category; or we would have to make a single category for the Former Netherlands Antilles and put all of these islands in that category.

Both solutions have problems, and none of these graticules are active, so for now I decided to tag both subcategories for deletion and add these six graticules to the general Netherlands category. If you disagree, please let me know, but feel free to change it to something better. --CO2 13:41, 9 March 2012 (EST)

There might be some merit in calling them the "Former Netherlands Antilles" (unless it's somehow politically offensive) just for the geographic colocation. After all, I assume Ste. Martin (the other half of Sint Maarten) has been included in the group all along, and it's in France. I'm reminded of after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when we had the Former Soviet Union. -Robyn 14:13, 9 March 2012 (EST)