Wikipedia:Requests for comment/History and geography

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Talk:Macedonia (ancient kingdom)

Does the sentence “Most ancient Greek geographers didn't include the core of Macedonia in Hellas in the strict sense.” supported by the sources ^[1]^[2] , comply with WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV, and WP:DUE? Please address any policy you consider unmet.SuriMuri (talk) 10:37, 3 October 2026 (UTC)

Talk:Portuguese Empire

The maximum extent of the Portuguese Empire is always reverted by a specific user, but it should be based on , reliable published sources, which can vary in their estimates.

Taagepera gives5.5 million km² as the Empire's maximum extent.

However, there are other published sources, giving substantially larger figures:

Bouda Etemad, Possessing the World: Taking the Measurements of Colonisation from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (Berghahn Books, 2007), gives Portugal an area of 8.5 million km² in 1760. Etemad's work is specifically concerned with quantitatively comparing colonial areas.
Walter Scheidel's chapter "The Scale of Empire" in The Oxford World History of Empire states that its modern colonial-empire figures incorporate corrections drawn from Etemad (2007).
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Strategic Vision (2012), gives the Portuguese Empire an area of 10.4 million km² in 1815, although the relevance and weight of this source under WP has previously been disputed.
Specialist histories of Portuguese America also describe a territorial extent substantially beyond coastal Brazil, including Roderick J. Barman, A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Leslie Bethell, Mark Harris and others. These sources do not necessarily use the same definition of "effective control" and should not be synthesised by editors into a new numerical figure.
A more recent work by Rein Taagepera and Miroslav Nemčok (2024) again gives 5.5 million km², but marks the early Portuguese Empire estimate as uncertain and explains that it counts only areas judged to be under effective control.

The question should not be which editors personally believe is the historically "correct" figure, but how Wikipedia should represent the disagreement between reliable sources and differing scopes, under WP:NPOV, WP:DUE, WP:RS, and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS.

I propose including the different reliable sources.

. ~2026-51340-84 (talk) 16:24, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Talk:Mahatma Gandhi

Should the Legacy and artistic depictions section include the proposed one-sentence summary below of international protests against Gandhi statues, with detailed coverage remaining in the standalone controversies article? Akyeame.kwame (talk) 05:18, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

Talk:First Fitna

I suggest that this sentence is added to the end of the very first paragraph: "The followers of Uthman were victorious and proceeded to establish the Umayyad Caliphate in 661."

The current version of the first paragraph does not say which side won. That would be good information to include there.

Do people support this? Sobelone96 (talk) 16:53, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Talk:De Beers

Should the word “manipulate” be replaced when describing the advertising campaigns of De Beers? Relisted 23:49, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Talk:October 7 attacks

Should the first sentence mention and link to the Blockade of the Gaza Strip? (Noting per Lf8u2 that it currently does as of 12 September with the single word 'blockade' linking to Blockade of the Gaza Strip and that this RfC is not about any addition to the first sentence.)إيان (talk) 07:19, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Talk:Superpower

Should we include a particular index measuring national power in the article?

The index in question is the DiME (Diplomacy, Military, Economy) Index proposed by Moyer, Pardee Institute, the University of Denver.

20:29, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

↑ Engels, Johannes (2010). A companion to ancient Macedonia. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-405-17936-2. But it appears that most ancient Greek geographers did not include the core territories of the kingdom of Macedonia in their descriptions of Greece. They usually drew the borderline of Hellas in the strict sense from the Ambracian Gulf to Mount Olympus and the Thessalian Tempe Valley.
↑ Stoppie, Karen (2003). Constructions of Greek Past: Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity to the Present. BRILL. p. 51. ISBN 978-90-04-49546-3. Phileas, a geographer who lived in the sixth-fifth century BC, identifies the northern frontier of Hellas with the Peneius, a river that springs from the Pindus Mountains and flows south from Olympus through the Tempe valley, and with the Homolium, one of the mountains south of the Tempe valley. Since Olympus formed the most southern part of Macedonia, the Macedonians did not inhabit Hellas, which can only be explained by the fact that they were not considered Hellenes:... Herodotus, too, situates Macedonia outside Hellas since he calls the valley of the Peneius Hellas' northern entrance way:....

[1] Engels, Johannes (2010). A companion to ancient Macedonia. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 88. ISBN 978-1-405-17936-2. But it appears that most ancient Greek geographers did not include the core territories of the kingdom of Macedonia in their descriptions of Greece. They usually drew the borderline of Hellas in the strict sense from the Ambracian Gulf to Mount Olympus and the Thessalian Tempe Valley.

[2] Stoppie, Karen (2003). Constructions of Greek Past: Identity and Historical Consciousness from Antiquity to the Present. BRILL. p. 51. ISBN 978-90-04-49546-3. Phileas, a geographer who lived in the sixth-fifth century BC, identifies the northern frontier of Hellas with the Peneius, a river that springs from the Pindus Mountains and flows south from Olympus through the Tempe valley, and with the Homolium, one of the mountains south of the Tempe valley. Since Olympus formed the most southern part of Macedonia, the Macedonians did not inhabit Hellas, which can only be explained by the fact that they were not considered Hellenes:... Herodotus, too, situates Macedonia outside Hellas since he calls the valley of the Peneius Hellas' northern entrance way:....

[1]

[2]

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