I refer to Wikipedia’s list of countries and dependencies by area. Note entries 1 & 3. Does including “World” & “Antarctica” on this list seem stupid to anyone else? Contrarwise, anyone want to explain it?
Including the world gives the total area that the rest add up to in a convenient spot. Including Antarctica is necessary to make the list add up to the world. 
But they do look kinda funny under a column headed “Country”.
Assuming you’re not just jesting, why on Earth does the total area of the rest need to add up to a total?
Anyway, the actual sovereign states don’t add up to the total area of the world, I’ll bet, or anywhere near it, as the area of the surface area of the world includes the oceans.
No, they just look stupid. It’s emblematic of Wikipedia’s basic stupidity: the lack of actual editors with authority and common sense.
Why yes, I AM pissed off today, why do you ask?
It’s quite common to include some relevant entries in a list to compare against, even if they’re not strictly members. Wikipedia usually puts them in italic to indicate they are special. It’s quite useful.
I’d like a similar entry for the EU, maybe I’ll put it in.
Of course it also drives strict Platonic realists mad, which is always a plus.
:mad: And of course I didn’t read the title in the first post, but just guessed the vote question (wrongly) from the truncated poll title. I meant No, not Yes.
I’m fairly sure no official entities recognize any countries beneath the ocean, so I don’t see the problem. As for the rest, it’s still of interest as a comparison. Did you know Antarctica is almost as large as Russia?
No, because they are not included in the ranking.
It makes sense so you can see how big a country is as a proportion of the whole world. And if you wanted to know how big Antarctica is, given that it gets relegated to the Mystery Zone at the bottom of most world maps. I must say I was surprised to see that it is bigger than any country in the world other than Russia: I’d assumed it was much smaller than that and only seemed bigger because of the “Greenland effect” of map distortion.
I was also surprised to see that there is an argument over whether China or the USA is larger. I’d have guessed China was comfortably bigger.
I don’t have a problem with it, especially since “world” and “Antarctica” have no rank #. But they need to explain the area of Antarctica. It’s completely covered with ice and snow, which extend beyond the land, into the ocean. So are they including ice shelves in the total area?
Have you considered waging a lengthy edit war over it? That seems to be the Wiki Way.
Hell no. I only noticed because, for trivial reasons, I wanted to know what the world’s eight-largest country was (I knew the top seven were Russia, Canada, China, the US, Brazil, and Australia). I only cared because I was grumpy yesterday, and virtually anything could set me off.
World - Stupid
Antarctica - Not Stupid
People who are interested in the relative size of countries are likely to be interested in the relative size of land masses as well, so it makes sense to me to put it all in one table.
Antarctica is completely defensible, World is superfluous.
No. “World” gives a point of reference (the “land area” column, I mean), and “Antarctica” is an interesting information.
By the way, I’m surprised by a lot of rankings (Argentina and Bolivia being that large, Algeria being larger than Congo, Egypt larger than Turkey, etc…)
Would you also want to include Afro-Eurasia, Eurasia, Asia, Africa, Europe, America, North America, South America, and Central America?
I voted that including it was stupid, but then 10 seconds later I decided this was a good reason to include it.
Personally wouldn’t mind that myself. But I find the “world” information quite informative, so if I want to make a quick calculation of would %age of landmass a certain country is, I could do it without having to dig for more stats. Absolutely defensible and, in my opinion, useful info.
Skald, I am one of your admirers, but this…
nah.
Leave off. There are better fights and more interesting polls.