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	Europe was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result February 26, 2008 Peer review Reviewed March 5, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed
Current status: Former good article nominee

This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

To-do list for Europe: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2023-02-26 To get to good article level Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : Fix the area of Turkey in List of states and territories. Should be 783,356 and not 23,764 (from the Turkey article). Verify : ADD inline citations - particularly geography to biology sections and for statistics throughout the article

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

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Economy of Europe

I think this would be in the economy section: Europe has a long history as the world's richest and most productive part of the world. At the time of Christ's birth is estimated western European output per capita was approximately 30% higher than the world average. Year 1500 had this advantage increased to 40%. After the development of science and the Industrial Revolution in Europe grew its lead quickly, in 1700 produced an average European almost 70% more than world's average population, and in 1850 was taken over the entire 150%. Around the year 1900 was Western Europe's leading role as the world's most productive area has been taken over by the former European colony of the United States, but Europe has continued to belong to the world's richest, most productive and knowledge-producing regions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.103.205.2 (talk • contribs) 12 January 2011

Chinese Name Change

I deleted the following sentence from this page:

which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲)

I did this because, I have never heard this term though I am a speaker of Chinese. I asked some native Chinese speakers, and they also had never heard this term. I have found any research indicating that the term 欧洲 is an abbreviation of 欧罗巴州, as the deleted sentence suggests, though 欧罗巴 is direct transliteration of the word Europe into Chinese. The word was used on the Chinese Language Misplaced Pages page refers to 欧罗巴 only as a transliteration for the Greek word "Europa." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Agenbite (talk • contribs) 27 January 2012

Deep ancestry of the Europeans

This genetic map, can be useful to look into the deep ancestry of the Europeans. Maybe it could be of use:

http://www.scs.illinois.edu/~mcdonald/WorldHaplogroupsMaps.pdf

Pipo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.203.72 (talk) 03:29, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Etymology as part of definition?

The recent change in format, which I reverted, was unhelpful. The definition of Europe is a historical matter according to the sources and has very little to do with the etymology. The mixing up of the principal clickable map detailing transcontinental countries rendered the start of the article unreadable. The separation into "definition" and "etymology" seems fine and there seems to be no reason to change it. Mathsci (talk) 07:50, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

The first paragraph of the Etymology section contributes nothing to the article and must be removed. It is only an unnecessary "filling" and serves to create an impression like every place name has to have a Greek origin and that we could not yet find it out in the case of Europe. As it is, it is not only irrelevant and unnecessary but also POV. I am removing that part. --E4024 (talk) 19:45, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

No, we are not going to remove it simply because you don't like it. Athenean (talk) 21:18, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

There is no reason to remove that paragraph or to claim falsely that there was consensus to remove it on this talk page. The etymology goes back to Ancient Greece and the first paragraph provides context for the reader. Mathsci (talk) 21:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Please leave your ARBMAC-related naming-warring out of this article. You have waged a long and sustained campaign of suppression of Greek and Armenian onomatology and promotion of Turkish onomatology and alphabet characters across many different articles. You even attempted to add the Turkish name to the capital of Greece. The pattern has become clear. Please know when to stop. Δρ.Κ.  00:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Matschi (and anybody else who may be interested), let me explain the issue. Our article's "Etymology" section begins with this paragraph: "In ancient Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess whom Zeus abducted after assuming the form of a dazzling white bull. He took her to the island of Crete where she gave birth to Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpedon. For Homer, Europe (Ancient Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē; see also List of Greek place names) was a mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation." There is nothing useful in this paragraph to the article on Europe. It does not explain nor contribute to understand from where the name "Europe" comes. Therefore it is irrelevant and unnecessary. Someone else could put this better with several WP bluelinks; I am not that knowledgable on all of those links (some conflicting with each other, AFAICS). However, I have done "editing" for many years, in total more than the average age of WPians around; as a journalist, as an academic and as an administrator who makes reductions every (working) day, since a quarter of a century or even more. I have learned a golden rule: If you take away any part of a text and the text does not lose anything from its value, it is because that part was "extra" or "redundant"; in other words "unnecessary". With this belief I removed that part from the article about a month ago. When you reverted my edit, I wrote a very kind message to you on your TP, under the title "Good wishes". I allow myself to repeat it here: "I visited here and saw that you are recuperating from heart surgery; so I wish you a very speedy recovery and the best of health all your life. After this I almost forgot what I wanted to tell you. I guess it was related to an edit of mine reverted by you. I think I had given enough reasoning at the edit summary but never mind. When you find time please read again the part that I had removed from the article, slowly, and you will see that my edit summary was correct and the edit also; if a piece does not add anything in the context it is used, that means it is empty talk. I do not want to disturb you much. Get well and best feelings." Your reaction to this message was to delete it and show me the road to the article TP with your deletion edit summary, without even thanking me. (I noticed that you have "archives" but you did not "archive" my message, you simply deleted it. Alas...) Now, after a month I came back to this "Europe" page. First I wrote my argument above there. (You gave no response.) The only responses I received were the ones above. One of them is telling me "I don't like it". (The user is referring to me but in the end it means s/he does not like my idea but has no argument against. The other one tries to intimidate me with an "Arbmac-related naming warring". What naming-warring here? I removed a paragraph that has no contribution whatsoever to the subject. I did this twice, with a long time span in-between and after presenting my argument which really did not receive any counter-arguments regarding etymology or onomastics. You came and reverted my removal saying "There was no consensus". BTW, Matschi, I would like to ask you kindly: Have you once ever tried to "interact" with me in WP? (I know this is not your TP and maybe I should not dwell on these "personal" issues now here. But your previous conduct does not give me assurances that I will be welcome in your TP, although I visited there -if I am not wrong- only once and for the above-occasion.) I request other users (out of this four, including myself) to please comment on the necessity (or the lack of) the said paragraph in the "Etymology" section of this article. Thanks a lot. --E4024 (talk) 09:30, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Golden Horde and Tatars

Please do not with add unsourced content to the "History" section. An editor has expanded the content related to the Golden Horde without new sources and with far more detail than is appropriate for what is just a summary of the history of Europe. The final paragraph added about Siberia and Alaska concerned the history of Asia and not that of Europe. The history section is quite carefully sourced. To add new material please ensure that it directly concerns the history of Europe, is properly sourced and is concise and in summary form. Mathsci (talk) 07:21, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello Mathsci, I understand why you removed my content I added in Europe, but when you removed the edits I made, you also removed some other changes I made to the article besides that of the Tatars. I also found the article to be biased. I added the part of Almış turning Volga Bulgaria into an Islamic state after his conversion, because I saw there were other random facts scattered across the article, such as the Crimean Tatars collecting Slavic slaves. I found these facts to be biased towards one side of the (hi)story of Europe, and not the other side. It also seems to describe the Tatars as if equating them with Mongols despite the fact that this is an error. The description of Russia expanding into Siberia and Alaska is part of European history and would have a major impact on the development of events in Europe. It is very brief. I will edit it.

If you must edit the article, then do so, but with the considerations in mind based on what I have written above. Perhaps the part of the Golden Horde can be condensed, but with the main points being that the Horde converted to Islam (probably under the influence of the Muslims already in the land of the Horde, such as the Volga Bulgars), and that their territory was mostly Turkic, and not an "occupied Russia" as is erroneously believed since Russia and the Eastern Slavs had not yet occupied these lands before the Mongol conquest except in very small areas. I will get sources on this later (this week hopefully as I know what the sources are). I ask you though, to not remove the whole of the material, but to place an "unsourced" tag if needed. I believe this is important to give a neutral view of European history. --Fernirm (talk) 07:32, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Please find a source or sources instead of writing the content "from your own head" in a discursive and parenthetic way. I assume that you also edited History of Europe with the ip 67.49.73.135, since identical wording without sources was used in both cases. I helped modify the history section some time ago and every attempt to maintain WP:NPOV was made. Your own edits to both articles seem to skew the content: in both articles you complain about "bias". You have objected to references to countries under Christian rule and have attempted to add undue content about Muslim rule. Please could you stick to reliable sources, preferably books on the history of Europe, and not edit articles to "right great wrongs" as that is POV-pushing? Mathsci (talk) 07:57, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I have added sources and condensed this history to a very small portion containing the most essential details. Also relating to the history of Europe, I am not out for an agenda, merely to correct popular fallacies, for instance, is it not biased to say that the Spaniards were "pushing Muslims out of Iberia"? This assumes that all the Muslims are invaders and that none of these Muslims are Spaniards, despite the fact that most of the Muslims in Iberia by the year 1100 were local converts. I am not pushing a pro-Muslim agenda as you might suspect, I am trying to give equity to the history of all. I especially found the statement "With the usual pride of advanced thinkers, the Humanists..." to be very biased (it sounds unencyclopedic). Again, you undid my edit without regards to details that I did not come up from my own head as you sat, such as changing "Kipchaks" to "Kipchak-Cuman Confederation", or the conquest of the Siberian Khanate before expansion into the rest of Siberia. Spain did experience a great cultural golden age during al-Andalus, so it seems biased to me to say that Spain had a golden age, this assumes al-Andalus is illegitimate, that's why I added "Christian Spain" so as to remove this bias. Writing that "Christian Europe" instead of "Europeans" makes it clear that not all Europeans were one and the same culture or religion, as was the case at the time of the fall of Constantinople, before it, and after it. I will certainly add sources to this material. And yes, this is righting "great wrongs".  ;) --Fernirm (talk) 08:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Please stop adding unsourced content about the expansion of Russia into Asia and beyond. It might be your personal point of view but is not directly related to the history of Europe. Again this is skewing content in a non-neutral and inappropriate way. This content is relevant to the History of Russia, but not here. Mathsci (talk) 08:55, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Peninsulas in Europe

Regarding this revert, the reason I added the category is because Europe is a Peninsula, and clearly Europe is in Europe. Emmette Hernandez Coleman (talk) 17:17, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Cat Peninsulas in Europe? Clearly those peninsulas are in Europe; but Europe, a peninsula or continent or whatever part of Eurasia is, is not in a peninsula... --E4024 (talk) 18:37, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Europe is quite easily defined as a peninsula, but is an entity inside itself? I wouldn't use that terminology. An odd semantic question indeed. CMD (talk) 19:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Use -if exists- the category "Peninsulas in Eurasia" and we will not have to spend this much energy to understand you. --E4024 (talk) 20:00, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Fall of "Byzantines" in 1453 after being "fatally weakened"

Last sentence under the heading "Early Middle Ages":

"Fatally weakened by the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantines fell in 1453 when they were conquered by the Ottoman Empire." I find there two problems with this sentence:

1. While Constantinople fell in 1453, other Byzantine cities only fell later, i.e. Trebizond in 1461. It certainly does make sense to associate the fall of the "Byzantine Empire" with the fall of its capital, itself one of the last strongholds to fall to the Ottomans. Please note, that even this is not objective fact, only interpretation, albeit a sensible and widely agreed upon one. But if you are using the fuzzy term "Byzantines", which I interpret along the lines of "Territory, Cities or Population with Byzantine allegiance", then this is not true anymore. Some "Byzantines" still survived a bit longer, even if their empire had already fallen.

2. It is a very bold assertion to make a monocausal connection between the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, i.e. in 1204, and the final collapse of the empire more than two centuries later! While it was certainly not a very good day for the empire when their capital was captured and their territories divided, only to be restored some 50 years later at a smaller scale, nobody in this world is able to make this bold assertion and support it with scientific evidence. Weakened? Yes, absolutely. Fatally weakened? In other words: irreversibly and exclusively by this event weakened? Who can say!?

Therefore my suggestion to change the sentence above into: "Weakened by the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantine Empire fell with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire in 1453."

Thank you for your time! 79.249.113.191 (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Why do we have to look for a justification 250 years before? Is it so difficult to accept the Ottoman victory, simple because it was superior to the Byzantines? (This is not a question, I mean remove all reference to the Fourth Crusade.) That is a POV not only against the Ottoman supremacy but also a subjective complaint "you see, you made us lose to those Turks" to some nations... --E4024 (talk) 17:20, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

No, we're not going to remove all references to the Fourth Crusade to satisfy your notion of "Ottoman supermacy". Athenean (talk) 17:34, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The sentence is sourced to the National Geographic Visual History of the World, so please look there to see whether the summary was a bit too drastic. (That kind of tweaking seems fine to me.) Finding an additional source would also be good. Mathsci (talk) 17:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I found six new citations which all verify this well-known historical fact. This fact is known widely except, apparently, to those advocating Ottoman supremacy. Δρ.Κ.  19:59, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

The Byzantine Empire wasn't at its best before the Crusades. What the fourth Crusade did was to smash the entire might of the empire, conquering Constantinople itself. Losing a capital is a great blow to any state (the Bulgarians came close to doing the same in the 900s, but left after some deft diplomacy). After basically disintegrating (although it was quite remarkably put back together by the remaining pieces afterwards), the empire lost all pretence of being the powerful and strong Roman state it once was. This was the irrevocable weakening the sources describe. (I suppose what might be similar is if London was conquered during the Second World War.) Whether or not the Ottomans would have conquered it without the crusade is just a what if, similar to the IPs note that whether it was necessarily a fatal weakening is a what if. That said, I support the IPs change. Their argument is quite good, and the information conveyed is the same. CMD (talk) 21:29, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree. Many of the sources which I added explicitly use the expression "fatally weakened". To rephrase by omitting the "fatal" part would be original research. Δρ.Κ.  23:32, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the first part of the IP's proposed edit, but I think "fatally" should stay, as a significant body of literature uses this characterization. Athenean (talk) 00:17, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I added five more citations using that very description. Δρ.Κ.  02:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 January 2013

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please edit since it is not supported by the (dead) link. Instead, the link's source, Princeton's Wordnet, now states , see http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=europe&sub=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&h= So, please use the source's content, or delete the sentence altogether. 79.220.24.16 (talk) 18:50, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

What did you want changed? The 2nd citation on the page links to a National Geographic source. Banaticus (talk) 09:48, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Communism in eastern Europe

I noticed that under Eastern Europe and the cold war that it wasn't really mentioned that many countries in eastern Europe not only where affiliated with the USSR but where communist until the revolutions of 1989 when Mikhail Gorbachev said that counties in the Soviet Union no longer had to remain in it's ranks. I believe this is a vital point in European history whether you view it as good or bad. I only point this out to make this article better thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hward4116SS (talk • contribs) 19:42, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

1. ^ Madisson, Angus (2009). [http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_09-2008.xls Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2006 AD].
2. "In addition, people living in areas such as Ireland, the United Kingdom, the North Atlantic and Mediterranean islands and also in Scandinavia may routinely refer to "continental" or "mainland" Europe simply as Europe or "the Continent"."
3. "the British use `Europe' to refer to all of the continent except the British Isles"

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