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As a micronation, using "infobox country" as if like other users of that infobox, it is an actual country, is inappropriate. The information can be readily conveyed in the text of the article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:31, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've been saying the same thing for some time. Infoboxes should be used for undisputed factual content, not the claims of websites promoting imaginary countries. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:30, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Insofar as the article exists about the very concept that this so-called "website promoting imaginary countries" created, it is undisputed factual content. This is no different to The Lord of the Rings having an Infobox claiming to be set in "Middle-earth". Getsnoopy (talk) 22:19, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Neither the existence nor non existence of a Wikipedia article, or an infobox in said article, have the slightest bearing on whether the subject of an article actually exists. Facts don't work like that... AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:35, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The political movement "Liberland" exists along with the people in it, and the piece of land that they claim also exists. The controversies that they triggered also happened. Look at Ladonia (micronation) that I mentioned in the other thread, an art project by a famous Swedish artist, for a parallel example (although perhaps a bit less politically controversial). - Anonimski (talk) 18:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with Hemiauchenia and AndyTheGrump. Donald Albury 23:41, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a good idea. The Banner talk 22:24, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

this does not seem like a good idea, as it appears that most every listing at Template:Micronations uses the country infobox. if this is to be done it should be a centralized discussion to remove or replace all of them, not single this one out. ValarianB (talk) 18:35, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly suspect that were Wikipedia policies concerning WP:NPOV, WP:RS etc properly adhered to, the 'micronations' list would be substantially shorter. A good few of them appear to be nothing but fancruft, lacking even the limited real-world substance that Liberland supporters present. The inclusion criteria currently appear to be 'mentioned by some dubious source or other, somewhere', with the vast bulk of content then being primary-sourced promotional BS, originating with whoever has proclaimed themselves President, Emperor, or Pastafarian Pontiff. If we are to hold a centeralised discussion, the starting point should probably be how much cruft we can properly consign to the bit-bucket, rather than concerning ourselves with infoboxes for concoctions that shouldn't be on Wikipedia in the first place. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:20, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You should step out from this discussion. You have shown a heavy display of WP:BIAS. You do realise that there are settlers in Liberland and prior to that, 'Liberlanders' have been arrested, deported and more since 2015? Croatia MOFA have released statements too so clearly there is a notable impact. MicroSupporter (talk) 12:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is you who have shown a heavy display of WP:BIAS., not Andy. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:32, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh please. You want infoboxes taken from a well known micronation. Whether you agree with Liberland's existence or not, you are doing everything you can to suppress it. You might as well continue and remove the infoboxes of all micronations at this rate. MicroSupporter (talk) 15:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Andy's proposal is to remove the "country" infobox. Thar is hardly "suppressing" the existance of Liberland, which after all, exists only in the minds and press releases of it supporters. It is not a "country", but rather a concept with no physical existence. Donald Albury 20:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

People live there now... with Liberland flags. Research first MicroSupporter (talk) 12:12, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have independent sources about that fact? The Banner talk 12:44, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, here is one MicroSupporter (talk) 15:33, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That report is based on a youtube video. Did the news source independently validate the contents of the video, or is the article more of an opinion piece?. The reporting does sound a bit breathless. To the extent that it acurately portrays what has happened, the video appears to show that some people have illegally entered the disputed territory and hastily erected crude shelters. I have a few questions. Who consecrated the so-called "church"? (Placing a cross over the entrance to a dugout does not make it a church.) Who issued the wedding license? How do helicopter tours establish occupancy? Donald Albury 15:50, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JlZs1lp-bwI

Two people delivering supplies to a houseboat parked on Liberland.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YB8NCJB5HD8

Inside of a building.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9MfOdT6RugA

Preparations for the wedding.

https://www.youtube.com/live/_hLf4AMMk38

Livestream of the wedding.

Due to these videos, it is my opinion that after the Liberlanders got kicked out of their mainland, they moved shop to the small island off the riverbank and has permanently parked a houseboat on said island.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GrVPzc0za6w

Said houseboat recently got its engine serviced, apparently. 180.231.250.240 (talk) 04:46, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We need independent and reliable sources. Not home made videos. The Banner talk 10:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Liberland is not inhabited. The Liberland project's own marketing material pretty freely admits this.

One reason Liberland is not inhabited is that both Gornja Siga (the mainland portion) and Donja Siga (the island) have spent most of the winter living up to their floodplain classification and being literally underwater.

Donja Siga can be seen almost completely submerged in this video uploaded to the Liberland Youtube channel 23 November. The few isolated spots of Donja Siga that remain unflooded in the video are roughly 86 meters above sea level, suggesting that roughly half of Gornja Siga may have remained unflooded as well at this point, even though the tree cover makes it hard to be sure.

In this video uploaded 19 December, the northern part of the Gornja Siga access road is under water. At 88 to 89 meters above sea level, the relevant portion of the access road is one of Gornja Siga's highest-elevation stretches; this is the part of Gornja Siga that was farthest from the Danube before hydraulic engineering changed its course and created the floodplain as it exists today. No point of Gornja Siga is more than 90 meters above sea level.

In this blog post dated 31 December, the water has reached the second (inner, southern) green gate. As this video demonstrates around the 02:50 mark, the two green gates are located right at the start of the downslope from usable land onto the floodplain.

The last video also demonstrates the other reason Liberland is uninhabited: Croatia is now actively policing the area, making it difficult to do any stealth encampment or construction there. There is no evidence that any of the participants are challenging the presence of the supposedly foreign police officers in their supposed sovereign country. On the contrary, the video makes it clear there has been some sort of actual interaction between the two cyclists and the cops but is unsubtly edited to omit the encounter.

The video, along with lots of other material, shows that the participants referred to as "settlers" living "in Liberland" are actually living in a houseboat in the Danube. The Danube is an international waterway that Croatia could not conclusively deny them the use of if it wanted to. The presence of the participants in the houseboat, in other words, is tolerated precisely because they are not actually "in Liberland". They therefore cannot be meaningfully described as "settlers", much less as inhabitants.

Since flags were mentioned: there are three boats involved and therefore three flags with actual legal significance, although much of the marketing material is staged and edited to make them hard to find:

1. The Liberty can be seen flying the Serbian state flag as its ensign in the second photo in this Instagram post and in multiple photos in this Alamy set of publicity shots. According to this houseboat rental site the vessel is homeported in the Serbian town of Apatin, consistent with its use of Serbia as its flag state.
2. The Swan can be seen flying the Hungarian civil ensign in this photo from the same set.
3. The "Freedom Boat" can be seen flying the Croatian civil ensign in this video.

There is no evidence that any of the participants have ever used the Liberland flag in a way that could be considered an attempt to stake a legal claim.

It seems worth nothing that while the Swan was only built last summer, Jedlička had been planning to pivot to houseboats since May 2022 at the latest. The Liberland project, it would appear, has been aware of the hopelessness of any actual attempt at actually "settling" in the swamp for some time now. GR Kraml (talk) 17:18, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Over the years, there have been some attempts to argue that the Liberland article shouldn't have any infobox at all. However, this is not the norm for micronation articles on Wikipedia today. For example, the Sealand and Republic of Minerva articles both have their own infoboxes with some basic information there. Even "art project" micronations have their infobox: see Ladonia (micronation). One question comes to my mind - why should this article in particular be without infobox?

Today, "Template:Infobox micronation" is a redirect to "Template:Infobox country", and editors are instructed to add "micronation=yes" as a parameter, so that it would be marked properly and reduce the risk of confusion. Removing it for just Liberland, and keeping the box for micronations of similar (or even lower) notability doesn't make any sense at all. Having a box with a slightly different appearance (for example using shades or colors) would perhaps be better.

I still don't understand why the removal discussion is specific for this article. The Liberland article is of considerably high notability in the Micronations topic. And, by the way, it's not just the infobox that has been targeted - look at the three (!) deletion attempts for this entire article, despite the fact that it's been well-covered in various forms of media in many countries.

The proper way to do this, is to try a wider discussion with editors that have written about other micronation topics, and settle on a generic solution for how they should be visually presented on Wikipedia. It's doesn't look very good to just gang up on one article in particular and push deletionism for one particular example. Topics related to Eastern Europe and the Balkans might have aspects that make people stubborn about their views about what's worthy enough to write about, due to the political history of certain parts. But that's not an excuse to try to "snipe" this article in various ways. See WP:IDONTLIKEIT.

As for my opinion - I think that the infobox should have a slightly different visual design in the general case, in all articles about micronations. And of course, "Micronation" should remain in the top part with a wikilink, for those who don't know what the word means. - Anonimski (talk) 17:10, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, this doesn't require 'discussion with editors that have written about other micronation topics'. Or at least, not with them alone. It requires a discussion involving the Wikipedia community as a whole over the issues raised, since it is that community that sets the standards regarding neutrality, reliable sourcing etc that frequently appear to have been ignored by the small proportion of the community that have been responsible for these articles. And no, this has absolutely nothing to do with the political history of the Balkans, or any other specific region. It is instead an instance (sadly not unusual) of content on a specific topic being unduly influenced by individuals often more concerned with promoting either a specific 'micronation', or 'micronations' in general, to the detriment of encyclopaedic coverage of the topic. I can think of no other subject on Wikipedia that quite as readily takes highly-questionable primary-sourced promotional claims as sufficient for infobox content, or that as readily acts as a conduit for such self-serving material more generally. Articles 'n 'micronations' must be made to conform with normal Wikipedia standards. 17:47, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

A wider discussion is fine too, perhaps even better. I just think it's so strange to focus so much of the "infobox removal topic" on this article. I do have understanding for why it may feel strange to use Template:Infobox country for these things, but we should instead have a true Template:Infobox micronation with a distinct graphical appearance. Having a "micronation=yes" parameter might feel like a lazy patch (and perhaps it is), but total removal would be fixing a wrong with a worse wrong. Many other "categorizable" topics have infoboxes for their purposes, summarizing certain types of content. - Anonimski (talk) 18:01, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete infobox completely Not by far there is proof that Liberland is a country at all. So giving it a country-infobox would be a knee-jerk towards reliability. There is enough spam and self-promo in that "article". The Banner talk 17:38, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  If I haven't made it clear - I am against presenting micronations in a manner identical to established countries. It's just the total removal of infobox that I'm questioning the motives of. And what spam are you talking about? Even though it's not about a "real country", the events and political controversies that relate to this topic have been covered quite well by external sources (and a wide variety of them). In the past, when I've searched for and added material to this article, I've considered the topic to be of similar notability as Sealand. - Anonimski (talk) 18:20, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  The spam? A lot of additions were (as they are mostly removed by now) backed up by their own website. And other "sources" often quote Vít Jedlička, the promoter of this subject. The Banner talk 00:14, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Some additions weren't just backed up by their website. A (former?) ' Minister of Justice' added himself in person. Can't have a better source than that. [1] AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Given that this question is clearly of wider concern, and appears not to have been settled, I have now started a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy) [2]. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just throwing this out there. A quote from an update to an article from the Reason.com website:

Vít Jedlička wants it on record that he does not consider Liberland a "micronation," for one reason because a nation is a people separate from a specific area and he considers all 700,000 online signups to be part of the nation of Liberland. [3]

There have been questions in the past as to the reliability of Reason magazine and its related website, but it would seem unlikely that they'd misreport this. In practical terms, it would appear to make no real difference as far as our article is concerned, since we aren't bound by Jedlička's personal definitions of words. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:31, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Then you still have the issue of independent sourcing. This reads like a press release case. The Banner talk 23:56, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with AndyTheGrump that we can keep using the term "micronation" on the Wikipedia article. The important part from a Wikipedia perspective is how the wider world describes it. At most, Jedlička's viewpoint could be mentioned and described, but even that might be trivial information, since it's an opinion that all micronations may have in one way or another. - Anonimski (talk) 16:27, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]