Talk:Australasia

Urgh. This page is going to have to get trimmed. For the love of pete, please, folks, no more of these hierarchical lists from hell. -- (WT-en) Evan 08:32, 10 Nov 2003 (PST)

Sorted. -- (WT-en) nurg

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I trimmed the individual Pacific Islands from this page and refered to their collective regional pages (Oceania, etc.), leaving only Australia, New Zealand as the major countries. Papua gets a mention as it is the largest remaining island, though perhaps that should be moved too.... -- (WT-en) Huttite 08:53, 14 Feb 2004 (EST)

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The 1st para of the article is unclear. If it is primarily ..., what is it secondarily? What are the islands surrounding Oz & NZ? Are the Pacific Islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia included? Personally I favor a broad rather than a narrow definition. (WT-en) Nurg 01:47, 11 Mar 2004 (EST)

I reckon that Australasia is ONLY Australia, New Zealand and the very large island of New Guinea - (Papua New Guinea and (West) Papua) I would also accept Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island (Australian dependencies) as well as New Caledonia (French Dependency) and the Kermadec islands as these are all between New Zealand and Australia and ride on the same techtonic plate. All the other island nations (currently) listed on this page are Island nations and fall under Islands of the Pacific Ocean or Oceania. Technically I suppose that Australasia is part of Oceania too, so should be listed there too. As I understand the Geographical hierarchy, the Continents are used, with a separate Island nations continent. In a stricter reading that would make Australia the same as Australasia. Rather than listing all the individual pacific islands under Australasia, they should be listed in their Island super-groupings, like Polynesia etc. with Australasia refering to them as nearby regions, rather than individually. -- (WT-en) Huttite 04:54, 22 Mar 2004 (EST)

PS: I have now reverted Island nation edits by (WT-en) Akubra, and will move any missing ones to Oceania. (WT-en) Huttite 05:49, 22 Mar 2004 (EST)

Wikipedia defines Australasia as the area that includes Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and the many smaller islands in the vicinity, most of which are the eastern part of Indonesia. So it includes part of Asia. The article also says that it is more an ecoregion than anything else. So, I wonder if this term can be used for a tourist region. I'm tempted to think that it should be replaced by Australia and Oceania or something similar, in order to have a Pacific section, comparable to the other continent sections. It could be divided into Australia, Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. That is why I added the Pacific islands to this article. I think either the islands go out or we have to change names. (WT-en) Dhum Dhum Akubra 11:29, 24 Mar 2004 (EST)

I see Australasia as being a subsection of Oceania. Yes I agree with the Wikipedia description, but the smaller islands are generally those in the Torres strait and Timor sea, and lie between New Guinea. This probably means East Timor and parts of Indonesia should be listed, or at least metioned in the Australasia article. However, places like the Solomon Islands, which is in the Pacific Ocean north-east of Papua New Guinea should be in Melanesia. Similarly Polynesia should include New Zealand but the other polynesian islands should not appear in the Australasia article.

I think the problem lies in how Wikivoyage separates the Island Nations from the other continents. If you change Australasia to Australia and Oceania, this means that the continental listing for Australasia should become simply Australia, since the country is a continent and everything else wold then be listed under Island Nations. Frankly I think that would be a bad move. There are notable geographical, political and social reasons for having an Australasia entry. In many respects Oceania is an artificial construct of the CIA, and perhaps only exists in their mind. Nowhere do I know that the people of the Pacific are collectively referred to as Oceanians. Pacific Islanders is probably politically incorrect by now and the term Pacific Peoples is seen as less offensive, though clumsy, and is social not geographical. The terms Pacifica or even Austronesia could be used, though they are probably more social than geographical. We could even use the old romantic term South Sea Islands. Unless we restructure the Project:Geographical hierarchy, I think we should stick with Australasia and indicate it is a subsection of Oceania. Besides, to travel to many of the islands you need to transit through Australasia anyway. - (WT-en) Huttite 08:24, 25 Mar 2004 (EST)

I think we are agreed that this page should more-or-less follow the 'pedia definition so I'll be bold and edit it. Akubra suggested "either the islands go out or we have to change names". I think Huttite and I agree with the 1st option so I've done it. The other islands are all in Oceania and there are links between the 2 articles so that's fine. While I don't think renaming Australasia would have been right, Akubra's suggestion could be applied to the Main Page. On 11 Nov 2003 I did to the Main Page pretty much what Akubra suggested and changed "Australasia" to "Australia/Oceania". That change was quickly reverted. Is there merit in reconsidering a change like that to the Main Page (but not the Australasia article itself)? (WT-en) Nurg 04:29, 26 Mar 2004 (EST)

Going, Going...

This page is nearly devoid of places that link to it, and now has a limited life. If you would be sad to see it gone, please raise and objections at Talk:Oceania. --(WT-en) Inas 04:37, 16 November 2008 (EST)

Gone...

gone.. --(WT-en) Inas 00:11, 18 November 2008 (EST)

vfd

Australasia

This is a very ambiguous term, and it does not mean the same thing as Oceania as Australasia also includes parts of Eastern Indonesia as well (according to the WWF), and does not include much of Polynesia nor Micronesia. And then whether NZ is part of Australasia is very ambiguous. Or to be more precise, there's no clear cut definition for what's part of this region, but only Australia and New Guinea seem to always be considered as being part of Australasia, so given the high ambiguity with this term, delete. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 03:07, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that as a redirect to Oceania (which it currently is), it is problematic. However, in my experience, it is not usually ambiguous as to whether NZ is part of it. It is more common for people to wrongly think it consists of NZ and Australia only. I suggest reverting to the extra-hierarchical region that it was in May 2017. Would there be anything wrong with that? Nurg (talk) 05:00, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  That works better than deleting it, since when I nominated this, I didn't think that it would also be a search term as well. If needed, I suppose a little bit of the Indonesian section could also be mentioned, but that's something to be decided on later. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  Also pinging @Yvwv: who redirected it if they would like to comment SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:03, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  I also feel this a better solution than deleting. Tai123.123 (talk) 05:04, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• Yeah, an extra-region seems most useful. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:34, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Write it as an extra-region. /Yvwv (talk) 01:08, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

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Outcome: Made an extraregion. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 04:17, 21 November 2021 (UTC)