I think the main issue is that the 'Modern' group doesn't mean 'nations that existed in the modern era (1500-present)' but 'nations that exist right now'. The Medieval group ends in 1500 so that means there is no grouping for nations that existed between 1500 and 2010. The simplest and least controversial way to deal with that would be to rename 'Modern' 'Contemporary' (or 'Current') and add a new Modern group for the 1500-2010 (or 1500-2000 if you prefer). That would be less confusing as well; currently a lot of nations that don't exist any more but that did exist for some time after 1500 are grouped under Modern by the people who contribute them. I don't really care if the post-1500 period is split up in two or not, but there really should be at least one extra grouping to cover the era. I guess the only problem would be that all contemporary nations would also be grouped under modern and that the modern group would be vast (which could be fixed by splitting it up around 1800 anyway).
Eurocentrism is not really an issue IMO, at least not for the 'Modern' (/'Early Modern') grouping. One of the most remarkable characteristics of the modern (/early modern) era is that during that period much of the world was brought under European control; for a lot of non-western nations there was a big rupture as well around 1500 when they were discovered and/or overrun by Europeans. I think 'Medieval' is much more of an Eurocentric term, that really doesn't make sense in a non-European context. 'China during the Middle Ages' is as nonsensical as 'France during the Tang dynasty'. I can't really think of an alternative for Medieval though. > Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:37:48 +0200 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > CC: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; > [email protected] > Subject: Re: Nation Grouping (was: Re: [patch #1698] Dahomey nation) > > On Sun, 15 Aug 2010, David Lowe wrote: > > > So this currently exists in 2.1+ ? Although it doesn't seem to help > > the case of a player looking for a specific nation if they don't remember > > the name... > > I think that situation is most likely to occur when the player is looking > for the nation name based upon what it is called in English, but the > nation name is something completely different in the native language. > For instance, I might not remember that Nez Percé is listed under > Nimíipuu, but if I know that it's from North America and roughly > what time period it existed, I could probably find it by process of > elimination. So simply having a smaller subset to search through would > already be helpful.
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