Talk:Western world

Does this belong in a travel guide?

This isn't a region or a travel topic – it's a broad and exceptionally ambiguous term that refers to countries sprinkled around multiple continents (by some definitions it includes parts of every continent). What traveller is going to search for this term when looking for a destination? Wouldn't we be better off leaving this type of analysis to Wikipedia? —Granger (talk · contribs) 16:39, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

No it does not belong in Wikivoyage.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 16:47, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Agreed, it does not belong. Ibaman (talk) 17:48, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking about that. I agree that this is not a travel topic, and it's certainly not a region. Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:41, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Unless someone wants to defend the idea (The dog2?), I'd advocate deleting this without VfDing. Speaking of VfD, please can participants in this conversation look at the current nomination? --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 18:46, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I see "where the article comes from", but am also not sure it'd work as a travel topic, extraregion or anything else. --Ypsilon (talk) 19:04, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I thought it would be useful as an extra-hierarchical region, just to give some sort of an idea on what a "Western" country is. We do use the term "Western countries" in many of our articles, but the problem is, the term can be ambiguous. For instance, would you consider Russian food to be "Western" food. In Singapore, most people would say yes, but in the US and Western Europe, most people would say no. And in terms of travel, people do talk about wanting to visit a "Western" country. The dog2 (talk) 19:20, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

There are people in Singapore who talk about wanting to visit a "Western" country and go southeast to Australia for that experience? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Yes, people do that since geographically speaking, Australia is the closest "Western" country to Singapore. And especially when I was younger, flights to Europe or America were way too expensive for the average person to afford, so middle class people who wanted to experience a "Western" country would save up to go to Australia, which was much more reasonable. The dog2 (talk) 20:05, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'd believe there are people in China who might do that. But it's hard for me to imagine they would find this article useful for planning their trip. I suppose the scenario has to be that they don't really know which countries are classified as Western – but that's a matter for a general reference work, not a travel guide. —Granger (talk · contribs) 20:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't know. I could take it or leave it. We don't have the space limitations of paper travel guides, and if there's a very small chance this kind of page could help someone in East Asia plan a trip, it probably doesn't hurt. I think, though, that we should delete this sentence unless we want to equate "Western" with "white": "The white community of South Africa is also sometimes considered to be 'Western'." Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Where it could also be useful is as a link from our articles, because we often use phrases like "visitors from Western countries". And I think it's also helpful to explain some of the abiguity behind what constitutes a "Western" country. For instance, an American tourist visiting China may ask for the nearest Western restaurant, and get pointed to a Russian restaurant (which most Americans would not consider "Western"). A disambiguation sort of article like this can certainly help in case of a situation like that. The dog2 (talk) 22:33, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Do you really want to link every instance of "Western" to this article? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:56, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed to it, but from a practical perspective, that would be a fool's errand. So people can do it just whenever they see it. The dog2 (talk) 23:17, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Wouldn't that hypothetical American in China ask for the nearest American restaurant, or the nearest Italian, French, whatever restaurant? I've never once asked where the nearest "Eastern" restaurant is when out and about in "The West". And if for some reason this American did just want any food as long as it was "Western", wouldn't she have a good idea what she meant by Western already? Aside from a few ambiguities like Russia, don't most travellers have a basic notion of which countries are "Western" and which aren't? More complicated, sociological discussions, for instance the significant factor ethnicity plays in which countries are considered "Western" and which aren't, are best left for other websites that have different purposes to ours.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 10:26, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• totally agreed here. I'm a student of Russian language; in Russian, zapad (lit. "west") is a word with many layers of meaning and connotation, of which "Western Europe" is floating on top. Disambiguating "the Russian notion of west" and "the Chinese notion of west" would already be too long and logjammed a prose to have its place on a travel guide, IMHO. Frankly, the very concept of binary geographic/cultural/social opposition between "the Orient" and 'The Occident", as happens more often in my native language, sounds really obsolete, almost 19th-century British Victorian Imperial Neogothic style, to my ears. Ibaman (talk) 10:45, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

As an aside, I always found the French term pâtisseries orientales, for cakes and desserts mainly from the Muslim world, funny especially when some of them only come from eastern Europe or the Maghreb.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:05, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

As Ibaman touched on, the equivalent to someone looking for "Western" food in China is someone looking for "Asian" or "Oriental" food in a country like America or England. "Oriental" is considered by many Americans to be an old racist term, but a hell of a lot of Americans call anything of East Asian origin "Asian". Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

In Singapore it's fairly common to ask a question like "Do you want Chinese or Western food?", and in that context, "Western" would also include Russian food. The dog2 (talk) 20:48, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

yeah, how well do these oversimplifications actually serve the traveller? let's have as example of my point our article on Indian cuisine. It will most likely never go beyond outline status, simply because the subject is too splendidly extensive to be properly summarized in the context of a travel guide. It's most obvious that peoples from the coast, the plains, the desert and the mountains (to not mention any non-geographical factors) must have very different diets, and it would be impossible to pick one regional style to describe as "typical". The scope is simply too vast. The scope of this topic here is even larger. Ibaman (talk) 22:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

• I've listed the page at Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion#Western world. —Granger (talk · contribs) 07:42, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

As of this moment, consensus to delete is very solid. Shall we act? --Ibaman (talk) 13:10, 13 December 2020 (UTC)