Passport stamps#367

I find it annoying that my passport page says “Spain” when I haven’t been to mainland Spain yet. I’ve been to Tenerife and Ibiza and I think they deserve their own stamp just as much as Cyprus gets its own stamp even though it’s a Greek island— by that logic I should only have ‘Greece’ as a stamp.

Same goes for Sicily, it is deserving of it’s own stamp as do other islands rather than being lumped under ‘Italy’. Yes they are Italian but they also have their own identity and dialect.

This problem is apparant when creating titles too and searching for places. When I search for Sicily, nothing comes up and I have to go through Italy content to find anything.

Cyprus is an independent country. Tenerife, Ibiza, and Sicily are not. When you travel between mainland Italy and Sicily, do you get your actual passport stamped? (Putting aside the Schengen area).
It would be cool if AO made destination guides for different provinces of countries the same way they do US states. But I wouldn’t want a new stamp every time I visited a new state. I’ve visted ten countries, so I have ten stamps. That makes sense to me.

For looking up islands and specific regions, I would suggest using the app. Maps on the regular website are prone to crashing or lagging, but my experience on the app has been comparatively smooth.

Here’s Sicily, for example:

Mike Walker, as someone who has been to Sicily, its funny that I got a passport stamp there then isn’t it? And I wasn’t suggesting a passport stamp every time you go to a place. For me personally– I’ve not been to mainland Italy, but I have been to Sicily and will be going to Sardinia. These are two separate destinations. Also if you ask any Sicilian, they consider themselves Sicilian more than Italian.

You said you had been to Sicily but not mainland Italy. So you must have arrived there from somewhere else. So yeah, I’m not surprised you got a passport stamp, since you travelled between two independent countries. I’m in favor of assigning passport stamps based on which actual countries you’ve been to, not just if it feels different. Oklahoma and New York are very different, but it’s all the USA.
Now if a territory of a country has a large degree of autonomy, like Greenland or New Caledonia, then it makes sense to have them count as different countries. But it looks like AO has already implemented that.

Or for an even better example, Alberta, Quebec, and Nunavut are very different, and speak completely different languages. You even travel greater distances between them than you do for these European islands. But it’s all counted for the Canada stamp.

Mark: You don’t have to be an arrogant asshole. This is what I and even Sicilian friends feel. And even friends in Tenerife, they don’t see themselves as associated with mainland spain. All I am saying is as an island COUNTRY (not county) it is deserving of it’s own stamp and that’s my opinion, no need to be condescending.

I agree with Mike’s comments here so far, and think that the name-calling is completely unwarranted. He has had to use basic examples and explanations as it seems that his point is still not being made clear. To me, that makes perfect sense.

Just pointing out that there has been something of a previous debate on what AO defines as a “country” in #218. That discussion could potentially be helpful.

Hi @Katie Ness We appreciate your feedback about the passport feature. We don’t have any current plans to make changes this feature but we will keep what you said in mind if that changes.

Regarding classification of regions, we at AO do not want to be the arbiter of country definition and we rely on Google for our geographical data. There are some exceptions and we will take into account the idea of regions like Sicily having their own destination guides if and when we make any changes to the structure of our geographical data.

Finally, we ask that everyone on the Nolt feedback board try to assume best intentions in the comments. This board is a place for the community to discuss what we want the site to be and become. Opposing opinions and feedback are welcome. Please refrain from namecalling and keep things civil.

As always, thank you everyone for being here and for your input!