Countries of the World v3 (EN, DE)
Hello fellow Ankineers
In 2022, I posted Countries of the World (COTW) v2. Thank you for your feedback. I've been working on v3 for a while now, and today it's publish day.
248 entries: 195 sovereign states, 49 dependencies, and 4 disputed areas. Available in English and German; both can be installed side by side without interference, using the same media to save disk space.
The changes are:
- UI overhaul
- Updated data (e.g., flag of Afghanistan or capital of Kazakhstan, Astana)
- New rotatable and zoomable globe for global positioning with country tooltip on hover (desktop) or tap (mobile)
- New vector maps now showing exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and territorial waters
- Light and dark mode support
Deck fields:
- Country name
- Country formal name
- Capital(s) and corresponding labels
- Flags (vector)
- Maps (vector): one for regional overview, one for details
- Interactive globe
- ISO-2 and ISO-3 codes
- Bordering countries
- Tagged by region and sovereignty so you may study them selectively
Card types:
- For most people, studying
- country → capital,
- country → flag, and in the other direction,
- capital → country,
- flag → country, and
- map → country should suffice.
- Other card types containing ISO codes and bordering countries are listed in a separate subdeck called Extras, which can be disabled.
- Of course, you can always delete card types entirely in the deck browser, but this process is destructive. To recover them, just redownload the deck.
Upgrading:
Due to some restructuring under the hood, upgrading from v2 is not possible. I'm sorry for that. However, with the new data structure (a separate ID for each country as the main field, independent of any of its properties like name or ISO code), upgrading should always be possible in the future, whatever changes our world undergoes.
IMPORTANT: Borders:
I used the GIS data from Natural Earth and other sources (for all sources, see GitHub or deck description). These borders show de facto control (with some latency), meaning that, for example, Crimea is shown as Russian, or Taiwan and Kosovo are shown as sovereign states. THIS DECK IS NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT and does not want to promote a certain world view. This will not hinder you in studying the countries. Please do not file issues on GitHub regarding this topic.
Ultimate Geography:
Yes, this deck's content is close to Ultimate Geography. I developed v1 as I did not like the look of UG, wanted to include ISO codes, and I like things consistent in style. I don't wish to be any kind of competition for UG. Just use whatever you like and be happy.
Use of AI:
- The globe and maps are completely AI-coded/generated using data from Natural Earth and other sources (while in v2 I made them all by hand).
- The dataset was originally gathered by me and revised by AI. I supervised all changes and checked all data. However, if you find an issue, please report it so I can correct it.
- The card design was made by me.
- An AI will check the data each week against Wikidata and report changes. Expect more frequent updates. This is the main game changer for me, reducing the workload to a feasible level. I will review the changes before merging them into the decks.
- Please do not reactively call it slop, as reaching this result was everything but easy, and all my choices were considerate, and the results always checked. There is good AI use out there.
Issue reporting:
- Even though a human and an artificial brain have checked the data, there still might be errors. Please report them on: https://github.com/Parapoxvirus/cotw/issues
- Mainly, I'd like to know if the loading speed with cards that display the globe is satisfactory on your mobile devices (I could only test with mine). I sacrificed a bit of loading time (about 150 ms on my device) for a much better resolution of the borders even when zoomed out.
Downloads:
- AnkiWeb English: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1365662043
- AnkiWeb Deutsch: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1416521286
- .apkg files: https://github.com/Parapoxvirus/cotw/releases/latest
License:
- Free and public domain (CC0).
- All licenses of the data and media I used are listed in the deck description or on GitHub under sources and attribution.
Thanks to everyone who gives this deck a go. Have fun studying :)
Screenshots:
Question: flag → country card type (the icons are explained when clicking the Help button)
