Talk:world map

RFD discussion: October 2020–January 2021
Sense 2: "(board games, video games) a visual representation of an imaginary or fictional area, where a game or a session thereof takes place". I think this is redundant to #1: "a visual representation of a world, whether real or imaginary". (I think typically in a video game it would be a map of the "overworld", which contains individual levels or stages; but even so.) Equinox ◑ 21:22, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Appears to be a subset of the first sense.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 22:34, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , I changed definition 1. Does the current entry look better now? -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:23, 9 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. I added a picture of the actual world map. One for a video game should also be added. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 15:16, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Consider also that the real sense of a world map versus the imaginary sense (e.g., video game) might translate into different words for a given foreign language. The two lists of translations were probably placed there for a reason even if the second one hasn't been used yet. This is probably not the best example, but take for example these possibilities in German: world map (real) (Weltkarte), world map (video game) (Spielplan / Spielwelt) -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 15:39, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Added the above-mentioned translations. Now we have different translations for both senses in one foreign language. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 16:08, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Just to point out, in case you overlooked it, that sense #1 already includes both real and imaginary worlds, so creating separate senses along real/imaginary lines requires amending #1 in addition to keeping #2. Given that sense #1 already includes imaginary worlds, my feeling is that sense #2 may be intended more to make a distinction between "world" and "area", rather than between real and imaginary, but I am not certain. Mihia (talk) 17:38, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment, . I'm working under the assumption that the translation lists correspond to the defined terms. However, I could be wrong. I believe I may have seen entries here with way more translation lists than defined terms. I'm not sure. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:09, 8 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, regarding the unchallenged sense 1, the def is a bit poor, since there are "visual representations of worlds" that are not maps. Equinox ◑ 18:56, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Can we change definition 1 to "A cartographic representation of the planet's surface"? -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:50, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The definition of points back to map, which makes such a definition circular.  I am tempted to delete world map entirely, but it feels almost like an atomic unit despite the space in the middle.  Vox Sciurorum (talk) 09:14, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * "A projection done to scale representative of the planet's surface." -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 09:28, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Sense 2 says it's a map of "an imaginary or fictional area, where a game or a gaming session takes place": so if the gameplay takes place entirely in one province of what is said to be a larger world, is the map of that province the "world map"? (What if that province is Ontario, a real place?) In e.g. a Final Fantasy game where you can move between the earth and the moon, is the overall map depicting both locations the "world map"? If so, this has some claim to idiomaticity. If not, then clearly delete. (Is that an RFV question?) If kept, sense 2 needs to be expanded / cleaned up, since a game's "world map" need not be of an imaginary or fictional area; a strategy game's world map may be an accurate map of the real world of earth, for example, and I don't think a map of the real world in one game in a series and a map of a fictional world in another are somehow different senses of "world map"! And sense 1 needs to be edited, since as Eq says there are "visual representations" that aren't maps, like 🌎. Btw, we have overworld map, with a definition that reads like it was never updated after a more &lity sense was removed. - -sche (discuss) 03:06, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * The moon in Final Fantasy IV could be a "world", sense 9: "A subdivision of a game, consisting of a series of stages or levels that usually share a similar environment or theme." Granted, it would apply more to a platformer than to the contiguous world of an RPG. Ultimateria (talk) 16:52, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I was thinking something like this. If your game is set only in (say) Victorian London, then that is the world for game purposes &mdash; the gameworld &mdash; and thus "world map" could be considered SoP. Equinox ◑ 09:49, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, and it looks like in Final Fantasy both the earth and the moon have/are separate "world map"s rather than the overall map of both being the "world map". Hence, to make my comment above more explicit, I'd say delete the game-specific sense and revise the main sense as necessary. I note that even "real" "world map"s don't necessarily have to cover an entire globe, if parts of the globe are unexplored/unknown, and likewise maps of the world of Game of Thrones are only of the "known" world. A came set only in Victorian London, where that is the "world", seems like the same kind of thing, and hence I agree with Eq that this is SOP. - -sche (discuss) 17:12, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Poor world map. The knives are being sharpened for you. Once definition 2 goes, that's it for you, buddy. Your 97.6 million hits on Google can't save you. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 10:20, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * A reason to assume that this sense is distinct is because “world” is used here in different senses. The first relates to the earth – perhaps sometimes another planet –, whereas the second sense depicts the whole universe in the game. But game environments, unlike the meat space, are of limited extent, at least in regard of what can be mapped (if they are endless then we are dealing with repetition), so the distinctions of the senses of devised with mainly the meatspace in mind are not really applicable. So it’s the same limited sense of world. And there was agreement that we should not have senses like  “a statue or pendent or other depiction of the abovedescribed animal”, and “ivory” does not mean “a counterfeit of ivory”.  does not mean . Words cannot have their opposites as their meanings only because one often imposes upon people with them. Imitations and simulations of a named concept do not constitute the meanings of its name. The translations are also the same for all languages, the German translations now here  and  are only metonymies in this sense. So delete. Fay Freak (talk) 17:52, 9 October 2020 (UTC)


 * There are also millions of Google hits for "I love my cat", but I hope you would not propose an entry on those grounds. Equinox ◑ 19:40, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not! But maybe the "I Love My Cat Design Thermal Insulated Lunch Bag Cool Bag Box" -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:43, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 06:13, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Ultimateria (talk) 20:07, 12 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep, insofar as it has different translations from the other sense of "world map". bd2412 T 02:38, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * as pointed out by Fay Freak above, the translations given in the entry are incorrect (they're overly specific, not translations of "world map", but rather translations corresponding to "game map", which is a different phrase from "world map" in English, too, and not just in those other languages; the person who added them does not appear to speak those languages fluently). - -sche (discuss) 17:03, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , I agree. The translations probably would have gone better with "game map". I'm not a native speaker like you. Then again, by your own words, you're not really a good example of a High German speaker, either. Be a grown-up, by the way, and just call my name if you're talking about me; this isn't a kindergarten. Let's look at an example sentence in German: "Die Spielwelt mit ihren 12 Millionen Feldern ist so groß, dass auch hier alleine ein kurzes superschnelles Scrollen von einem Ende zum anderen Ende über eine Viertelstunde dauert." Here, Spielwelt could be translated as either "game map" or the "world map in the video game", etc. All sorts of things are possible. I'm not sure why you removed the translations. Being a native speaker, why didn't you supply a better one? As for me, I live in your country and I get by just fine. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 18:39, 13 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Then why don't we change the second definition to game map, and create that entry? bd2412 T 17:30, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Re changing the second definition: the discussion above suggests the usage of world map to refer to maps of game worlds is not distinct, existing on a continuum with usage to refer to fictional books' (partial or complete) world maps, world maps of the Earth (whether whole or, historically, partial), etc. Re creating "game map": it seems SOP (like also its translations). - -sche (discuss) 20:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete, per -sche.--Robbie SWE (talk) 19:27, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Hi,. Would you like to keep the second sense in your world map entry? -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 19:40, 13 October 2020 (UTC)


 * New definition #1, "A map of a world; a cartographic representation, a projection done to scale, representative of a planet's surface", does not contain any information beyond "world" + "map". In my opinion, the alleged gaming sense is equally SoP, since "world" can be used in itself to mean "an imaginary or fictional area". Therefore I vote to Delete this entry unless someone can show convincingly how either sense means anything more than "world" + "map". Mihia (talk) 16:32, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. I'm not thrilled about keeping sense 1, but since this RFD applies only to sense 2, so does my vote. —Mahāgaja · talk 17:07, 14 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello, . I don't mind having sense 2 deleted or kept. A link to gameboard can be added as the reference to games. Liggliluff (talk) 12:40, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , no prob. I guess that settles it. You should know their next step once they've deleted sense 2 is to argue that "world map" is an SOP term. They're going to RFD the entire thing after. But if you're okay with it, great! Have a good one. ;-) -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 12:42, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

For all those who have taken an interest in world map, it would appear that sense 2 now has three citations to support it. What are the implications? I suspect this is no longer a matter for RFD and, at the very least, should be referred to RFV. I await your feedback. -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 13:07, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * We don't have a page for eat tofu and providing three examples of those words together wouldn't justify creating one. On the other hand, we do have Mandarin  because it is not the same as 吃 (eat) + 豆腐 (tofu).  It's slang for groping a woman.  A world map is like a plate full of bean curd, not soft female flesh. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 13:26, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Amusing argument. I really did smile. Correct me if I'm wrong: we're doing the does-sense-2-deserve-to-be-here discussion today not the SOP one, right? -- Dentonius (my politics | talk) 13:55, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

'''Keep but rewrite. I think the definition I describe here can be added to map; see the comment I made lower down.'''. Sorry to ping so many people, but as someone who grew up using video game jargon (meaning I acquired it naturally), I'd say that world map actually does have a separate video game sense, but I think our current definition entirely fails to capture it.

I don't know if everyone here is familiar with a stage select, but essentially, it's a representation of the different levels in the game that allows the player to select a level. I'd say that a world map (or just map) in video games has two senses. The first is the same as sense 1 for world map, a cartographic representation of the places in the game, and is usually found in open world games, such as in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The second sense is a type of stage select for games that are divided into levels as opposed to being open world. Some stage selects aren't maps, like the one in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate; a player would probably correct you if you referred to this screen as a map or world map. But others are similar to cartographic maps aside from the fact that they're often very abstract and only exist as a means of navigating between levels, such as this one from Super Mario Bros. 3 or this one from Super Mario Galaxy 2 (here's a screen from within the map of World 2). It's kind of a continuous vs. discrete thing: the world map in Breath of the Wild is literally just a map of the world (continuous—you can physically walk between these places in the overworld), while one of the other ones I mentioned is functionally identical to if you were to make a list of all the levels in the game (discrete). This second type is the one where it would make sense to have a separate sense for, as our current sense 2 doesn't adequately describe it because no actual gameplay takes place on this type of world map (sense 2 says "where a game or a gaming session takes place").

The page for map has the definition "(board games, video games) An imaginary or fictional area, often predefined and confined, where a game or a session thereof takes place" with the usage example "I don't want to play this map again!" Just to be clear, this sense of map is completely different from everything I just talked about—it's really just a synonym for stage. For example, in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate picture I linked before, the screen with the array of stages is the stage select (not a map/world map, since there's no representation allowing you to navigate between stages), whereas the stage the cursor is hovering over, Golden Plains, is one of the maps you can choose.

I think what we could do here is fix sense 2 for world map and/or add a new sense to map that captures what I just described. It's difficult for me to say whether I think world map is a sum of its parts—I'd say world map and map are more like synonyms—but it's possible I'd use them contrastively in cases like the Super Mario Galaxy 2 maps, where one selects the world and the other selects the stage. —Globins (yo) 06:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I fully understood that, but to the extent that I did, I don't see why is any less "world" + "map" than . I don't see why it makes a difference to SoPness whether one can walk around the world or just use it to navigate to different levels. It could be that I am missing something. I think what might help would be to distil your explanation down to a manageable definition whereby it is clear that the thing being described is not just a "map" of some (imaginary) "world" for reasonable senses of "map" and "world" that are or should be covered under those respective words. Mihia (talk) 23:15, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I was talking with a friend about how to put this in a better way, and I think the most concise definition I can give is this: in video games, a world map is a stage select (which I can create an entry for) stylized to resemble a map (which would exclude things like and ). The reason I made a distinction between the first and second maps you mentioned is because the latter would fall under sense 1 of world map—the game it's from isn't one that's broken down into levels, so it's not a stage select. I think the board game sense would also fall under sense 1. In terms of SoPness, I think it would probably be fine if we delete sense 2 entirely and add a new sense onto the page for map with the definition I just gave. —Globins (yo) 21:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I am still struggling to understand why e.g. is not a "map" of a "world" for meanings of those words that exist outside the phrase "world map". I don't see why it matters whether the map shows the location of levels or stages within a landscape, or a continuous playing area, so long it depicts an imaginary "world" in which the gameplay exists. Nevertheless, if "world map" really is strongly a set phrase in gaming jargon, with very specific meaning(s) that you allude to, then perhaps these senses should be kept. I think more input is needed on this from other people, especially others who (unlike me) are familiar with gaming terminology. Mihia (talk) 20:26, 29 October 2020 (UTC)


 * RFD-deleted. —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 22:59, 1 January 2021 (UTC)