Virgin Islands (VI) as a region under United States or with sub regions under Virgin Islands, U.S.?

[papagunit]

Is it consistent to offer the virgin islands as a region under the united states country and keep it as a separate country with its own individual regions? This could lead to data inconsistency when it comes to reporting and segmentation.

Thanks!

ISO 3166-2:VI

[papagunit]

Same could be said of American Samoa.

[benkeen]

Agreed... but it's a tricky one. I think I should probably clarify the purpose of this repo in the README. Primarily it's intended as a practical list of countries/regions that people use, rather than a definitive list according to a standard. Kosovo, for instance, may only be officially self-recognized as a country, but so many people regard it as such, it's reasonable to include it here (it isn't yet, but could be).

I agree for data integrity we want a single entry - and since they're both territories of the US, putting them down as regions seems the most sensible solution. But for practical purposes, I wonder if having them as separate "countries" is more convenient for people, since they're subdivided into separate regions (i.e. the islands) that people readily use. Hmph!

[papagunit]

Ideally they should have a sub-subregion if you chose US -> VI, or if you choose VI at the country level, it changes to US and has the subregion as VI. I'm thinking about this from a segmentation standpoint and marketers are not thinking about these edge cases - say you want to segment contacts who have a country of US. Using this drop down, some contacts might inherently not be part of the US and instead VI, and thereby are excluded from the segment, although the marketer intended for them to be in there because technically they are US residents.

Having the islands/regions within the Virgin Islands for example is nice, but then we might also start arguing for counties/municipalities within a state/province.

This also makes me wonder, do people in these "countries" look for themselves first in the country section, or expect to find themselves in the region section under their self identified country?

Kosovo falls under this.