File talk:Churches Orthodox Communion Europe.png

It's a very good idea to have a map like this in the Commons, but, unfortunately, the map as it stands right now suffers from two very serious shortcomings:

1. From a purely functional standpoint, the choice of colors is terrible. There are too many different shades of yellow that are hard to tell apart, the two colors used for the two different Alexandrian Churches are also difficult to make out, Albania looks like it's part of the Church of Serbia and Cyprus looks like it's part of the Church of Greece. We need to change the colors for better contrast and clarity.

2. Is the map supposed to represent the areas where believers of the various Churches live or the areas claimed by the various Churches as part of their jurisdiction? Right now it's a jumble of both, sometimes representing the first thing and sometimes the other. The Serbian Orthodox Church is shown to include Hungary but not Kosovo (?!), whereas both of them should be included if we go by jurisdiction and neither of them should be included if we go by population. The two Patriarchates of Alexandria are shown to include Libya but not the rest of Africa, even though they both claim all of Africa as their jurisdiction (but have almost zero believers in North Africa outside of Egypt). Likewise, the EO Patriarch of Jerusalem has jurisdiction over the Arabian peninsula, even though no Orthodox Christians currently live there, so if we go by jurisdiction it should be colored. The Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch does not claim jurisdiction over the parts of Turkey belonging to the Ecumenical Patriarchate - its territory overlaps that of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. And neither of them have any significant presence in Iran, although it is part of their jurisdiction.

So, in brief, if we go by jurisdiction, the following changes need to be made:

• Kosovo shown as part of the Serbian Church
• All African countries shown as part of the two Alexandrian Churches
• Saudi Arabia shown as part of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem
• The parts of Turkey under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate shown without any Antiochian shading.
• A small corner of northeastern Turkey shown as part of the Georgian Church (see this map)

On the other hand, if we go by population (i.e. the countries where the various Churches have a significant presence), the following changes need to be made:

• Hungary and Slovenia removed from the Serbian Church
• Libya removed from the two Alexandrian Churches
• Iraq removed from the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, and most of it colored grey
• Most of Turkey colored grey
• Iran and Kuwait colored completely grey

I would make the changes myself, but first I believe a discussion is necessary to decide which principle we want to apply to this map (jurisdiction or population). I lean towards the principle of jurisdiction myself, since it is the one least likely to cause controversy (if we go by population, we could argue for a long time about what constitutes "significant presence"). Ohff (talk) 18:44, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I agree with part of the discussion. I would take out the Eastern Orientals which make the map complicated. This part is faulty anyway becaue the Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch never really had any say in parts on todays Iraq and Iran which was area of the Church of The East (today: "Assyrian", formerly called "Nestorian").

I would go for "main traditional jurisdictions of the Orthodox patriarchs", forget about claimed areas but go for longtime factual dominance and put footnotes that a) areas of jurisdictions underwent changes in history, b) since the spread of Islam the vast majority population in Arab and Turkish speaking countries has become Muslim (one could add some THIN green strips to indicate this) c) since WW I most of the Christian population has been removed from Turkey.

We cannot show all historical changes of millenia in one map. We should also cut out recent migration (so there are again Coptic churches in Arabia proper: Dubai, Sharjah, Ras al Khaimah, Kuwait; majority of Syrian Orthodox now in Germany - but also in the Gulf States...; majority of Christians of the Constantinople now all over Europe and USA) but lets leave that off the map. So I would forget about Lybia (grey). If you can do it please go ahead!!! Kipala (talk) 07:37, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

People with colour deficiency

My son has red-green colour deficiency and was not able to distinguish many of the colours chosen for the different jurisdictions. There are too many similiar yellows, greens and reds. Commercial map makers (especially for those for educational purposes) make the accommodations for this when choosing the colours in maps. This could be something to consider in future versions of the map. Dr.khatmando (talk) 13:25, 14 April 2017 (UTC)