Islands of the world/Talk

We've left off Hawaii, Oahu, Maui, etc. I'd add them but I have to be off to bed. --KQ

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I'm sure we've left off most islands. But it's a work in progress. - Tim

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The list of islands by region will differ from any list of islands by country. Hawaii, for example, is under Pacific, separated from its compatriot islands under North America. So long as it is a list by region, this is how it should be done. - Tim

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This page concerns me for the simple reason that there are millions of islands in the world... we could never hope to list them all. -- SJK

Is Australia itself regarded as an island (in which case wouldn't it be the largest?), or is it a continental land mass? -- DrBob

It's generally regarded as a continent (if you read the Wikipedia entry for Australia, you'll see it described as such), though AFAICT such division are basically arbitrary. --Robert Merkel

According to a very authoritative source (my junior high geography teacher), Australia is both a continent and the world's largest island. I'll see if I can find some even more authoritative sources to back that up... :) --STG

If you look at the island/continent issue from the viewpoint of continental drift, it's easy to tell whether a landmass is an island or a continent. Islands are either seamounts, (Hawaii, Iceland) or they are the landmasses associated with a continental plate except for the largest landmass. The largest landmass on a plate, of course, is designated as the continent for that continental plate. I doubt that this is an official rule, but it is a logical one. If you use it, you can see that Greenland is an island but Australia is a continent. -- Derek Ross