Comment by roysting

11 hours ago

Hi. Nice project. One issue though; if you go to the Factbook for any year[1], the link to the entry for “Germany”[2] will take you to the entry for the Gambia for every year I have checked. I have not noticed any other countries where that happens.

[1] https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/archive/2002

[2] https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/archive/2002/GM

4 comments

roysting

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tjsch  11 hours ago

I found another example: searching for "Nicaragua" takes you to the page for "Niger".

  • MilkMp  11 hours ago

    Hi there, I have located the root cause and will be fixing the issue:

    Root cause: CIA uses FIPS codes (CanonicalCode), which differ from ISO Alpha-2 for many countries. Templates and SQL queries prioritized CanonicalCode over ISOAlpha2, so URL codes like /archive/2025/AU matched the wrong country.

    Australia (AU) -> American Samoa (AS = CIA FIPS for Australia) Singapore (SG) -> Senegal (SG = CIA FIPS for Senegal) Germany (DE) -> Gambia (GM = CIA FIPS for Germany)

    • roysting  41 minutes ago

      Thanks for the follow up, I figured it was semantic collision. I noticed the “GM”.

      This is a good example of the importance of strong toping patterns. The GDP of Germany just tanked, we didn’t lose a mars climate orbiter this time. :)

MilkMp  11 hours ago

Hi there, will fix Thank you! Most likely a grouping problem due to the MasterCountry ID.