Talk:List of freedom indices

I live in Australia and I can confidently say I have no rights or freedoms. Please read Aboriginal history, statistics because Aboriginals have the highest suicide rates in the world. Online community stand up on this one and call it out. What’s happening in Australia is breaching international law and a key indicator of oppression is the world doesn’t know

Update the Tables?
I noticed that there are some discrepancies between the ranking listed on the tables on this page and the latest data listed on the indexes' pages. Specifically, the latest data for the Press Freedom shows the US with fewer problems than the UK, but the table on this page does not reflect that. The tables should be updated, and clearly dated as to when the data arrives so we can prevent confusion and keep things as up to date as possible. 129.110.116.65 (talk) 09:13, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

EIU
I'm not completely certain but i think the Economist Intelligence Unitis is based in London as is The Economist newspaper itself. Rokpok (talk) 15:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Netherlands Press Freedom
Netherlands should not be considered a good situation for press freedom. Recently Geert Wilders is being charged for criticizing Islam. Currently the US is at satisfactory situation and Geert Wilders would not be charged in the US for what he said. Lambedan (talk) 01:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

the Netherlands have one of the lowest (best) scores on press freedom in the world acccording to the press fredom index. this page is not supposed to make an ranking. just organize the results of 4 official rankings. and your example is totally wrong because the point is not freedom of speech but freedom of press and Geert Wilders is NOT an journalist —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.126.207.29 (talk) 01:01, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Freest
So what is the freeest country in the World. It appears to be Ireland, who are near the top in all three rankings. But I'm biased, since Im from there. --Richy 20:23, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

By these rankings, it would be one of these (free, free, good sitation).


 * Canada
 * Denmark
 * Estonia
 * Finland
 * Germany —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.246.7.102 (talk) 09:58, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Iceland
 * Republic of Ireland
 * Netherlands
 * New Zealand
 * Sweden
 * Switzerland

The next tier, roughly speaking, are the countries with free, free, satisfactory situation for press freedom (since press freedom is broken up into 5 divisions, not 4 or 3).


 * Australia
 * Chile
 * United Kingdom
 * United States

The interesting thing is that with the exception of Chile, every country in the above list is:


 * in Northern or Western Europe
 * a former colony of England (US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland) where the English culture, language, etc. took root

Daniel Quinlan

Bias in measurement
Not to mention that these rankings are based on western values, any suprise that western countries rank high? That's like asking a person to write an essay on humanity-- chances are they will set the bar low enough to pass as good.

And the english culture was that of aristocracy; the ruling of the higher estates upon the peasants-- not freedom, that is why revolution brought that system down... I think what you mean to say is that those countries have democracies (which comes from Greek culture...).

- 4.152.102.64


 * Regarding bias in measurement, it's not really a factor here I think since western culture values freedom higher than some other cultures. The article is about freedom, it does not try to define best or greatest overall (that would be POV anyway), just list the degree of freedom (as measured by several western institutions, not us).  Second, the history of how English culture evolved from feudalism, monarchy, and aristocracy  is besides the point I was making as well.  Finally, democracy alone doesn't guarantee freedom, or the same level of freedom.  I should also point out that some (maybe all) of the countries listed have a fair claim to not being derived from Greek democracy.  Being first doesn't guarantee lineage.  For example, the Althing of Iceland.  Daniel Quinlan 23:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Zimbabwe and Myanmar are in the least free section, both were ruled by the English. The Estonians come out in the best group, but are not Western European or English. The Japanese and Mauritians come out generally good. They are largely or almost exclusively not of Western European descent.--T. Anthony 02:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Inherently NPOV
I may just nominate this for deletion, because it's inherently POV. First of all, it's original research because it uses it's own qualifiers regarding "free", "mostly free", etc... Second, it is making factual statements about the amount of freedom things have. Wikipedia is simply not allowed to do that, period. Wikipedia can have articles about specific studies if they're notable, but not have an article stating as a matter of fact how much freedom countries have. Nathan J. Yoder 07:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Umm, the qualifiers have been made by the indices listed...

Economic "Freedom"
What exactly is "economic freedom"? I would argue it has nothing to do with what we think of as individual freedom - indeed it has more to do with how free corporations are, which arguably is the opposite of freedom for individuals. It should be noted that the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation are both extreme even in the USA regarding the myth of the free-market as the solution to all problems.

I would argue these indices should be striken - and unfortunately that doesn't leave this "article" with much content.

Brianski 12:32, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * The indices exist external to Wikipedia. Just because you don't like them, it doesn't mean we should pretend they don't exist. Average Earthman 11:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * These indices certainly exist independently of WP; but presenting them in this precise manner includes some claims and statements which should be either substantiated or removed.
 * The article presents a couple of newspapers and a couple of conservative think-tanks as "NGO's". This is a choice, and a somewhat surprising one.  As an effect, a listing partly based on the amount of income taxes is presented as a an "index of freedom".  This is a highly controversial POV.  (Note, that my comments are just from following the links to the WP articles of the various groups and companies behind these indices, and from a general knowledge about how income taxes are viewed by different political groups.)
 * There is also a selection of a few sources and lists, I think. From some comments on this talk page, you might get the impression that actually some authors think that the US should be placed rather high on any index, if the index is to be worthy of inclusion here.  Hopefully, this is not a consensus opinion of the actual article authors.
 * If this article is to be retained essentially unchanged, then there should be some sources added which shows that the view and opinion that these indices indeed measure freedom, and that the news publications and conservative think-tanks indeed are important and mainstream NGO's, is based on a consensus in the academic world of political science and related subjects. If not this is so and can be shown to be so, then the presentation of the lists should be changed radically.
 * I am quite aware that article authors with libertarian opinions might be of the opinion that it is an objective truth that higher income taxes automatically infringes people's freedom, and that outspokenly libertarian foundations are the best representatives of NGO's you could think of; after all, who would be more anti-government? However, e.g. article authors with marxist leanings would probably come to other solutions; and it is not the purpose of WP to propagate the one or the other opinion as the undisputable truth.  If the choices and presentations only depend on the authors personal basic convictions and not sustained by exterior sources, then they should be removed from WP.  This is not a question of whether the libertarian point of view is the true one or not, but of basing the articles on reliable sources.
 * Note that removing or qualifying the claims that these be indices of freedom produced by NGO's does not mean that the listings themselves need to be qualified or removed from Wikipedia. The listings do exist; that is an objective and WP-independent fact; and IMHO they indeed have enough general encyclopedial interest to be presented. The question is what they are presented as.-JoergenB (talk) 07:55, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed this problem and came here to see what had been said. Perhaps the word "freedom" should be changed to something like "laissez faire" for this rating.  One could argue that it is just chance that this is on the other side of the right-left scale than other freedoms, like the right to bear arms.  But the above argument that freedom of corporations tends to limit, and potentially even destroy, individual freedom is a strong one.  Corporate rights are in no way part of human rights.  David R. Ingham (talk) 19:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The poster of this is an imbecile. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.95.129.245 (talk) 10:00, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Italy
I don't see why my changes to Italy state have been reverted. Freedom House clearly state Italy as partially free.

Oh I see, I was reading the press freedom index and not the global one, sorry for the question

Color coding
I just swapped the blue and green color codings because: I acknowledge that this is potentially confusing, as now "all-green" isn't the best, but this is more consistent with external color usage. Please change back if necessary. –Ryan McDaniel 21:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) When more colors are used than just green/yellow/red, blue typically means "better than green", and
 * 2) This agrees with the color scheme used by the Index of Economic Freedom.
 * Personally, I just came to this today (16 March) and I found the mix of colours for "best" confusing. Much better to have the top and bottom colours the same IMHO. Changing the top level for "Freedom in the World" to blue would work. -- Blorg 15:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I'd be in favor of making all top colors blue. If I don't see any objections here in the next few days, I'll do it. &mdash;Ryan McDaniel 04:53, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Seeing 2 votes for, none against, I've made the change. &mdash;Ryan McDaniel 19:00, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That runs counter to Homeland Security Advisory System Sarsaparilla (talk) 00:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Other indices?
I wonder if there are any other widely-known indices. It would be interesting to see one for religious freedom, for example.--Pharos 08:42, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The main index for religious freedom I know of is done by a Freedom House subsidiary. In most comes it comes out about the same as their freedom index, but there are a few exceptions. For example Zimbabwe and Guatemala came out better in the religion index, while Mexico, Greece, and Bulgaria came out worse. Well kind of, see they haven't updated it since 2000 as I recall. However I think Zimbabwe was considered unfree by them in 2000 while Greece was.--T. Anthony 06:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

United States
It seems someone took it upon themselves to alter the entry for the United States, though they forgot to change the colour along with it. It is discouraging to such vandalism. I have made the correction.

How did the US only get a satisfactory rating for freedom of the press?


 * Indeed. And how did the UK get a higher free press rating than the US? In the UK there are a number of things that reporters CAN'T report, like certain things relating to the monarchy and they can't reveal the names of suspects in certain criminal cases (whereas the US newspapers can). In the US, reporters can report ANYTHING, except for maybe the names of rape victims, youth offenders, or members of a ongoing jury. Even in matters of National Security, they can report what they want (see the Pentagon Papers), and if they hold off on a report it's only because they are using their own common sense. Of course they could get sued after the fact, but they are not prohibited from reporting what they feel like reporting. This map is BS.68.164.4.102 (talk) 23:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=639 These are the latest rankings with an article discussing them. There's a section discussing the US. At the bottom there is a link to the questionnaire they used to compile the list. DAF 03:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Isnt the USA partly free and the democracy is flawed and the new militry law that can phisclay stop the press, and that should make it a dangorus situation and the economy is government ran? Mickman1234 (talk) 00:16, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry but this isn't a forum, as soon as the source says those things it'll be in, if not it can't be included. G.R. Allison (talk) 06:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Economist rating
Perhaps we should include the Economist democracy rating? Just a thought. QZXA2 18:56, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Update Tag
Index of Economic Freedom scale requires update, as do results for each country. I.e., Austria is not free, it is mostly free. - MSTCrow 19:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Morocco
Where is Morocco in the indices. It is included in the IPU - International Parliamentary Union- and is not a democratic country. --Nopetro 09:15, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Iraqi Press Freedom
This is a unique situation because their freedom has been steadily rising, yet still threatened by the sectarian violence going on in Iraq. So I have moved this into unique situation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haha169 (talk • contribs) 16:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Naming of press freedom categories
Where is the source for the category names used in this article to describe the rankings of the Reporters Without Borders' Worldwide Press Freedom Index ? They are listed here as "good situation - satisfactory situation - noticeable problems - difficult situation - very serious situation" but all I see in the actual reports are numerical rankings. Was this an arbitrary decision made by an early editor, or is there a citeable source from RWB showing how these category names correspond to their numbers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.198.109 (talk) 12:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

List of indices of freedom?
Isn't this a list of indices of freedom Such as

Please fill if any of the blanks if you know them (with source)


 * Indices of Freedom of press
 * Reporters without Borders


 * Indices of Freedom of Speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_insurance_coverage
 * Indices of Right of Universal Health Care (freedom from insufficiently or unremedied health concerns)


 * Indices of Freedom of Religion


 * Indices of Freedom of Assembly


 * Indices of Freedom of bearing Arms


 * Indices of Freedom of Commerce
 * the Heritage foundation
 * the Fraser Institute


 * Indices of Indices of Freedom of Labor (Freedom of/for Workers)


 * Indices of Freedom of Information (government transparency)

Others I haven't organized ZyMOS (talk) 01:21, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Indices of ......
 * http://www.freedomhouse.org
 * http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_14.htm Freedom index of education state by state within the USA
 * http://www.workerfreedom.org/index.php?content=iwf07 Freedom of/for Workers state by state


 * Not all these indices's are applicable on a global sense. The list seems to US-centric. Seems like you just took the main part of the US constitution.....95% of the planets population is not American. 62.56.66.64 (talk) 21:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Some of those mentioned are only focused on the US, but the list at present is more likely UK-centric. The US does not rank in its "most free" section. However the United Kingdom does as do two English-speaking Commonwealth nations. (New Zealand and Canada) Then again two of the most unfree nations are former British possessions. (Burma and Zimbabwe) Or it could be Eurocentric, although Mauritius is in Africa and is included.--T. Anthony (talk) 11:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Conflict in the table with the map supplied by Reporters Without Borders
I found that Portugal's freedom of press column did not match the supplied map by Reporters Without Borders. In the map Portugal is colored at the higher value of press freedom while the column only gave it a "Satisfactory Situation". From my own knowledge and experience of Portugal I corrected the column to "Good Situation" and colored it blue believing the Reporters Without Borders map as being the most correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.46.127.11 (talk) 16:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

who came up with this chart?
First of all who came up with this chart? Secondly how do i know what "partly free" or "mostly free" means? Please explain the criteria for this chart, because without more information this chart is useless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.17.167.114 (talk) 23:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

-- I would like to thank the person(s) who spent so much time coding this chart. It is a very helpful way to summarize the findings of the various freedom indices. Thank you! Jamiem (talk) 06:09, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

uk not a flawed democracy
If the data that says the UK is a flawed democracy comes from this: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007_v3.pdf then the UK isn't a flawed democracy, so I will change it unless it's based on newer data in which case feel free to change it back. 79.78.111.16 (talk) 16:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Similarly, how is India a "Flawed Democracy"? I come from there and we seem to be able to exercise our voting rights just fine. Not all systems that have multi-parties in their democracies are flawed! Some people might view the US system as flawed while others may not. Just a thought.

How democratic is it if you still occupy a part of another country, Northern Ireland? The UK is doing that as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.193.158 (talk) 12:39, 12 October 2009 (UTC)


 * First of all, we DO NOT rank the countries according to our will or personnel perception. The list is according to the 2008 data of the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index. You can see it here. Secondly, voting rights is not the only criteria in this list, there are other categories such as Functioning of government, Political culture, Civil liberties etc. So even if India does allow all its citizens equal voting rights, it might not be good in other categories. Kindly go to the list and see the individual score of India in each category for further details. Cheers. Marsa Lahminal (talk) 08:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Ordering the table data
When you click the columns, the data should be order by free-to-not-free, rather than Alphabetically! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.76.213.203 (talk) 03:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * More people actually care about if a specific country is free/not free. If they alreaday know if a country is free/not free, why use a table? ABC is easiest way to cater to those who need to know. --haha169 (talk) 03:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Remove
The indices are primary sources. The information from them violates WP:PRIMARY, in a way that, unlike e.g. transcriptions of court proceedings, is quite unequivocally contrary to the interest of WP:NPOV. Their results are not notable WP:NOTABILITY as there is no observable scientific process, let alone peer review, and thus are also unverifiable (WP:V). They are even hidden from the view of empirical observation, as the sources do not provide the formulae by which the rankings are obtained. Without peer review, they must also be considered WP:FRINGE.

There would currently be no irrevocable loss to WP readers who wish to seek out this information, as it is already linked in other articles; however, the fact that information about the indices in those articles is also subject to removal should be considered. Anarchangel (talk) 04:38, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * WP:PRIMARY? You mean the one that says "Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Wikipedia"? These rankings have been reliably published.
 * WP:NPOV? It is a verifiable list of all notable lists of this kind (and it is pretty inclusive) - therefore I would say it is as neutral as it gets. Criticism of the methodologies of the studies goes in he respective article of each.
 * WP:NOTABILITY? The criterion does not refer to an "observable scientific process", and each of these lists had enough coverage to be notable without a doubt.
 * WP:V? The list itself is verifiable, there is no requirement for peer review in WP:V. I quote: The criterion is that it "has been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true"
 * WP:FRINGE? Again, there are enough well-known, reliable, and verifiable sources that discuss the ideas from these lists so that you can't claim that they are from fringe conspiracists.
 * Please stop misquoting Wikipedia regulations and please stop advocating the deletion of a perfectly viable article. -- 192.223.158.46 (talk) 17:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Updated information?
There is no indication as to whether this article is using the most recent indexes. Perhaps the references should be listed in the references section for clarification?--Abusing (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

NPOV issues
I came by the article which is some subjective listing. I tried to neutralise it a bit. I categorised listings per country. One of the leading institution is funded more than half by US government. I added a notice. And table need some additional notices per source. Kasaalan (talk) 05:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Press Freedom, U.S. vs. UK
Why is it that this article has the UK listed as "good situation" and the U.S. listed as "satisfactory situation" for press freedom, while the article specific to that one benchmark (Press Freedom Index) has them tied in 20th place for 2009? And how, specifically, are these numbers attained? It is well-known that the UK has laws specifically prohibiting the publication of certain information (as previous commenters have mentioned), while the U.S. would freely allow that information to be published without incident. &mdash;Gordon P. Hemsley&rarr; &#x2709; 17:40, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

This must be incorrect, one of them has to be moved up or down. the problem is that reporters without borders place the nations in 7 groups while this article only specify's 5. I suggest we take (this article's color =official ranking color) blue=green, green=light green+light blue, yellow=white, orange=yellow+orange red=red. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.126.207.29 (talk) 19:10, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Updates to the table, Press Freedom Index categories?
I updated Freedom House, Index of Economic Freedom and Democracy Index columns of the table to include data from 2010 reports. I also added years to the table header. Especially the Index of Economic Freedom column was changed a lot, as the latest report (http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking) lists only 7 countries as "Free" while the table listed many more. I'm not sure what the source had been, because Finland for example was listed as "Free" while it has never received such a score as there's still a lot of government regulation in place.

I didn't update the Press Freedom Index column because it's unclear to me how the the scores are split into the five categories "good situation", "satisfactory situation", "noticeable problems", "difficult situation" and "very serious situation". The Reporters Without Borders report (http://www.rsf.org/IMG/CLASSEMENT_2011/GB/C_GENERAL_GB.pdf) only shows the categories on the map on the last page, and the map doesn't seem to match with the ranking. Germany for example is shown to have a "good sitaution" and Japan only "satisfactory situation", while Japan is actually higher than Germany in the ranking. Anybody have a source for the definition of the categories? --Antti Salonen (talk) 06:02, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I now updated the Press Freedom Index column to be in line with the 2010 report from Reporters Without Borders. The source is the map included in the 2010 report, and in the case of very small countries the individual reports for each country. It's still unclear to me how the category relates to the score, though. --Antti Salonen (talk) 17:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Original research in the table
The data shown in the table have not taken directly from the freedom indices, but have been reinterpreted by the table's author without going through a source. The most troublesome cases are The Index of Economic Freedom and the Press Freedom Index. The Index of Economic Freedom doesn't use the six categories "free", "mostly free", "moderately free", "mostly unfree" and "repressed", but instead assigns each country a score. And the Press Freedom Index uses scores as well, not the categories "good situation", "satisfactory situation", "noticeable problems", "difficult situation" and "very serious situation". The other two indices do use the categories shown, but also use scores in addition, while the author of the table has chosen only to use the categories.

This could have implications for how a country is ranked (by Wikipedia, not by the sources!). The so-called "all-blue" and "all-red" countries listed on the pages are not "all-blue" or "all-red" according to the source materials, but according to the categories that the table's author has chosen to place them in. Rōnin (talk) 08:12, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

For an indicator of how serious this is, notice how the Index of Economic Fredom ranks the US and Canada:

World Rank Country     Year    Overall Score 	Change from Previous 	Business Freedom 	Trade Freedom 	Fiscal Freedom 	Government Size 	Monetary Freedom 	Investment Freedom 	Financial Freedom 	Property Rights 	Freedom From Corruption 	Labor Freedom 7 	Canada       	2010 	80.4 	-0.1 	96.5 	88.1 	76.7 	54.1 	75.4 	75 	80 	90 	87 	81.5 8 	United States 	2010 	78 	-2.7 	91.3 	86.9 	67.5 	58 	78.1 	75 	70 	85 	73 	94.8

Nearly the same.

Now, here's how this table ranks them:

Canada       	free United States 	mostly free

So this table distorts the results so much that it places the United States in an entirely different category. Rōnin (talk) 08:21, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The Index of Economic Freedom does use five categories in addition to the scores, as you can see here on the Heritage Foundation website: . Canada with a score just above 80 falls into the "free" category while USA with a score just below 80 falls into the "mostly free" category.


 * Likewise, the Press Freedom Index also uses five categories, as you can see on their website: . You have check the individual country reports or check the included map to see the categories for each country. In the case of Press Freedom Index, it is also unclear to me how the numeric scores are mapped into categories. I sent an e-mail to Reporters Without Borders to clarify this, but did not get a reply.


 * In general, I think that the categories are useful for a summary of different indices, as the table remains more readable. A good question is if the four indices in the table are well chosen? Do they measure different things? For example the Democracy Index covers press freedom as well, and is possibly a bit too similar to the index by Freedom House in its methodology.


 * However, there is no original research in the table. --Antti Salonen (talk) 15:18, 14 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Wow, I can't believe I overlooked that! Sorry for raising a false alarm, and thank you for the clarification.


 * Your other points are interesting as well. As for the categories being useful, that's actually what brought me to this page, because the list of all-blue countries is such a useful indicator. It frightened me to see how much shorter the list has become since the last update!
 * Rōnin (talk) 04:10, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * What comes to the "all-blue" countries, it can be pointed out that there are ten countries which are not all-blue because they are not among the very few countries considered "free" by the Index of Economic Freedom. These are all European countries of the Western world, including the four highest-scoring (Scandinavian) countries of the Democracy Index. In these countries there's a fair bit of government regulation still in place, and it is so as a result of functional democracy.


 * This is just an observation. I don't think it can be used as an argument against the inclusion of any of the indices, and I think listing the "all-blue" and "all-red" countries make sense because the readers of the table are no doubt interested in that information and would dig it out anyway.--Antti Salonen (talk) 17:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Hm, yes... Not to mention there are territories with missing information, too... I think I saw Andorra among them, and Antigua and Barbuda, Liechtenstein, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, San Marino and Tuvalu. They seem to all be classified as "free" by the first index, and missing from the other indices. Some of those places look quite interesting, really... Rōnin (talk) 22:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

2011 updates, removal of FreeExistence.Org indices and maps?
I updated the Freedom House and Economic Freedom columns to reflect the 2011 reports, and also updated the list of "all-blue" (just two now) and "all-red" (Vietnam and Syria are no longer) countries.

I have a problem with the section on indices by FreeExistence.Org. From their website it is unclear to me who exactly maintains their indices and if they are updated on a regular basis. Their "Freedom Index" is just a parameterized web interface to other indices, including their own. Their "Gun freedom index" seems to use Wikipedia as a source in the case of many countries. The same goes for their "Drug freedom index". In the very least, I don't think that they (whoever they are) are well-established in the same sense as Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, Transparency International (whose index is currently missing from the article) and so on.

Finally, the maps in the article are out generally out of date. Would it not be enough to have these maps be in the articles for each index? --Antti Salonen (talk) 16:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I too can find nothing about it beyond its web site. It looks like typical self publishing to me.  As such it shouldn't be used as a source for wikipedia.Dejvid (talk) 12:56, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

incorrect colors
some of this article's colors for RWB are incorrect! for example Iraq is classified "noticeable problems",but it has RED COLORS! Palestine is classified as "difficult situation", and it ALSO got red links.

This is cracy, best wishes from 153.110.194.139 (talk) 11:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Polity IV
This is a major index used in political science - http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm

It is probably the least ideologically biased of these indices.

Someone really should add this to the article. --SublimeWik (talk) 05:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Internet censorship
I'm just wondering if, maybe, we could give the list by country a new column that includes data from internet censorship reports by Reporters Without Borders or OpenNet Initiative? Just an idea that I'm throwing out there. --220.239.171.136 (talk) 01:45, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * See Censorship by country and to a lesser extent Internet censorship by country for something similar to what is suggested here.


 * A problem with including that information here is that neither Reporters Without Borders nor the OpenNet Initiative produce a numeric score or ranking of Internet censorship for individual countries. RWB produces two lists, of Internet enemies and of Countries under surveillance. ONI classifies the level of filtering in four areas as pervasive, substantial, selective, suspected, or no evidence. We might be able to include something based on the summary classifications from the Internet censorship by country article, which are in turn based on the data from RWB and ONI and possibly from Freedom House or the U.S. Department of State when no data for a country is available from RWB or ONI. What do others think, would this last be a good idea? --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 21:39, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

The Freedom House (Freedom in the World) column and Economic Freedom (Index of Economic Freedom) are both out of date. The 2012 data is available.
The Freedom House (Freedom in the World) column and Economic Freedom (Index of Economic Freedom) are both out of date. The 2012 data is available. When will this article be updated? Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Merrick79 (talk • contribs) 18:56, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Economic Freedom of the World Index vs. Economic Freedom of the World Report
The article talks about two indexes or reports with similar names and some overlapping institutional sponsorshop. Are there really two separate reports or just one? Here is what the article currently says:
 * Canada based
 * The Economic Freedom of the World Index is a report published by the Fraser Institute. It is a numeric index and its results are not (yet) included in the table below.
 * United States based
 * The Economic Freedom of the World Report, published by the Cato Institute and the (Canadian) Fraser Institute in conjunction with other liberal organizations around the world, measures the consistency of the institutions and policies of various countries with voluntary exchange and the other dimensions of economic freedom.

--Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 21:54, 25 March 2013 (UTC)


 * ✅. My conclusion is that they are the same report. I deleted the duplicate U.S. entry. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 17:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Differences between the table and the "2013 Press Freedom Index
Czech republic is 16th above Germany in the press freedom index, but it's only "satisfactory situation" in the table below, where Germany has "Good situation". I think it must be wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.78.117.1 (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

List of indices by country
What's the importance of listing the indices by country? Especially, since there are only three countries present. I propose to eliminate the country breakdown and arrive with one list. Objections? --Truther2012 (talk) 18:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅--Truther2012 (talk) 16:14, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

The Economist's Democracy Index out of date
We currently have the 2012 index, it's 2014 now, anyone want help update it? Charles Essie (talk) 03:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Correcting mistakes
I spent some time this morning correcting various entries in the table that didn't match the cited sources. But, I am thinking that the only way to be sure that all of the country ratings in the table are correct is to recreate the table from scratch using data taken directly from the sources. We could bring any out-of-date columns up-to-date at the same time. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:49, 27 July 2014 (UTC)

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Academic Freedom Index (AFi)
In March 2020, Germain think tank Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), in cooperation with Swedish V-Dem Institute (Univ. of Goetherburg), Germain FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and American Scholars at Risk (SAR) published a near-global dataset and basic documents of new Academic Freedom Index (AFi). Wikidata d:Q104054373. This index (scaled 0-1, where 1 is maximum value) creates many possibilities for further use nationally and internationally. With AFi one can e.g. compare development of academic freedom in each country in time (e.g. due to educational policy changes) and compare freedom of tertiary education between countries.

The AFi was described by Grimm and Saliba in 2017. Further work and international cooperation was lead e.g. by professor Katrin Kinzelbach (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg). "First edition" of AFi was published in March 2020. This work is based party on assessments (110,000 data points) provided by 1,810 scholars (coders) around the world. Majority of the Globe was covered, with Portugal and Uruguay top the list with scores of 0.971 each. At the bottom of academic freedom in 2019 are North Korea (0.011) and Eritrea (0.015). Unfortunately, total of 35 countries with university education were NOT included in this first AFi listing due to "insufficient coder numbers". Thus, countries like Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Madagaskar, Moldova and Tajikistan did not get AFi value. Surprisingly, also countries like Australia, Switzerland and USA were left without AFi. Therefore, thinking of further annual editions of this AFi, authors request that "scholars with country-specific knowledge on academic freedom should contribute their expertise to the collaborative AFi coding effort."

Authors suggest many applications of AFi. This index could be used internationally e.g. when student or scholar make selections where to study or work. Index can be used to evaluate how well different countries comply international agreements like Article 15 of the UNESCO agreement on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This states that the “States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.” Out of 193 UN member states, 170 have ratified the ICESCR. Authors also suggest, that international university rankings could be scaled with AFi.

Suggested by, --Paju~enwiki (talk) 13:12, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

As far as countries that have no freedom you neglected to mention North Korea!
Was that on purpose or do you think that there is freedom in North Korea and that it is not an authoritarian country? Furthermore, you place Croatia as a non freedom country because of its flawed democracy? What does that have todo with authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc. and what about Venezuela? And I could go on and on! 96.242.121.9 (talk) 02:40, 1 December 2021 (UTC)


 * This is a list of self-labeled NGOs. As with all NGOs, accuracy is not implied. Looking closer, some of the scores actually border on satire, which would place North Korea quite high in the list. ExtremeSquared (talk) 23:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

America is Not flawed it’s a full democracy
Change the chart 47.229.100.152 (talk) 04:40, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Colour
Azerbaijian's economic freedom colour is glitched — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9000:CA02:CACC:A5DD:B2F1:8357:4A80 (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Macao & Hong Kong
Does any of the institutions that made the analysis does it in Macao and Hong Kong context? It should be stated since they differ from China mainland. 89.214.127.107 (talk) 09:40, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

Copy/split to List of democracy indices
HudecEmil (talk) 13:20, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Regarding scores
The scores for each index should be on the right, not the left. That way, it's much less confusing for readers and makes navigation easier. —theMainLogan (talk) 00:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)