Talk:List of international professional associations

WP:NOT
isn't this just a list of indiscriminate information (besides the obvious connection of being "professional")? --Fredrick day 10:56, 9 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. It's a linkfarm, so the links need to go.  Then we need some inclusion criteria. --Ronz 21:58, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Have any decisions been made regarding the proper use of this page for creditable associations? Regards, --Mike Smith (talk) 00:56, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

We could nominate it for deletion. It's absolutely ridiculous. If we don't do that, then we should use blue links as the criterion. That would cut down on many nn organizations. Carl.bunderson (talk) 05:26, 11 March 2008 (UTC)


 * At the time the above comments were left, this was List of professional associations. It had national sub-lists, which duplicated Category:Professional associations by country. I therefore repurposed the list as "international", moved it to include that word in the name, and deleted the country lists. As there is no corresponding category this seems to justify the existence of the remaining list for the time being. - Fayenatic (talk) 22:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * And I object to the move. It was neither suggested nor discussed. We all know Lists and Cats can coexist. Whats the purpose in limiting the scope when its not required? The allegation that it is a linkfarm is false. I would surmise at least 90% of the links were to actual Articles. In performing this action, I assume your attempting to lump it into WP:Linkfarm #2, but the logic of why escapes me. It was providing navigation, as well as delineating scope and the region of interest of each organization. Something that it is no longer doing. NOW its a linkfarm, providing less assistance to navigation, nor indicating scope of individual organizations. Seems actually harmful to the concept of WP:BUILD the web. I think you have placed to much weight on comments that are all more than a year old, and in half the case more than 2 years old. This list has improved since that time. Why dont you take a look at how the List was when the comments were made. THEN it was a linkfarm. Exit2DOS • Ctrl • Alt • Del 00:26, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Linkfarm was not the only problem. There were other things wrong with it, some of which are noted in my and the other comments above. The Europe section had four entries: two that are not professional associations, and two without articles. In most cases, the region of operation is clear from the name; American institutions don't seem to see the need for this, but they are listed in Category:American professional bodies, so listing them here was not adding any information that is not already available in Wikipedia. The list was also woefully incomplete, and would become huge and unwieldy if anyone attempted to make it complete. I am usually very thorough about consulting, but in this case I thought the list was so poor that it was worth a WP:BOLD edit to strip it down to something distinctive and justifiable, especially as nobody had left any supportive comments here. If anybody else objects, I'm happy for you to revert it and start a discussion at WP:RM. Come to that, you can of course do so anyway. - Fayenatic (talk) 12:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * So basically your saying : 1/ a Cat exists and 2/ its incomplete. And you believe the list is better off now? Exit2DOS • Ctrl • Alt • Del 23:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes. A list can add information not available from categories, e.g. an alternative order (perhaps by industry sector, e.g. construction/ finance/ science/ law/ information) or additional information on each item (e.g. year founded). In this case, the national parts of this list were simply alphabetic lists and very incomplete at that, so they added nothing to the categories. Certainly I think it's better without them. - Fayenatic (talk) 14:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Why only international?
The List of learned societies includes International and National bodies. Why does the title of this article preclude national bodies? (Note the redirect from the original.)--Graham Proud (talk) 03:18, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria
This list seems to be lacking any meaningful inclusion criteria. It may even be WP:OR if there isn't a clear underlying source for defining these bodies as international. Some of these bodies, such as the International Astronomical Union are truly international, but others appear to have been added randomly. I would suggest that an international professional association should be either recognised by an international body (such as the International Science Council) or by multiple national professional associations (as is the case for many European international associations), or have formal government recognition in multiple countries. That would push the decision over whether something is "international" away from editors and self-definition. Being a national association with a large international membership should not be sufficient to qualify. Robminchin (talk) 20:16, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

List trimmed (August 2023)
In keeping with the stated criteria that "These organizations are either chartered by international bodies or by relevant national professional associations from multiple countries", I have removed bodies that clearly do not meet this. I've taken a broad interpretation of this and kept in bodies that consist of national chapters (such as PEN International), as being in the spirit of being 'chartered ... by relevant national professional associations' even if not technically meeting the letter of this. Robminchin (talk) 18:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)