Template talk:Lists of countries by population statistics

WHO ranking
I removed the link to the WHO's health ranking. The paper is quite outdated (2000) and is far too subjective and controversial to be presented as an academic subject. The WHO does not stand by its paper, and it has all but denounced the idea of ranking health systems. —Designate (talk) 19:42, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
 * What source can you point to that shows the WHO not standing by/retracting the list? Jesanj (talk) 22:39, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Adding non-"List of" articles
Recently several of the list articles in this template have been replaced by. (Sorry to call you out like this, and maybe I should've done this via user talk page message, but I think it makes sense to discuss this here.) The links used in place of the lists are articles on the regions' demographics, e.g. this edit which:
 * Replaced List of African countries by population with Demographics of Africa
 * Replaced List of Asian countries by population with Demographics of Asia
 * Replaced List of European countries by population with Demographics of Europe
 * (and added Demographics of the world as a link in one of the group headings, but that's a separate issue)

The problem with these changes is that this template is specifically a navbox for list articles, which are a specific type of content at Wikipedia. (See WP:STANDALONE for guidelines.) These articles exist to present specific information in a specific way, and are linked by a navbox template for that reason. While it's true that Demographics of Asia presents the same information as List of Asian countries by population and more, it's actually the "and more" that's the issue here, as it makes the navbox less useful as a connector of articles with identical structure and intent. You have to work a bit, at Demographics of Asia, to access the same information that's presented right up front in List of Asian countries by population.

More importantly, in some ways, it breaks the navbox utility as a navigation tool between the articles, because it still appears on List of Asian countries by population despite no longer linking to it. That breaks WP:BIDI for the article & navbox. And if the navbox isn't added to the "Demographics of..." article, as is the case with Demographics of Asia, then that's a second WP:BIDI breakage.

If the list articles that overlap with the "Demographics of..." articles are truly not useful, then merges should be proposed to combine them. Then, the merged name will become a redirect, and the navbox will automatically point to the merged article. But unless that's done, I would argue that the defining structure and topic for this template means that it must link to the relevant "List of..." articles, not any substitutes, however appropriate or relevant. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 06:40, 23 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes you are right in everything, except that I think that Demographics of the World should be left because if you see the article it deals with a lot of demographic/population statistics of many specific countries, and also of continents, it is an important article with content that I think should be place here so that people can at least locate it, and so learn more about the demographics of countries in general.--BrugesFR (talk) 06:52, 23 November 2019 (UTC)