Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Demographics of the Kingdom of Hungary (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. The article may need clean-up (and possibly renaming) - but these are not reasons for deletion. I suggest that a rename request be made on the article's talk page, and a discussion take place there. --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 20:40, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Demographics of the Kingdom of Hungary
AfDs for this article: 
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This article is a collection of unreferenced esoteric data. In particular, it does not appear meet the Wikipedia guidelines for: 1) "Excessive listing of statistics" per WP:WWIN, 2) Verifiability (WP:V), 3) No Original Research (WP:NOR), and 4) WP N (in general). - Idunno271828 (Talk &#124; contribs) 00:28, 23 October 2010 (UTC) *Delete as unsourced and unverifiable. I recognize that, in 2006, information about the 1910 census might have been unavailable on the internet and that the author might have relied upon an old book for the numbers and just forgot to mention things like the title and publisher, but that's a lot of "might haves". I'd change my mind if someone could locate a source. Mandsford 23:51, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete WP should be about articles to read, and other things (like lists etc.) supporting that. It's not for raw census data, by "not a directory." Or failing that some of the other policies cited above. Or by "WP:Don't waste your time writing an article you wouldn't want to read." Or by "WP:Readers are not stupid. You can not write an article without sources. If people want this information they can go to the same sources."  -Steve Dufour (talk) 00:44, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The article is sourced, to the Révai nagy lexikona, a major encyclopedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 08:40, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, the author wrote "Sources: Révai Nagy Lexikona", though that's not much different than writing, "Somewhere in an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica". I guess the guy wasn't into things like page numbers and such.  Looks like Gregory B has found something as noted below.  Mandsford 14:57, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Mandsford, I just wanted to point out that the link GregorB has provided below is to a scanned PDF copy of the entire book Révai Nagy Lexikona. I believe your analogy to the source being "Somewhere in an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica" is still very much true. - Idunno271828 (Talk &#124; contribs) 22:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:14, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Hungary-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:14, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Croatia-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Serbia-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Slovakia-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Romania-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:16, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - It's pretty obvious that the source of this material is the 1910 national census, which would have been the last before the breaking up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I. Thus the rather esoteric date DOES have a significance. Should a better sourcing note have been made? Of course. Is this enough of a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Not in my opinion. As we are well aware, nationality questions remain a burning topic in Europe and this strikes me as fully encyclopedia-worthy as topic and retention-worthy in terms of standing content. I'll put up a RESCUE banner in the hope that more definite sourcing materializes. Carrite (talk) 02:24, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Carrite, I certainly agree with you about the nationality questions in Europe and a Wikipedia article on the demographics of Hungary is definitely important. But there already is a well-written article about the Demographics of Hungary that contains data, analyses, references, etc., and also addresses the evolution of the demographics of Hungary through a long period of history.  Given the existence of this article, I feel that the AfD (the Demographics of the Kingdom of Hungary) does not have as much value as it would have if the article on the Demographics of Hungary did not exist (regardless of it being simply a list of data). - Idunno271828 (Talk &#124; contribs) 22:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. There's nothing particularly "esoteric" about the data. It took me literally two minutes to find a possible online source: http://mek.oszk.hu/06700/06758/pdf/. Provided this could be used, there's no reason to delete. GregorB (talk) 10:24, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Excellent find.  Each volume of the encyclopedia is imaged, and the search engine on the page will lead to what's inside a volume (for instance, type in "Abaúj-Torna" and it goes quickly to the article within Volume I).  Google translate does have a function for Hungarian to English, so there's hope for someone to back the article up.  Mandsford 15:08, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * GregorB, thank you for posting the link to the scanned PDF copy of Révai nagy lexikona. I feel you took offense to my use of the word esoteric, and I would like to apologize for using it.  I simply feel that the AfD is a list of data with no analysis.  If the title of the article is something like "Census data for the Kingdom of Hungary (1720-1910)" I don't have a problem with it.  This article, however, is titled as an "article" instead of a "list" and so it automatically gives the impression that it provides an exposition of the demographics of the Kingdom of Hungary with analysis based on the data.  Also, there already is a good article on the Demographics of Hungary in the English Wikipedia.
 * Mandsford, you make good points about the search feature in PDF software combined with the use of Google Translate, but since plenty of references (citations) are needed for the various data in the article this would be truly a non-trivial task. I'm also not sure how we could comply with the policy on the use of non-English sources too (WP:NONENG), particularly "When quoting a source in a different language, provide both the original-language text and an English translation in the text or a footnote."  Perhaps a better solution would be for this article to be transferred to the Hungarian version of Wikipedia, where the source material can be used directly?  Just a thought, please do comment. - Idunno271828 (Talk &#124; contribs) 22:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Absolutely no offense taken. "Esoteric" was perhaps simply not the most fortunate description. Two problems remain: the article's content does not correspond to its title (as duly noted by yourself - rename per Dream Focus below looks like a good idea), and it is effectively still unsourced. This is a big book and those are 100 Mb apiece PDFs, so just saying that it is "somewhere inside" is still not enough. I was hoping that Hungarian-speaking editors would be able to help. GregorB (talk) 23:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - Trying to argue that the demographics of a large European country are not notable or verifiable is not going to work. I'll agree that the article currently is an excessive listing of statistics and needs major cleanup, but I don't think deletion is the answer here.  The article just needs to emulate some of the better demographics articles, like Demographics of Switzerland.  Snotty Wong   talk 13:52, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The opening line of WP:V: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth — whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."  If someone's statement isn't verifiable, that's probably the  main arguments in favor of getting rid of the statement, and it works every time. For all the numbers that got recited here, the article's author never seemed to take note of the "page number".  Mandsford 21:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, so get rid of the information that is not verifiable and replace it with information that is verifiable, which clearly exists. Snotty Wong   talk 15:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Snottywong, there already does exist an article on the Demographics of Hungary just like the one on the Demographics of Switzerland. The article I proposed for deletion is a complilation of historical census data, which has already been analyzed and incorporated in that form in the article on the Demographics of Hungary. In addition, I believe your proposal to get rid of unverifiable information and replace it with verifiable information cannot be readily accomplished because there appears to be only one accessible source for this information: a Hungarian encyclopedia.  Using that as a source would likely be easy in the Hungarian Wikipedia, but would require plenty of translations for the English Wikipedia, and this is going to be difficult per WP:NONENG. - Idunno271828 (Talk &#124; contribs) 22:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:NONENG only requires translations of direct quotations from sources, so is not an issue here. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep This one has more information than the other one does. And its all based on the 1910 Census, plus is featured in a major printed encyclopedia.  Call it the 1910 Census data for the Kingdom of Hungary if you wish.  It is quite encyclopedic to list everything, instead of just eliminating valid information for the purpose of a shorter summarized version that makes up a small part of another article.  Having year by year census data available for each country, would be quite useful for some who wish to access that information.  WP:ALMANAC   D r e a m Focus  23:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Userfy Being able to prove any of this would be even more useful. I can't imagine two users more diverse than Snotty Wong and Dream Focus, but they seem to be in agreement on this.  No offense intended, both persons stand up for what they believe in.  However, I'm amazed at how many people seem to assume the accuracy of the figures in here.  This really needs to be userfied if someone is going to attempt a rescue.  For anyone who is going to attempt what User:Ocsi should have done when he or she cranked this out, it's going to take awhile.  It's not impossible, but downloading even one of the volumes, and even at high speed, takes awhile, after which search can be done for the 1910 language census using various terms.  Mandsford 13:04, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment This sounds like something more suitable at Wikisource? There is no discussion about the statistics (nor should there be, probably) so other than a bit of fancy formatting, there isn't any particular encyclopedic content. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 08:21, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. (I will just comment on your comment without starting a new comment.) The article starts out: "This article is about the demographic development of the Kingdom of Hungary during a time period between 1715 and 1910." But all it contains is data for 1910, nothing about development.-Steve Dufour (talk) 18:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Userfy I think the topic is worthy for inclusion, but in it's current form it is just an extensive list of statistics. Armbrust  Talk  Contribs  13:59, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment We should rename it, because Demographics of Hungary page does exist (e.g. 1910 Census data for the Kingdom of Hungary)or the matter of article should be inserted into Demographics of Hungary.Fakirbakir (talk) 21:55, 28 October 2010 (UTC) It contains well detailed informations about Hungarian counties around 1910. It is worthy.Fakirbakir (talk) 22:42, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.