Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of countries by formation dates


 * 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 No Consensus defaulting to Keep. There is no consensus that I can see between those who think the list is inherently POV and unmaintainable, and those who think the issues with the list can be solved and that it is a valid topic for a list. I encourage those who think it should be kept (and others of course!) to discuss on the talk page ways to improve the list. Davewild (talk) 11:38, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

List of countries by formation dates

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Procedural nomination, this article was tagged as prod, but was previously kept in an AfD. Switching to AfD on behalf of the nominator, User:Largoplazo -- lucasbfr  talk 17:05, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed deletion text follows:

Two reasons:
 * 1. The "formation date" of a country is an inherently subjective or even made-up term so this list can't help but be a perpetual WP:NPOV violation.
 * 2. "List of countries by [characteristic X] implies a list in order by value of characteristic X, whether in ascending or descending order, and indeed there are numerous "list of countries by" articles in which the countries are arranged in the expected order. This article lists countries by continent and then alphabetically, and merely has data about supposed formation dates.

Therefore, the article's title is a misnomer and the article doesn't serve the purpose implied by its title.

Summary: the current and potential utility of this article are both low.

'''This is not a vote, but a discussion. Voice opinions, not numbers.'''
 * Note to closing Admin: please review this edit which totally rearranged this AFD discussion page. Another User subsequently tried to restore the page, here, but it is tremendously difficult to discern if any contributions have been lost or distorted. Is this kind of disruptive behaviour acceptable? Should the User who tried to rearrange the whole AFD discussion be warned not to repeat such edits in future? --Mais oui! (talk) 10:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * For some reason this editor dislikes me and wishes to create ill will. I have attempted to communicate with him numerous times only to be rebuffed. All I did was try to facilitate the discussion by grouping them into categories. Nothing more nothing less. I didn't think about numbering them, I should have made them bullet points. When objections arose I did not revert since I thought their objections notable, reasonable, and honest. I would request this user to go through with his challenge to my honour and check that edit and see if their can be found any discrepancies, omissions, or any disingenuous actions I undertook to undermine this AfD. Instead of carefully worded slights you could at least let people know what you find. I honestly do not understand why you have such a low opinion of myself or my contributions when before this month I had nothing but high regards to yours. But this petty bantering and refusal to talk is rather beneath both of us. Isn't It? Please lets come back to the round table that Wikipedia is and work together to make this encyclopedia the best it can be. -- UKPhoenix79 (talk) 11:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Surely UKPhoenix' neutrality indicates that he didn't, nor would wish to, distort or in anyway alter any comments/votes. Please take the time to look at UKPhoenix's rearrangement. It is actually quite helpful. Particularly these AfD votes, that dont have any "support" or "oppose" areas, can become very confusing...--Camaeron (talk) 12:12, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for coming to my defense. If consensus is to reinstate it then I will, though I don't think it would be appropriate to number them. But yes! any comments yet? -- UKPhoenix79 (talk) 22:42, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I like it. Since we have multiple dates for a number of countries, I think it best to list them in the general order of creation rather than by any one date. Celarnor Talk to me  22:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you put this under the wrong conversation. -- UKPhoenix79 (talk) 23:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I was talking about your rearrangement. Celarnor Talk to me 16:29, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh... Sorry about that. Any other ideas or comments? -- UKPhoenix79 (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong keep! Sure it needs a bit of a clean up but this article is very useful. Difficulty maintaining NPOV is not a reason to delete an article... --Camaeron (talk) 17:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment : Perhaps it would be a good idea to rename this page to " List of countries by date of statehood" as the meaning of country varies, the meaning of state, admittedly does too, but not as much! --Camaeron (talk) 17:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong keep. The subject itself is notable and verifiable.  This is not grounds for deletion.  It may be grounds for changing the article's title and to include some general guidelines to reach a consensus on 'formation', but this is the improper forum for that proposal. Celarnor Talk to me  17:22, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete - as one massive big POV-magnet. The entire concept of the article is a breach of WP:OR and WP:VERIFY. The History is littered with WP:SYNTH, WP:UNDUEWEIGHT and WP:MADEUP travesties. If someone can provide me with a list of respectable external refs which prove that this is a valid encyclopaedic topic then it would be some progress, because despite many such appeals not one valid ref has ever been provided. --Mais oui! (talk) 17:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep - as this article is useful. GoodDay (talk) 18:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete The list is not actually arranged by date and so is both misleading and redundant to List of countries. Since various dates are tenable for each country, such as Egypt there is no obvious rearrangement which will improve matters. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:13, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment. Infobox Country has parameters established_event1/established_date1 .. established_event9/established_date9, reflecting that many countries have multiple candidate dates. The only way to make the list-article work is to have three columns: "country - established_event - established_date" and copy-paste the dates and types from the corresponding country-article's infobox. Anything else  is an automatic Contradict-other tag for both the list-article and the country-article.  Any debate over a particular date can take place on the country article rather than the list article, since there are likely to be a greater number of informed contributors there. jnestorius(talk) 18:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * That was a very good comment. Wouldn't you like to vote, what are your views on the matter? --Camaeron (talk) 18:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Wikipedia is not a democracy so I don't feel obliged to vote. In its current format, it's useless and should go. If someone is willing to put in the effort to convert the article to a reasonable format, it should stay.  (I am not that person.) It would require about the same effort to recreate from scratch, so it hardly makes a difference.  jnestorius(talk) 18:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This is afd - no-one "votes" here. The important thing is the flow of debate and the consensus which is reached in it. Grutness...wha?  09:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete this article will either become forgotten and full of errors/contradictions or be a perpetual string of pointless arguments. Countries such as Egypt, China, or England have long histories full of various constitutional events - creating enough space to accomodate all those AND accomodate (say) East Timor won't work. Secondly why would anybody look up this article? The useful information is on the country's own page and hence this article is only useful for cross comparison -but in many cases you wouldn't be comparing like with like. Perhaps a list of countries by dates of independence, with countries that don't have such a date ommitted or noted as such? Nick Connolly (talk) 19:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. I feel this is a valuable reference tool. And I don't buy the argument that it would become full of errors. For one thing, countries don't retroactively change their creation dates (i.e. the US won't decide that it was founded on July 3). Just like every other article, there will be people who will police this and make sure any errors are corrected. 23skidoo (talk) 22:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment the errors arise because the wrong significance can be given to particular dates. For Example the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland isn't even 100 years older making it younger than the US or Australia - but that is highly misleading because Britain is actually much older dating back to the Act of Union and England and Scotland even older. The UK desn't have neat founding dates or clear constituional status (go to Talk:London and see if London is the capital of England or not....). Even the USA is problematic - the signing of the decleration of independence, the end of the war of independence and the signing of the US constitution are all dates which arguably mark the formation of the USA. If we use the criteria used for the UK (when it gained or lost constituent bits) then the current USA was formed when Alaska became a state.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nick Connolly (talk • contribs) 18:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep per above. Well organized presentation of information, parameters are spelled out, and, as others point out, it has been well-maintained (since Sept. '05).   Although there are additions that can and should be made, dates of sovereignty and dates of establishment of the current form of government are verifiable from many sources (e.g., World Almanac).   As others have pointed out, the governments of these nations identify (and celebrate) when the nation came into being.   Edit as necessary... Mandsford (talk) 23:47, 17 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - if kept, then either the format of or the title of this page needs to be changed. As it stands, this is not a "list of countries by formation date" - it is an alphabetical list of countries showing their formation dates. A list of countries by formation date by definition would either start with the oldest and finish with the newest or vice versa - it wouldn't go from A to Z. Grutness...wha?  02:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that list is sure to go down a blast. :) +Hexagon1 (t) 05:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, the page should be what the page says it is. At the moment it isn't. BTW, who's idiotic idea was it to refactor this page so that all the keeps are in one place, all the deletes are in one place, and answers to individual comments are no longer immediately after the comments they refer to? We're already having editors who are having to link individual comments on different parts of the page (such as Hobbeslover's note against one of the keep !votes above) - it just ruins the flow and disrupts the purpose of the page. AFD pages are kept in discussion order to make it easier to read the way opinions change as the discussion continues. By refactoring it like this is makes it look like a simple tally-up, which it never is (there are no votes at afd, only voiced opinions). The flow of opinion back and forth is far more important in the discussion of an AFD, both from the point of view of the final outcome and for people entering into the debate as it progresses. I'd like to see this put back into the usual format, like it was before someone decided to mess it up. Grutness...wha?  09:03, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, I was surprised when I saw this page - too much focus on numbers and not enough on opinions. +Hexagon1 (t) 09:14, 18 March 2008 (UTC) PS: I just rearranged it, hopefully I didn't screw anything up too badly. +Hexagon1 (t) 09:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I've just factored in the comments where they're meant to be, too :) I don't think you screwed anything up - hope I didn't! Grutness...wha?  10:36, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong keep So what if it's a list of things available on other pages? If it's verifiable information (as noted by Mandsford), it's helpful to have them in a big list.  We list US states by statehood date (see U.S. state); if we can get verifiable dates for countries, it's at least as helpful.  And look at the criterion for sovereignty: it's apparently using a strict bit of when the country had its own government; nobody believes that Japan first began to exist in 1952, but that's listed as when the country last began to rule itself.  Seems somewhat of an odd criterion, but it's good enough to enable the article to be POV.  It's useful, it's in line with policy, and I can't see why we should delete it.  Nyttend (talk) 02:54, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Neutral - I could go either way rather easily. On one hand this is a page that has a troublesome history and is a magnet for people to tout their views (dates going back to 3,000BCE are ridiculous). While editors trying to make some sense of this page and are willing to work on it only get hounded by other editors as proliferators of OR while themselves not willing to assist in improving the article (not trying to point fingers or start an argument here btw, no need for that). On the other hand I don't believe that confusion on the name or POV claims are valid reasons for deletion only a call for a massive re-working of this page & better definitions given that will ensure correct and non OR dates given. -- UKPhoenix79 (talk) 03:41, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Very Strong Keep Useful as hell! I don't see how formation date is POV, care to explain further? The Dominator (talk) 03:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Read my comment (#5, delete) for some more insight. There are some countries where it declares itself as independent but is not recognized as such by any other country, even today? In this case, what is its date of formation? What about countries with many different important dates, each of which could be a date of formation? Tibet and Kosovo are good examples. It's POV because if you are Tibetian, you would say your "country" was formed on this date, but if you are China, you will say another thing. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 07:49, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Not to mention the whole "My country X dates back to 900,000 BC when the cave-men drew our coats of arms on cave walls" thing that some nationalists are ever so fond of. +Hexagon1 (t) 09:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * If a country alone recognizes itself as independent then it is not independent, not unless the country that it wishes to be independent of grants it independence. Also, just because an article is prone to POV pushers isn't a reason to delete, we wouldn't delete an article on 9/11 because people add their POVs there. However, I recognize your concern and have a proposition: in the column "Formation date" we put in all separate dates and have a large "History" or "Notes" column where everything would be explained in a brief summary style. For example; "date X, declaration of independence, date Y constitution written and date Z UN approval" with a short history of how things happened at different times, this would make the article not only less POV, but also have it containing more useful info. Thoughts? The Dominator (talk) 04:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This idea would definitely work, but I don't think it's an "excellent idea" in terms of should we implement this. This would just create a large mini-article for every country. We already have country articles, and we have lists of the countries in the world. I think we should just delete this and use those two existing lists to cross-reference each other. Yes, it won't be as convenient as having one page, but having one page won't really work: it will either be flawed or too large and duplicate data. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 06:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree, country's formation dates are a major research thing and sure people could read the respective country articles, but if somebody is looking for just formation dates they would have to search a whole bunch of different articles, it's more convenient to have it all in one article, IMHO. The Dominator (talk) 13:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 *  Delete Strong Delete - Hmm, tough call. Even though the article can be useful and is likely to get reincarnated in some form by users unaware of our AfD, the article is somewhat strange, to put it mildly ("Birth of current form of government" - that sounds painful and wrong). The events are for the most part sourced on their respective pages. Then again the list is basically infeasible, from Serbs deleting Kosovo to evil nationalist Czechs (*waves*) unhappy about the 1993 date there's bound to be conflict. I think this kind of thing is best left to the individual country pages which manage it more than sufficiently in two or three significant dates with the consensus of the community - changes to this article easily get overlooked. PS: No, I'm not voting delete because of the 1993 date. I'm better than that. :) +Hexagon1 (t) 05:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete I don't see this being useful: honestly, who would ever search for this? Further more, per some of the above, this is hopelessly WP:OR. You can't just create an list of "countries" with dates. What does it mean to be a country? What is a "formation date"? This is a neat concept within the modern thinking, e.g., the United States has a neat date of July 4, 1776 and 1783 as the end of the Revolutionary War, so we have some simple markers to go by. Even so, the US has TWO dates, what exactly is our "date of formation"? And the US is a simple case, what about countries such as Kosovo who has declared independence but is not recognized by any country? There are just too many problems with this list. Lists are good for some things but the nature of countries/nation-states is something that requires much more analysis than a list. Hobbeslover talk/contribs 07:40, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * 'Who would search for this is not a relevant argument'. There are many, many things on Wikipedia that I would like to apply that to (List of awards and nominations for American Idol contestants), believing that it's useless information.  However, this is useful to someone.  Someone could be doing a project on the longest established government still in existence today; that would be a prime use for this article.
 * The problems that most people seem to have are either "people will vandalize it", and "there are multiple dates". Both of these baffle me.  If we can't reach a consensus on the establishment of the US government here, then why is it on United States of America?  Why can't that information be included here?  As for vandalism, that's simply an inane argument.  This is Wikipedia.  People are going to vandalize and POV-bomb everything.
 * A country would be a date (or dates, if one isn't available) upon which the country became sovereign under that given regime. For entities such as Kosovo; that is far too modern.  For the time being, relevant entries regarding obviously notable government-starting dates can be entered (e.g, if/when the UN recognizes their sovereignty), along with the date they declared independence, just as the page for the United States lists both the date of the signing of the Declaration and the close of the Revolutionary War.
 * Regarding the duplication of information, that is, and has never been, a problem with Wikipedia. Wiki is not paper.  If it presents the format in a more useful format for a given purpose, then it's fine, and ipso facto, listing them by their formation date does that. Celarnor <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me  07:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. Plus, the AfD "summary" has nothing to do with the two reasons listed above it. Mrprada911 (talk) 07:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * And your contribution to the debate would be? This is not a vote. +Hexagon1 (t) 09:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * VERY STRONG DELETE. The parameter used for sorting the list is POV per definition.  For example Jacques Chirac once said France is the oldest nation state in the world together with China.  I think he was right because the King of France manage very early in the Middle Ages to create a uniform nation state.  Some dates the creation of France back to the Baptism of Clovis.  Others to the reconquest of France by Jeanne d'Arc.  Ask any German when Germany was founded: there is only one possible answer: 1870 by Bismark though many will say afterwards but the Federal Republic of Germany was founded by Adenauer in 1949.  So the whole list is a big POV article which has no place at all in any encyclopaedia! Vb (talk) 10:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep Most states have their founding date in their articles. This article should be retitled "List of countries by date of statehood," since "countries" don't get founded. The geography of some island countries has been stable on a timespan of millions of years, give or take a few volcanoes and changing sea levels, while the political governance of states varied greatly. I have issues with many of the dates, such as Cuba having the 1868 date for when someone started an independence movement, and ignoring that Spain continued to rule until the US kicked them out, and ignoring the change to the Castro regime 50 years ago. Some of the European and African states occupied by the Axis are said to start their independence when the Nazis were booted out, but some of them basically went back to their pre-invasion governance. Many of the states only date from when a European power granted them their independence from colonial occupation, which is a date celebrated in those states. I have some problems with the aspect of the "statehood timer" being reset by a foreign occupation: If Canada and Mexico invaded the US while US troops were overseas fighting the Global War on Terror and operated an occupation government for a short while until the US troops could be brought home, and the US government resumed its preoccupation functioning, it should not make the US the newest state in the world. Similar arguments should apply to some of the states occupied during World War 2. I would strongly disagree with a listing in order by age, since that would invite instability and edit warring based on national pride. It is an encyclopedic and useful assemblage of documentable information. Collaborative editing and watchlisting can keep it encyclopedic and up to date. Edison (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't understand. You opt to keep this article, and say that it's salvageable, yet list a large number of complaints that I don't believe can be adequately addressed without having a mini-article for each country in this list. Care to explain? Hobbeslover talk/contribs 17:34, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete Title should be changed to "List of countries by formation date of current regime" or scrapped. Several dates are already at variance with their corresponding country article, and the sovereignty dates given are highly dubious and reek of original research. Furthermore, this article will become a magnet for militant POV edits that are unlikely to be properly policed by each country's respective community. Drachton (talk) 18:06, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Not necessary, since we have articles for the current regimes rather than the location of the country. e.g, People's Republic of China is the regime, China is the place. <b style="color:#629632;">Celarnor</b> <sup style="color:#7733ff;">Talk to me 07:09, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep for the time being at least. It's just one way of sorting information and could conceivably be useful to high school students. Everybody got to be somewhere! (talk) 22:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I would side on keeping it, mainly that many of the places listed are valid & quickly informative. Of course the word "formation" may not be the best word to use (since some places have been around since antiquity), but most of the countries in it's present state did come into existence this past century. That-Vela-Fella (talk) 10:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong keep Although the date of formation of a country can be a matter of debate, there is usually considerable consensus on a short handle of dates for most countries.--Damifb (talk) 14:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Strong keep but radically reform. The information here is highly useful, but the current format is not. This list is the result of a good-faith attempt at merging two previous articles: List of countries by date of statehood and List of countries by date of independence, but unfortunately that attempt has failed to produce a list with any semblance of stability, leading up to this AfD. The former lists were far more useful, in my opinion, and were around longer than the current list in its present form and while controversial, were not nearly as unstable as the list is now. The problem, I think, stems from trying to define dates for "statehood", "independence", "acquisition of sovereignty", and "birth of government" in a manner that can be consistently applied to all countries worldwide. Such a task would inherently be based on original research and will continually fail to maintain a neutral point of view. I'm not even sure why "Date of most recent significant territorial modification" is in this list, as it was added after the merger and does not seem to me to have the same significance as do dates of independence or a union establishing a new country. However, I believe there is no doubt that most of the dates presented in the first two columns are significant nationhood events, and a list of those events presented chronologically would be extremely useful. I propose this list be reformed and renamed to List of significant nationhood events (I got the phrase "significant nationhood event" from the CIA World Factbook FAQs where it addresses how "Independence" dates are established). Please see the talk page for an example of how such a page might look. DHowell (talk) 03:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Neutral for now. If this list is deleted so must Date of independence of European countries and a watch must be permanently kept for the recreations that will most likely occur. I think there is a place for this article in an ideal form, but I fear it will be riddled with consensus problems and of course trolling. Inge (talk) 17:38, 22 March 2008 (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.