Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of country subdivisions


 * 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. This discussion did not result in any consensus whether such a list would have to be deleted. Before this is developed further though, I think both sides here (indirectly) admit that further discussion might be required to determine whether an expansion of the list makes sense. Regards  So Why  12:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

List of country subdivisions

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This list is a content fork of multiple existing lists, in an ill-conceived attempt to combine them into a single article. For example, each entry includes a type, the ISO 3166-2 code, the capital, and a flag, thereby duplicating content from articles in Category:First-level administrative country subdivisions, Flags of country subdivisions and its links, Category:ISO 3166, etc. But all of that existing content is broken into per-nation articles for a reason. The current work-in-progress version of this article has about 500 entries, and is 84K long. There are ~4200 ISO 3166-2 entries, so that means a completed version of this page would be about 700K in size. That article size is not viable, and we already have appropriate ways of splitting the content into manageable pieces. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Why can't it just say what they are called and how many there are, and link to the article in question? Polarpanda (talk) 20:01, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be at the existing Table of administrative divisions by country article. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:05, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * So it is. I don't think this idea is feasible, so best to delete it before too much time is wasted on it. Polarpanda (talk) 20:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Kill it quick before it multiplies I mean, someone could put every Massachusetts township in this list, much less every US county. I suppose in some sense it's not indiscriminate, but I don't see what the point is of dumping all these (presumably already extant in most cases) lists onto a single page. Mangoe (talk) 14:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep It very specifically counts first-order administrative regions. This excludes townships and counties. Many of the lists are not extant. This is a project that highlights state or province templates, articles, or capitals that have been added for some countries but not for others. I would love to break it down better into sub-articles instead of one massive article; any hints how? Table of administrative divisions by country does not contain the names of the subdivisions; it just says that "the US has 50 states", etc. Flags of country subdivisions is incredibly incomplete and not growing as fast. I do not know of a list of subdivision capitals. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 14:46, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, it doesn't say at all what it counts; it gives no statement other than its title as to what is or is not included. Also, while Table of administrative divisions by country does not include the lists, it does link to articles in each case that I've checked thus far that do include lists and (equally importantly) maps. Compressing all of that into one big article (especially considering how huge Table of administrative divisions by country already is: 89,012 bytes as of 1 December) is pointless. Mangoe (talk) 15:45, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That's my point. This content is already present in a couple of hundred articles, and many of these articles are very good, with maps, additional information such as demographics, and larger flag images than useless decorative 22 pixel icons.  See States of Brazil for a good example.  I would say that Table of administrative divisions by country and Category:Lists of country subdivisions are simply methods of navigation for this WP:Summary style approach to a lot of data.  And the table page is an effective way of navigating, as it provides context for the links (e.g. number of divisions for each country) instead of just being a list of links.  I would also say that Flags of country subdivisions may be incomplete, but at least it follows summary style conventions by linking to sub-articles (e.g. Flags of Brazilian states), where gallery markup can be used to more effectively display the images. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:33, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This page also serves to collate each first-order subdivision in an effort to highlight which countries (e.g., 3166-2:MA have only or mostly stubs as articles for their subdivisions. That way we can focus on bringing all of them up to a minimal encyclopaedic standard because, as User:Andrwsc mentions below, they are all notable. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran Let it off your chest the past 18:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment I appreciate the effort that's gone into making sortable tables, but I think that the limitations of sortability will become apparent as it goes on. I'm thinking 200 nations, and let's say an average of 40 provinces/states/counties per nation-- a sortable table with several thousand lines might be beyond the capacity of sorting, I don't know.  However, if they have to be broken down into 25 separate tables, I'm not sure that a sortable table is superluous.  Mandsford (talk) 21:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete I  think a list by country is enough, together with a list of those lists. If this one were done properly it would be too large, and I   do not see an advantage in collocating different  groups in different countries with the same first letter  in their name. Nor do I see why one might conceivably want to sort, except within those for a particular country.     DGG ( talk ) 04:21, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Proposal Move to List of First-level administrative country subdivision capitals. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 07:12, 2 December 2009 (UTC)


 * If I remove all of the flag template tags to avoid template limit and decrease byte counts, making it into only a list of subdivisions (linked) & codes & subdivision capitals (linked), would you folks possibly decide to keep it? Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 09:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Proposal 2 Temporarily suspend action on this proposed deletion because the admin that started it, User:Andrwsc, engages in WikiBullying in User talk:Thecurran, ignores simple questions and requests in User talk:Thecurran, thwarts my attempts to trim the article by deleting my reasonable links in Special:DeletedContributions/thecurran, goes so far as to block me in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:Thecurran without warning, cf. User talk:thecurran, and chooses not to DISENGAGE in User talk:Andrwsc. This deeply conflicts with Deletion policy and creates an environment that is not conducive with improving the article. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 03:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I see no reason to give this article a pass because you and Andrwsc got into a scuffle. Its existence is a problem no matter who wrote or originally complained about it. Mangoe (talk) 04:04, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * User:Mangoe originally commented about the size. I already reduced it from ~90 kb to ~50 kb and have plans to further reduce it but these plans have been hampered. I thought I was duly addressing your concern. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 05:23, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It did not occur to me that Thecurran's recent template creations were solely to reduce the size of this page. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case, as he/she is using constructs like  instead of the much simpler  .  However, saving bytes by using cryptic codes isn't going to solve the problem, as WP:Template limits will come into play well before the page is completed.  It is not feasible to transclude several thousand templates onto one page. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 06:32, 3 December 2009 (UTC)


 * is for the province.  goes to the distinct federal capital, which is shorter as  . Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 12:47, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

 Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Fences  &amp;  Windows  21:22, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Proposal 3 Should it be decided that the page is to be deleted, please consider moving it to a Userfication on a subdirectory of my User page. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 05:50, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  --  Fences  &amp;  Windows  21:24, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep while not perfect, the nominator's rationale - that a complete article will be >700k is not among the criteria for deletion. Perhaps that criteria could be invoked to delete the dozens of ethnic lists like List of Irish Americans, of which by WP criteria of a single drop of Irish blood in an American passport holder gets you in, there's likely 30 to 80 million potential people to be listed, making 4200 look like child's play. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 16:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That's an imprecise analogy. The 4200 potential entries of this list are all certainly notable, whereas I doubt that millions of Irish Americans pass our general notability guidelines, so obviously that list would never reach that size.  But let's say that List of Irish Americans did grow to an unwieldy size; what would we do?  Of course, it would be split into sub-pages, probably alphabetically (e.g. List of Irish Americans: A etc. per Naming conventions (long lists)).  But that's my point—we already have the ~200 articles that include this content (and much more), in an obvious per-country structure.  What we don't need a a superset article that will blow away Article size guidelines by a wide margin.  We don't need this Content fork of existing articles.  My nomination was obviously not to delete the useful content, but to delete this specific page, and there is a difference. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Carlossuarez46's point that be[ing] >700k is not among the criteria for deletion is an important one, especially since there are proposals that would cut it significantly. Please address the points raised rather than the analogies used to bolster them. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran Let it off your chest the past 01:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Being >700K is not a criteria for deletion, but it is most definitely a criteria for WP:splitting, per WP:Article size. And if you split this article, what do you get?  What we already have.  I'm looking forward to the logical conclusion of the work-in-progress state of the current article, and at that point in time, the resultant WP:content fork is a reason for deletion.  We can delete this now (and save a lot of effort), or delete it later, I don't care. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 01:24, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Please try not to use sarcasm here. If you really mean you do not care, then your vote would count as an abstention. According to Article size,
 * With some web browsers with certain plug-ins running in certain environments, articles over 400 KB may not render properly or at all.
 * So non-articles, without sections, that are less than 400 kB (which is quite probable with the near halving I have worked on) should not pose the gargantuan problem you keep referring to. When you say, I doubt that millions of Irish Americans pass our general notability guidelines, so obviously that list would never reach that size, you quite strongly imply that there will never be 4200 or more notable Irish-Americans. I would much rather avoid such statements.Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran Let it off your chest the past 16:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Read WP:Almanac. This is clearly information you'd find in an almanac, one of the things Wikipedia aims to be.   D r e a m Focus  17:52, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Please read the previous discussion. The information already exists in Wikipedia.  I am not proposing that we delete clearly encyclopedic (or almanac) information!  I am proposing that we delete an unwieldy content fork.  Why is this a difficult concept?  It's all quite logical: when complete, List of country subdivisions would have to be split up, per WP:Article size guidelines.  Ok, how would you do that?  Perhaps the most logical way would be to split by country and have a top-level page that directs to each of the per-country pages.  Not surprisingly, that's how it is already done.  We have Table of administrative divisions by country directing readers to articles such as Regions of France, States and territories of Australia, etc., and most of those are very useful articles with maps, flags, demographics, etc.  I don't see any possible way for continued work on the tables within List of country subdivisions to result in anything that is a net positive for the encyclopedia.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I've proposed drastically reducing the bytes to avoid both template limit and article size and you have not responded. Please desist from using that plank of your argument until you have responded to those proposals. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran Let it off your chest the past 00:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * How do you propose to fit ~4000 entries on one page? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 01:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * By limiting the table to the official English name and an ISO 3166-2, even possibly excluding the capitals if necessary. If it is impossible to maintain as a sortable table, we can make it a non-sortable table. If that too is impossible, we can split it into the appropriate number of entries per page. 50 is obviously fine or the US one would not work, so it would be more than 50 per page. Wikipedia constantly offers 500 entries per page on things like revision history searches, which hold much more data, links, and option buttons per entry so the upper bound for a table should be well over 500. That means even in the worst case scenario, we would be splitting it into nine pages. Nine pages is a good deal easier to link together than around two hundred disparate ones that are not checked by the same people, right? Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran Let it off your chest the past 15:48, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Redirect This page is 51 kilobytes long. The article isn't that long now. Deleting something because you believe it might want day be too large, makes no sense at all.  Deleting it because the information already exist elsewhere, makes sense. Redirect to [Table of administrative divisions by country].  The information should be placed on side pages if not already there.   D r e a m Focus  19:01, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is an insane article. We already have, or would accept, subpages for each individual country, but why take those useful articles and combine them into one big totally unuseful article, one that would have to be updated each time there was a change, patrolled for vandalism, checked, etc. There are 62 average counties per state in the U.S., take 62 x 50 x 170+ countries (obviously that's an estimate) and you're talking about a huge number of entries shoved into a tiny page, when most of these are already handled elsewhere. Not assuming bad faith, but most of these Keep !votes seem like they just want to argue with the rationale of the nominator. Ask yourself instead whether or not you think this article actually makes the encyclopedia better. I don't. Shadowjams (talk) 10:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This list is meant only to encompass first-order country subdivisions such as states or provinces but not counties or parishes. A proposal to move it to a more apt title is posed above. Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran Let it off your chest the past 15:34, 12 December 2009 (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.