Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of largest ruling leaders by population


 * 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 delete. Eddie891 Talk Work 14:19, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

List of largest ruling leaders by population

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Interesting topic but may not meet WP:NLIST. Cannot find any reliable sources that discuss this topic in general. The list is presently made up of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. -- Ab207 (talk) 14:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. Ab207 (talk) 14:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Ab207 (talk) 14:11, 30 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete Huh??? No, totally ridiculous synthesis. If you're combining current and former populations, you'd also need every former Chinese and Indian leader too.... It's merely a coincidence that Aso's one year in office was also when Japan's population peaked, no relevance to the others listed whatsoever. Reywas92Talk 14:35, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. As above. The title is also ridiculous, these are not the largest leaders, but the leaders of the largest countries. If they meant what they said the Kings (and Queens: remember Salote in 1953?) of Tonga would be right up there.  Athel cb (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Fails WP:NLIST: reliable sources have not taken note of this rather arbitrary grouping. And, of course, it's pure WP:SYNTH, which is an independent reason to delete. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 00:18, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete WP:SYNTH, and consequentially woefully incomplete: for example, Joko Widodo of Indonesia (pop. $271,000,000$, fourth biggest in the present-day world) is not listed, and the listing of Li Keqiang instead of Xi Jinping for the People's Republic of China is questionable as well. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 00:42, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - You might as well just have a list of largest countries by population, which we already do, but with the countries' leaders' names by them. Completely redundant list. --MuZemike 02:38, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete. Clearly WP:OR. Ajf773 (talk) 09:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete This is a clear example of WP:OR. In practice, it is a (woefully incomplete) list of countries by peak population with an additional column for the head of government (which is not necessarily the "correct" choice of leader, as noted above). One suspects that e.g. Kublai Khan would qualify for inclusion, but historical population figures are of course notoriously difficult to estimate and the margins of error are huge. Estimates from different authors often vary significantly (see e.g. here). The practical upshot of this is that collecting estimates from different sources and using them to create a ranked list inevitably results in a WP:SYNTH mess; the only way to construct an article like this properly is to use a high-quality source which has collated the information in a systematic way (i.e. something along the lines of what The Oxford World History of Empire does for ranking empires by population as a percentage of the world population). Absent such a source, this is fundamentally a non-starter. TompaDompa (talk) 22:48, 3 September 2021 (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.