Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of state leaders in 3150 BC


 * 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 '''Moved and merged by DHowell. Page now redirects to appropriate article. Non-admin closure. TN ‑ X - Man 17:32, 26 May 2008 (UTC)'''

List of state leaders in 3150 BC

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

Scope of the article is too far in history to be referenceable or expandable into individual year. I am also nominating the following related pages because same reason:

--Jklamo (talk) 01:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Weak keep I certainly sympathize with you on this one and for the most part agree.  However, the reason I'm !voting keep (but only very weakly), is because this format has gotten WP:CONSENSUS at WikiProject Leaders by year, which is the WPWP that maintains this list of pages.   If this were just a page unto itself, I would heartily !vote to nuke it.  However, as this page is a part of a larger project, my recommendation is to bring up the issue at the WikiProject rather than club it with the AFD hammer here. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 01:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I am a member of that wikiproject but regrettably the project is pretty much inactive now - I don't think there are any other active members now. Davewild (talk) 17:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Per the above -- Given the fact there's no one to build consensus with, I'm striking my !vote. -- ShinmaWa(talk) 21:04, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Move and merge Maybe create the article by decade or by century (e.g. 3150s BC). Alway Arptonshay (talk) 02:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per nomination. The nominator is exactly right: with such a remote date it is not really possible to create a meaningful and verifiable list for a specific year. A decade, maybe, but a year? I think in most cases there will even be a basic WP:V problem here since historians rarely identify events in such remote past definitevely with a specific year. In view of this, I don't think that creating merges and redirects makes much sense either. Nsk92 (talk) 02:49, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Move and merge into at least a decade article a millennium article. I agree with Nsk92, it's far too far in the past for the individual year to be reliable. J I P  | Talk 03:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Changed my vote. The article to merge to should be List of state leaders in the 4th millennium BC. I agree with Dougweller below, this is too far in the past for even the century to be sufficient, we have to go for the whole millennium. J I P  | Talk 19:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Move and merge into an article on the century, that far back an article on the state leaders over the whole century makes far more sense. Davewild (talk) 17:15, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with it being on a millenium either as suggested by JIP. Davewild (talk) 19:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * DeleteEven a century isn't going to give many definite names, this is just too far back, and there are too many chronological arguments that will have to be ignored to have an article like this. --Doug Weller (talk) 18:40, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep I added a reference to support Narmer's rule in 3150bc. The scope of this project is certainly grand, but it depends on consistent presentation of state leaders by year for its value. Names of heads of state and dates of rulership obviously become harder to establish for more remote periods, but this sort of project is potentially very useful when available, verifiable information for a particular year in history is accessible with one click. The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.230.141.215. Nsk92 (talk) 03:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. I see two main problems here. The first and more important problem is that only a tiny fraction of the world was organized into states at this time: Narmer could be the only state leader that we can name. The other problem is that lists like these, for individual years, presume a level of date precision that we don't have when dealing with this time period. We don't know that Narmer was king in 3150 BC, do we? We don't even know that he was alive in 3150 BC. It's an estimate. I propose that some cutoff date be established, after which we will have these lists and before which we won't. Everyking (talk) 04:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Redirect both to List of pharaohs Move and/or merge (see below). I don't believe there are any verifiable "state leaders" from this time period other than the pharaohs, and we already have a list of them. The State leaders by year page should just point to List of pharaohs milliennia-based lists for information from the 3rd & 4th millennia BC and eliminate those year tables that will be pointless to fill out. DHowell (talk) 06:57, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree with a redirect as it violates the 'principle of least surprise'.  I'm fairly sure I'd be very surprised by that redirection.  -- ShinmaWa(talk) 18:11, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with ShinmaWa. I don't know if a redirect to some other destination is appropriate but List of pharaohs is not a good choice. Nsk92 (talk) 18:52, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * You'd be surprised that looking for a list of state leaders in 3150 BC would take you to a list of pharaohs? What other "state leaders" were around during that time period that we know about? Besides, in the case of Narmer, 3150 BC is an approximation with an error of at least a century; I've seen dates as early as 3300 BC and as late as 2900 BC. With all the gaps and uncertainties in our historical knowledge during this time period, making an accurate year-by-year or even century-by-century list for this era would be impossible. If we started adding, e.g. Chinese leaders to these year lists, there would be no guarantee that the leaders listed in any particular year would have even been alive at the same time, let alone whether they would have ruled at the same time. At the very least then, move these lists to List of state leaders in the 4th millennium BC and List of state leaders in the 3rd millennium BC per JIP, or even better, merge both into List of state leaders in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. With the available knowledge of this era, this is really the best we can do. I agree with the idea of the State leaders by year project, which is why I'm not suggesting outright deletion, and note that that page needs to be modified to discourage further inaccurate year-by-year lists. DHowell (talk) 21:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I see your point. Personally, I think that "List of state leaders in 3150 BC" is an extremely unlikely search term and I would prefer no redirects at all, but a plain delete or perhaps a move to something like List of state leaders in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. That could also include Sumerians, Chinese and maybe even something else. I do agree that the idea of listing leaders from such remote past by exact year is fundamentally flawed and can only lead to inaccurate information being proliferated. Nsk92 (talk) 21:34, 22 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Delete this is just too much.-- danntm T C 04:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I have boldly moved and merged the lists to List of state leaders in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, as well as merging in some existing lists from 2668 through 2686 BC. I noticed there was some precedent to this in that the lists for the 800s BC through the 1650s BC were already arranged by decades. I have also edited the State leaders by year, eliminating the tables for the 7th century BC and earlier and replacing with links to appropriate decade, century, and millennia lists. DHowell (talk) 15:24, 25 May 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.