Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of statistically superlative countries


 * 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. Yes I know that's entirely dissatisfying&mdash;I'm right there with you.

First let me say that I've obviously read the previous close by User:Black Kite (overturned at DRV) and the closing rationale by User:Mkativerata at the ensuing DRV. With respect to the latter, I wholeheartedly concur with Mkativerata's summary of the DRV. In a sense that was my jumping off point&mdash;consensus at the DRV was best interpreted to mean that the original discussion should have been relisted rather than closed, i.e. we needed more discussion.

Has the additional discussion helped? For the most part no, at least in terms of determining consensus as to what to do with the list.

There were a whole bunch of comments/votes that simply did not provide anything in the way of a valid rationale&mdash;and yes that means folks on both the keep and delete side of things. In the end this AfD is largely a conversation between GreyHood and a few who disagree with that editor, with S Marshall making some helpful meta points. Frankly it's not a very good discussion, which I don't remotely intend as a negative comment directed at anyone in particular&mdash;sometimes that's just how these discussions go.

The main arguments revolved around WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:SALAT (incidentally the fact that WP:SALAD is a redlink is goddamn shameful, and if someone doesn't fix that soon....well you just wait and see what I do! and how fat we'll all get!). Some of the arguments were based on an earlier version of the article which seriously deforms the AfD (and is often a problem in these drawn out discussions). Overall there are legitimate arguments on both sides of the is-this-a-random-infinite-meaningless-list (there's the rub) argument. GreyHood commented far more than anyone else in the discussion, but the fact is that said editor makes some good, exhaustive/ing arguments rooted in our guidelines (or at least a completely reasonable interpretation of them). There just isn't a consensus to delete or change the status quo ante based on the indiscriminate/salad (sic) discussion (incidentally Pgallert phrases the WP:INDISCRIMINATE argument most persuasively, but it certainly did not overrule other discussion).

A couple of delete supporters invoke a WP:OR/WP:SYNTH argument. The point would seem to be that, in order to limit the list in such a fashion that it does not fall afoul WP:INDISCRIMINATE, a criteria was developed for the list (this happened during the AfD) which said it would be based on other Wikipedia lists and basically nothing else. That's probably a pretty good argument (a counterpoint that List of countries is in the same boat is not entirely persuasively for reasons not worth going into), but it was not developed fully (Quigley probably came the closest) and it certainly did not achieve anything like consensus.

I genuinely had no idea how this ought to be closed when I decided to shut 'er down after a quick glance, but the "no consensus" conclusion seemed pretty inescapable after weighing all of the relevant factors. As I said it isn't satisfying, but that happens.

Because I spent way too much time on this and am annoyed&mdash;and because the previous close resulted in unsubtle suggestions that thumbs were pressed on scales&mdash;forgive me (or not) if I "editorialize" briefly (the frustration is very much directed generally and at no one in particular). Appropriate given our policies/guidelines or not, I find this list semi-ridiculous, and more importantly the entire process surrounding the deletion discussion über-ridiculous. en.wikipedia is an encyclopedia project with a ton of gaping holes in it, and the fact that we (that means me too&mdash;no doubt) spent as much time and effort as we did dealing with this thingy is frankly embarrassing as hell. Good day, and good luck to all of us with whatever this is. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 09:37, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

PS--For a bit of hilarious perspective, I think, check out (if you haven't already) what the article looked like when it was created by none other than the Wiki-notable Simon Pulsifer (also notice the redlink at the bottom of that version&mdash;Wikipedia lists were mad different back in 2004 before the Biographies of Living Countries policy came into effect).

List of statistically superlative countries

 * – ( View AfD View log ) •

This list is totally unencyclopedic. There are at least a million other items of similar quality which could be added to it. Kill it before it takes over the world. It has already started to spawn (see List_of_statistically_superlative_objects_by_country). Honestly, I expect this nomination to be defeated by the arguments A) “It's interesting” and B) “It's all referenced”, but I feel the need to at least try to save the world from this mind-numbing dross. The answers are of course A) “Only if you're interested in worthless trivia” and B) “IT'S STILL WORTHLESS TRIVIA”. I apologize for insulting everyone who has contributed to the article, and for shouting. Dingo1729 (talk) 21:27, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Thank you for your apologize. Truly a rare gift for a Wikipedia rare visitor who is more active in deleting articles, instead of expanding them ;) Grey Hood   Talk  22:07, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The page is perfectly encyclopedic, and interesting, indeed. There is however a potential problem with the scope of the list. And instead of so straight and quick deletion proposal, one should have brought this problem on the talk page first, to find a decent solution for it. One such solution may be limiting the scope of the list exclusively to the statistics present in Wikipedia's List of countries, that is to non-trivial and noteworthy statistics approved by the community (at least so far as the lists in question are not deleted). In fact, most of the page currently is composed of links to various Wikipedian list of countries, and the page provides useful summary for them, and there is really no need to remove this summury. Grey Hood   Talk  22:07, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * As for the List_of_statistically_superlative_objects_by_country, I created it in order to pipe off non-general and non-statistical records, which some users started to add to the original list. I won't strongly object to deletion of that spawned list. Of course its scope also may be restricted in some reasonable way, like the similar connection to the lists of objects, but still the number of noteworthy objects likely would be dozens and hundreds times higher than the number of noteworthy statistics, and the list could become unmanagable. Grey Hood   Talk  22:07, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Another possible solution is not modifying the list at all, until it really becames too big, and then splitting it by topic area, like with the old Template:Lists of countries which became too big and eventually was splitted into several templates (see Category:Country list templates). However, I would prefer to have a multi-topic list of countries intact, since it gives certain general picture of a country and an option of multidimensional country comparison. Grey Hood   Talk  22:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- Jclemens-public (talk) 01:09, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete Despite having contributed to this list, I agree with the nominator that it is nothing more than a big list of trivia. It doesn't even allow to do any meangingful comparison since it includes both the worse and the best of each country. For instance, Zimbabwe has 10 entries when the UK only has 5 - what are we supposed to learn from that? Laurent (talk) 17:41, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Why should we expect to learn anything from the number of entries? (Btw, I'm against the addition of the number column.) We can learn from the statistics, however - being top or bottom at something is considered an important characteristic of a country. Look at most of the Wikipedian articles about major countries - editors typically try to mention the things the country in question is good at. And we can learn from the current list that China is a major producer of many agricultural and industrial products, Russia has a large territory and strong energy sector, the United States has a great prominence in financial sector, Germany is good in sports etc. Grey Hood   Talk  19:10, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Note. The number column has been removed. Grey Hood   Talk  12:04, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete - This is a collection of endless trivia with no cohesion. It's basically a directory of "things" a country is best/worst at. Oh, and can we please include an entry for the country with the longest average toenail length? Do U(knome)?  yes...or no 09:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. The criteria for inclusion has been set in the lede of the list. "The country with the longest average toenail length" won't be included unless somebody creates the List of countries by average toenail length and such list is accepted by community.  Grey Hood   Talk  14:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Note. The criteria for inclusion has been set in the lede of the list, in such a way so as to include only notable and non-trivial statistics, approved by the Wikipedian community. Now the list is mostly an extended version of the Lists of countries (with rankings), sorted by the name of the country which is at the top or (in some cases) in the bottom of some ranked country list. Grey Hood   Talk  14:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * So, now the list is in now way "unencyclopedic", since it is set to include only the information approved as encyclopedic in the other parts of encyclopedia.
 * The list is no longer potentially endless, since there is a finite number of lists of countries and maps with rankings on Wikipedia. Grey Hood   Talk  14:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm not sure whether re-branding the article as List of Best and Worst Countries in Lists in Wikipedia will work. It makes it very clear that everything references back to Wikipedia and that usually isn't allowed because of WP:CIRCULAR. I thought about this before I nominated the article and my opinion is that we would really need some outside source which discusses “best and worst countries in lists in Wikipedia”. But I'm the nominator and there are widely different views on what should or shouldn't be allowed in List Articles. So maybe someone else can provide an opinion. Dingo1729 (talk) 04:20, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No matter how we rename it, the article will remain a big list of random trivias. If this article exists, then why can't we also have a "List of best and worst humans", "List of best and worst dogs", etc. and then we end up with a Guinness Book of Records, which is WP:NOT what Wikipedia is about. Laurent (talk) 11:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "Best and worst" is misleading, since it may sound as a violation of neutrality. Otherwise, I think this is quite an interesting idea to create the List of statistically superlative people or the List of statistically superlative dogs with the similar inclusion criteria as for the list of countries. Why not? This would be interesting, encyclopedic, handy and quite volume-limited lists. Grey Hood   Talk  15:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The list of Lists of countries and many technical lists don't require any outside sources, and generally there is no need in single outside source for a list if the criteria for inclusion are clearly defined and the idea behind the list is notable and encyclopedic. And again, now the list of statistically superlative countries is mostly an extended version of the Lists of countries (those with rankings), sorted by the name of the country which is at the top or (in some cases) in the bottom of some ranked country list. In fact, we may even insert the similar table or several tables by topic right into the Lists of countries or into the List of international rankings, changing their format. Grey Hood   Talk  15:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)


 * KEEP. The artcile is informative and encyclopedic.--Aliwiki (talk) 20:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. This article provides valuable and encyclopedic information. (Same goes for the list of statistically superlative objects). In my humble opinion, most of the ratings can be found in other good wiki articles, so unless you can justify deleting the "List of countries by Gross National Income" article or other similar ones, do not try to do it to this one.--Therexbanner (talk) 23:10, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

These were my arguments for keeping it. But since today I visited the page, its character has changed. Some one has removed a large portion of entries in the name of triviality. This is wrong. For example the opium production in the world affects the lives of millions of people, kills hundreds of thousands and probably causes hundreds of billion dollars of economic damage to the world. Calling that trivial is none sense. On the other hand the best performance in swimming is trivial. So if the article is going to become a "sanitized" one made palatable for consumption of a few then it should be deleted. I am in favor of its old format, with possible splitting up to different pages if its size goes over 150K. But it is to become a propaganda page in line with "ideologies" of a "few" then its deletion is a better choice.--119.156.25.46 (talk) 13:13, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * KEEP/Delete. I as a contributor to this page, would have liked to keep it for these reasons: the page contains useful information about nations which is difficult to find in one page in other places which is the nature of an encyclopedia, the page has a high traffic volume proving that it is popular on the net, the page is designed to be fun and many school children use it to learn stuff and the page though not proper for a 19th century Encyclopedia Britannica is very much a wikipedia article. Besides the history of the article shows that its size has been very much stable as hardly few entries have been added to it since the past several months, certainly it was not becoming the Godzilla swallowing the world. There are longer articles on wikipedia than this one.
 * Well, the opium hasn't been removed completely, just commented (put into the tags "< !--" and "-->"). The entry is clearly worth of inclusion when compared to the other entries, but according to the criteria for inclusion which I have set (or proposed), the opium production in Afghanistan may be re-added if somebody creates the List of countries by opium production, or finds or draws a map of opium-producing countries (at least the top ones). However, if the majority of editors will agree that the proposed criteria are too strict, and that we may include new entries that are obviously important and in the same league as the entries already in the article - well, OK, it will be easy to de-comment such entries. Grey Hood   Talk  15:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * "Ideologies" of a "few" has nothing to do here. The article just needs some reasonable criteria to limit its scope. I had hoped to discuss such criteria before single-handedly implementing them, but my proposal was ignored and people kept voting "delete" because the article is possibly an endless list of trivia, so I decided better to limit the scope of the list right now. However, you may propose different or less strict criteria if you like, and de-comment the old entries. Grey Hood   Talk  15:00, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, these criteria mean that we're relying on Wikipedia itself both for accuracy and notability for each of the items. Wikipedia just isn't that accurate and isn't a good measure of notability. I just don't know if there are any criteria would work. Dingo1729 (talk) 21:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
 * For the accuracy of the items we may provide external references if there is any particular need. As for the notability, there is no any universal measure of notability, and all content here on Wikipedia presumably follows the lines of the notability in Wikipedia. As long as a list is on Wikipedia and hasn't been deleted, the information in that list is presumed to be notable and encyclopedic. Grey Hood   Talk  21:44, 13 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep "Useful" is a relevant factor for lists. The title is hideously awkward, but I cannot immediately think of a better. The sources are in the linked articles; they can be copied over, but I think it would just make the table harder to read.    DGG ( talk ) 05:49, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Not useful for any purpose of information that I can think of; indiscriminate collection of information in which such gems as "Best performance at Sidecarcross World Championship" are given equal importance to statistics such as "Highest Human Development Index".  Sandstein   08:05, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * From DR: People create games based on this list, which is one example of how this information can be used.
 * On equal importance: if something is listed together with something else, that doesn't necessarily mean that those items are given equal importance. Let's put aside the statistics for a moment - this is a list of countries, but the fact that some smallish countries are listed beside the world powers don't make them all equally important. Grey Hood   Talk  20:51, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep Listing notable accomplishments in various fields. Perhaps the Agricultural ones could be in their own article, listing all the accomplishments in that field per nation, and then split off the sports related things, and then other things as well.  Get a world view about how different nations are exceeding in various things.   D r e a m Focus  12:07, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep: Needs some more sources, but otherwise it is interesting and everything is notable. So why not have it? A lot of encyclopedias have interesting facts like this listed in one spot.-- Navy Blue84  16:56, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Relisting note: The discussion was re-opened at this point as a result of Deletion review/Log/2010 November 15. The outcome of that deletion review was that the AfD should be re-opened for at least another seven days. The AfD is eligible for closure 168 hours after the following timestamp: --Mkativerata (talk) 03:11, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete- this article is a textbook violation of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. There is no possibility that any meaningful comparison can be drawn between such wildly random properties like "Best performance at Paddle Tennis World Championship", "Largest sisal producer", "Most frigates in operation" and "Highest number of World Heritage Sites". This entire list is meaningless, incoherent WP:TRIVIA, and deciding which of the millions and billions of possible statistics to list is unavoidably original research. Reyk  YO!  03:52, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It has been already shown at the DR, that the only point of WP:INDISCRIMINATE which may apply in this case is the Excessive listing of statistics. The main concern of that point is the neatness of the article and its readability. Nobody questioned those so far, and as WP:INDISCRIMINATE suggests, the table format is already used to enhance neatness/readability. As for the volume of statistics, the criteria have been set already in order to make the scope of the list finite, and if some editors still find the volume of statistics "excessive", there is always possibility to impose stricter criteria and delete more not-that-notable entries. This can be done by editing the article and by discussing its improvement on the talk page; this is content dispute and not a good reason for deletion. There is no point in deleting the entire list when the problem can be solved by deleting some parts of it.
 * The idea that a sprawling, incoherent mess of an article can be excused because it has borders, pretty colours and neat little national flags is abhorrent to me. It's like chrome-plating a turd. Restricting this list to properties that can be meaningfully compared is not the answer because we already have lots of lists like that, which would make this one redundant. Reyk  YO!  00:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Show me any other general list which will contain the information on countries which top the most notable international rankings, and I'll agree that this list is redundant (Actually, I've already proposed myself to insert most of valuable information from this list either to the Lists of countries, or to the List of international rankings, but this may result in making the representation format less handier). Grey Hood   Talk  01:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * On comparison: this list doesn't compare "wildly random properties", this is a list of countries, and it provides reader with some means to compare countries. Since the countries of the world differ very much in many ways and are expected to be good or bad at different things, it is quite natural to see very different types of entries in this list.
 * I maintain my position that there is no meaningful comparison to be drawn between statistics like "Highest lowest point among all countries" and "Winner of most Bandy World Championships (women)". Reyk  YO!  00:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The comparison of the two suggests that one country is prominent in some sport, and other has a prominent geography. An opposition of the two is mostly pointless, but the combination of such facts can tell us, for example, that China is the largest producer, US is the largest consumer etc. Pretty interesting way to create a general image of the country, and pretty encyclopedic: read almost any Wikipedian article about a (major) country, and you will see that editors try to put into prominence the information about things that country is prominent at. Grey Hood   Talk  01:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:TRIVIA is irrelevant here. It deals with Trivia sections of non-list articles, rather than with specific standalone lists. Grey Hood   Talk  20:41, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I suggest you go back to WP:TRIVIA and look at the six words in bold at the very start of the guideline. "Avoid creating lists of miscellaneous information." I also suggest that, if you think the spirit of that guideline can be dodged because this list is an entire article rather than just a section of one, that you have a good long read of WP:WIKILAWYER as well. Reyk  YO!  00:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This guideline does not suggest the inclusion or exclusion of any information; it only gives style recommendations. Issues of inclusion are addressed by content policies. Again, basically the guideline writes that information from the trivia lists should be transformed into good prose as the article is further developed. The first six words are not a good summary of a guideline - there is a nutshell for short summaries, read it please. Thank your for your WP:WIKILAWYER reading advice, but I think that obvious misinterpretation of the letter is not a good companion of supporting the spirit. Grey Hood   Talk  01:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:OR is irrelevant here. Deciding what should be included into Wikipedia and what should not be included is exactly what editors are expected to do, otherwise the whole of Wikipedia would be OR. Grey Hood   Talk  20:41, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I think you misunderstand. When you start generating arbitrary inclusion criteria like the ones at the start of the article, you are beginning to advance positions that are not advanced by any of the sources- and that is original research or synthesis at best. Reyk  YO!  00:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Why arbitrary? What positions do I advance, when I just take together all the ranked lists and maps available on Wikipedia, and sort them by a top country? Grey Hood   Talk  01:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Finally, I'll add that your relentless badgering of all delete !voters is getting tiresome. We were not convinced by your badgering of earlier voters, nor by your badgering at the DRV. What makes you think we're going to suddenly be convinced when you badger us with exactly the same faulty arguments you've made previously? Reyk  YO!  00:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Please, show that my arguments are faulty. So far I see mostly the misinterpretation of some WP policies, and the persistent ignoring of the fact, that absolutely nothing prevents us from fixing the problems with this article instead of deleting it. I believe that if all those problems were brought to the article's talk page instead of AfD, they would long have been solved without all those tedious discussions. Unfortunately, I also can say that it is getting a bit tiresome for me to read and answer the same type of arguments all over again. Perhaps this is a wrong way of conduct, but I'm a rare participant of deletion discussions and haven't time to acquire better manners. Grey Hood   Talk  01:35, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete - WP:SALAT, detailing the appropriate topics for stand-alone lists, provides that "lists that are too general or broad in scope [...] have little value". WP:INDISCRIMINATE also bars "long and sprawling lists of statistics" especially where such lists fail to provide sufficient detail to put those statistics into their proper context. - DustFormsWords (talk) 05:29, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * On WP:SALAT - here is the full quote: Lists that are too general or too broad in scope have little value, unless they are split into sections.  This list's scope already has been limited and can be limited even more, and this list can be sorted by country or by topic/field which is as good as sections.
 * WP:INDISCRIMINATE is discussed above. Providing details to put statistics into their proper context makes sense only in case of non-list articles. This standalone list has a clear purpose and certain criteria for inclusion. WP:INDISCRIMINATE is relevant here only so far as editors find the volume of statistics "excessive". The problem should be solved like all other content disputes and cases of overgrown articles; it is not a good argument for the deletion of the entire list. Grey Hood   Talk  21:21, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A user looking for the world's largest producers of pears would expect to find the answer at pear; a user looking for Argentina's exports would look at Argentina. What additional encyclopaedic purpose does this list?  What possible user query could be answered by this page?  Hence WP:INDISCRIMINATE.  (Re WP:SALAT - this list cannot be broken into non-arbitrary sections, hence it can't satisfy the stand-alone-list critera.) - DustFormsWords (talk) 00:30, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * A user looking for largest, greatest, smallest, statistically superlative countries would get this list, as well as user who looks for international rankings sorted by top country. Additional encyclopaedic purpose, as it is quite often on Wikipedia, is creating a good general reference page to the most notable statistic superlatives. Above and below I've already given an example of how some people created an on-line game based on this list, which means it is interesting to readers and has some application. As you can see, the list can easily be broken into sections by country or by field, but arguably this will make it less handy. I won't argue against switching the format of the list, but I think it is not a good place and moment to discuss it here and now. Grey Hood   Talk  01:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Wikipedia is not the Guiness Book of World Records or The Complete Book of Lists. - The Bushranger Return fire Flank speed 05:31, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Straw man argument. The Guiness Book of World Records is irrelevant here. As well as the technical list of Lists of countries, this list doesn't aim to become The _Complete_ Book of Lists. Like in case of all Wikipedian articles and lists, we should try to include only notable enough end encyclopedic information, not all records and not all lists. This list's scope has already been limited, and nothing prevents us from following Wikipedian policies here. Grey Hood   Talk  21:21, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete, original research, trivia, too broad in scope, indiscriminate, listcruft, take your pick. Stifle (talk) 09:09, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:OR and WP:TRIVIA are irrelevant here, see above. The scope has been limited, and the further contraction is possible, which makes the deletion of the entire list pointless because the problem can be solved by deleting just some entries and setting stricter inclusion criteria. WP:INDISCRIMINATE relevance depends exclusively on the scope problem, see above. WP:LISTCRUFT relevance depends on WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:TRIVIA relevance, which means that we again have only the problem of scope here. Grey Hood   Talk  21:29, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Unencyclopaedic, violates WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Bob A (talk) 15:42, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * In what way is it unencyclopaedic, other than WP:INDISCRIMINATE? For the latter, see above. Further limiting the scope and deleting some entries is the solution, not a deletion of the entire list. Grey Hood   Talk  21:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Would you expect to see a list like this on a serious encyclopaedia, like Britannica or Brockhaus? Bob A (talk) 01:31, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't, because as far as I know, Britannica or Brockhaus contain few to none list articles, and it is an advantage of Wikipedia that it has many lists. Grey Hood   Talk  01:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. Both an excessive list of statistics and synthesis, because it takes each 'superlative' from its own source and not one source that reliably covers the subject. Quigley (talk) 15:50, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Excessiveness can be dealt with by editing, not by complete deletion of the list.
 * On WP:SYN: there is no any general requirement for WP:LISTS to be based on one single source. More to say, many technical lists of lists don't need sources at all. This list is no more WP:SYN than Lists of countries or the entire Wikipedian collection of lists in the Category:Lists of countries. In this case it is possible, however, to cover most of the entries in the discussed list by few reliable general sources, such as the CIA World Factbook, NationMaster, FAOSTAT and perhaps several others. No problem with that. Grey Hood   Talk  21:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This AfD is focusing on the article's current state, and there's a consensus that as written there's too much in the way of trivia. I agree: it can't be retained in its current form.  However, the discussion has yet to consider whether a process of selective trimming and removing the trivia could bring the article into compliance with policy.  It's essential that this is done before deletion would be appropriate.  AfD isn't about what the content is today; AfD is about considering an article's potential in the light of the sources. It doesn't help that this list doesn't have the right title for the subject and we might want to think about what the list should really be called.  My own view is that there's potentially encyclopaedic material here, but it may also be redundant with other lists we already have.  I wonder whether the correct outcome is a redirect to the List of international rankings.— S Marshall  T/C 22:27, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Given the present state of the List of international rankings, it seems redirecting the List of international rankings to the List of statistically superlative countries has more sense in terms of usefulness. Also, I think that perhaps the List of statistically superlative countries can be renamed into something like List of top international rankings by country or List of international rankings by top country. Grey Hood   Talk  22:42, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:SALAT, unclear inclusion criterion. Not to mention ambiguous title: "statistically superlative", what does that mean? Apparently any random subject where a country is in some way exceptionnal is enough. That is too broad in scope, and meaningless altogether. Repeated entries galore! I mean, did you know that China is the country with the largest population? With the largest ethnic Chinese population? The highest proportion of ethnic Chinese in the population? The largest number of Mandarin speakers? The largest number of Cantonese speakers? It's also the largest country in Asia that is not also part of another continent? The country with the largest wild population of pandas? The largest wild population of Chinese alligators? Pick a country, any country, and start counting its "statistical superlatives". You can come up with an arbitrary number of them in no time.--137.122.49.102 (talk) 23:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:SALAT is irrelevant, see above. The title most likely will be changed, we've already started the discussion. The scope may be broad - OK, lets make it even more limited and restricted, but why delete the list? And couldn't you see that even according to the criteria already set for the list, most if not all of your example statistics shouldn't be added to the list? Adding "an arbitrary number of them in no time" hardly ever occured for the last year, and many attempts to add trivial statistics were reverted as non-notable. Grey Hood   Talk  23:28, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - You think seem to be the only one to think WP:SALAT is irrelevant. The article still serves no purpose. Make separate list articles if they don't exist already. There's no point in a completely arbitrary collection of "statistical superlatives". We have a bunch of List of countries with specific purposes. This one has none. But if WP:SALAT is not the right guideline according to you, how about WP:NOTDIR? You can't get more loosely associated topics than this. --137.122.49.102 (talk) 00:13, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The article serves to identify which countries are at the top of the international rankings present on Wikipedia. A minor thing, but still an example that there is a point in this collection of "statistical superlatives": people create games based on this list. Then, the collection is not arbitrary, at least no more arbitrary than average Wikipedian article which usually tries to reflect the most notable facts about its subject instead of collecting all possible data. Here we also have an attempt to collect only the most notable statistics. If there are some flaws in the collection, this can be fixed by editing the list. As for the WP:NOTDIR, let's quote its first point which you apparently are talking about:
 * Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contribute to the list topic. Wikipedia also includes reference tables and tabular information for quick reference. Merged groups of small articles based on a core topic are certainly permitted. (See Stand-alone lists for clarification.)
 * Core topic: notable international rankings. Sorting by top country is a format, not a topic. Listing all possible superlatives is not an aim. Grey Hood   Talk  00:45, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

NB. I kindly advice the following for the people here:
 * Before voting, make sure you have carefully read
 * The current inclusion criteria in the list, at the top of the page
 * Previous votes in this discussion, answers to them and other comments
 * (Reading the Deletion review/Log/2010 November 15 also may be of some help to those who haven't participated in it.)
 * As S Marshall  have pointed out, we should consider not only the current state of the article but also the ways of improving it, since AfD isn't about what the content is today; AfD is about considering an article's potential.  Grey Hood   Talk  23:42, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Contributors should also note that Greyhood is the only user to have made a keep argument since the relisting, and not be misled by the fact that his contibutions have a higher word count than everyone else combined. (They're not bad contributions, mind, being both polite and referring to policy, and he's entitled to make them, but it's a mite disconcerting to realise all this argument is only against one user.) - DustFormsWords (talk) 00:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Do not misrepresent the situation, please. The keep votes made before the relisting still should be taken into account, and there were plenty of people on the DR discussion that were against deletion of this article. I'm not the only proponent of keeping the list, and all this argument is not only against one user. I've just been the most active editor here so far, and judging by your reaction, I was a bit too much active ;) Grey Hood   Talk  00:53, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete Even though that way of arguing has been contested before, WP:INDISCRIMINATE indeed is the right policy to cite to delete this creation. Because what it means is "List of statistically superlative countries under any criterion", and that's just not acceptable. Please also note the following quote from WP:NOT: "The examples under each section are not intended to be exhaustive.", which is linked to WP:BEANS. So it is not the case that excessive statistics would be the only violation that could possibly apply. --Pgallert (talk) 12:10, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflicted, but placed here in order to keep the chronology of posts) Well, DustFormsWords, the numbers aren't really relevant. It's the arguments.  The fact that GreyHood is the only person saying what he's saying doesn't mean that he's wrong. Where GreyHood is wrong is when he says "there were plenty of people on the DR discussion that were against deletion of this article", because DRV is not about that.  Decisions about whether to delete belong at AfD. The DRV decides whether the AfD was correctly conducted.  There was a widespread view at the DRV that the AfD needed to be more thorough and rigorous, with !votes on both the "keep" and "delete" sides needing to be disregarded for being little more than a statement of opinion with a vague handwave towards a policy. (To my amazement, users who have contributed since the DRV are still doing this.)  But that does not mean that users at DRV were opposed to the deletion of this article. What it means is that they were opposed to its deletion based on the previous debate alone.  Quigley's remark, above, is very pertinent and needs to be taken seriously.  Quigley is right to say that the article as presently written is a novel synthesis, which means it cannot be kept in its current form.  However, could this be solved by selective trimming?— S Marshall  T/C 12:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, you are right of course that DRV was about the correctness of AfD closing. But naturally, the merits of the article and arguments for its deletion simply had to be discussed there as well. That's why I'm right in asserting that there were people on the DRV discussion that were against deletion of this article, at least against deletion on the basis of arguments presented up to that moment, including the application of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. While I agree that this policy may be applied here to show the drawbacks of this article and to demand its improvement, I do not agree that it is a good basis for deletion. Grey Hood   Talk  14:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My answer to Quigley was that there is no any general requirement for WP:LISTS to be based on one single source, that many technical lists of lists don't need sources at all, and that there is a possibility to cover the entire collection of lists by a very limited number of general sources. Where am I wrong? Grey Hood   Talk  14:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I have a proposal to discuss the following scheme, which may lead to improvement of this article and perhaps several other articles as well. This is also an attempt to answer the last question from S Marshall.
 * 1)We go to the Lists of countries and expand it with the lists mentioned in the current List of statistically superlative countries, specifying which country is at the top of a list. This would result in a purely technical list of Wikipedian lists of countries, sorted by topic area. No any WP:SYNTHESIS, WP:INDISCRIMINATE or WP:SALAT.
 * 2)We go to the List of international rankings and expand it with the lists mentioned in the current List of statistically superlative countries, specifying which country is at the top of a list. This would result in a purely technical list of international rankings on Wikipedia, sorted by topic area. No any WP:SYNTHESIS, WP:INDISCRIMINATE or WP:SALAT.
 * 3)We rename the List of statistically superlative countries to the List of top international rankings by country. We drop the table format, because the sorting by topic area would be already accessible at the Lists of countries and the List of international rankings. So we make a simple plain list sorted by country. No any WP:SYNTHESIS, WP:INDISCRIMINATE or WP:SALAT, just another version of a technical list of ranked lists of countries sorted by top country.
 * A technical question: is renaming of an article appropriate during an AfD discussion? Does it mean that an AfD discussion should be renamed as well? Grey Hood   Talk  15:03, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm very pleased you asked the question rather than just doing it! Please don't rename the article during the AfD, it's potentially disruptive because it can break templates that are supposed to direct interested users to this discussion.  There's no urgency to rename it.  If there's a consensus that it needs to be renamed then that should be done by the closing administrator at the end of the discussion (although I'm going to propose a different solution in a minute). Your answer to Quigley is that WP:SYN doesn't apply to a navigational list.  (This is quite logical.  It can't be a synthesis if there's no thesis!)  However, I think there's more to the article's present content than a navigational list.  As it grows and changes, this list is acquiring a thesis over time.  I think the subject you're actually writing about is achievements by country.  In other words, the list shows that most countries are at the top of some league table, somewhere, and some countries are at the top of quite a few league tables in different categories.  I do think that's potentially an encyclopaedic subject, and this list provides an index to it.  The list could be of value to someone doing research.  In that sense it's navigational.  However I can't see any objective criteria for including an item on the list.  I think you're trying to address that with your latest suggestion.  I agree that a revamp along the lines that you suggest would be a big step towards making this material suitable for the mainspace, but I don't think we're quite there yet, and I think the best outcome now would be for the closer to userfy this material to GreyHood.  Let GreyHood make the changes he suggests in his own time and then move this list back into the mainspace -- when it has a more suitable name, clear criteria for inclusion, and otherwise addresses the various problems this AfD has identified -- in his own time.— S Marshall  T/C 17:13, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't accept this your userfy proposal if the article was not already deleted/restored. The deletion resulted in loss of many links to this article from other Wikipedian articles and templates, which were deleted after the article was deleted. But now the harm has been already done, and there is indeed some point in userfying the article, deleting it from the mainspace, fixing and reshaping it in the user space, and posting it again to the mainspace under different name. I have already copied the article into my userspace, and I'm not going to be very active at this discussion anymore. Grey Hood   Talk  17:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * However, I am not sure that I'll revamp the article in a short time, and it has been shown during this discussion that the article was found useful both by Wikipedia editors and outside. That's why I think the result of this discussion should not be delete, but rather revamp and rename, with preserving the current version of the article in the mainspace. Then, if the article is not revamped in some reasonable time, it should be quick-deleted. Grey Hood   Talk  17:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * So, you're suggesting that wether or not to delete this is based on what the article would look like later on? I don't think that's a very good keep/delete argument, since the criteria for keeping or deleting. If a topic does deserve inclusion, then it's worth keeping, even if it's article is terrible (unless said article has content that cannot be preserved like copyright violations). If a topic doesn't deserve inclusion, it's article should be deleted, regardless of the article's quality. NotARealWord (talk) 19:29, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll retract that part of the proposal. I have suggested it just as an attempt to reach some consensus and avoid further tedious discussions, but now I see that it only brings more controversy. Grey Hood   Talk  20:07, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * My initial position was that the article needs improvement, but there was no point in deleting it. Basically I agree with the approach to deletion/keeping which you have described, but unfortunately so far this discussion focused mostly on the current state of the article, and the article was actually deleted without conclusive proof that it can't be amended. For many editors, there seems to be a problem here with understanding what is the point of this article, and whether the scope can be reasonably restricted. This problem is enhanced by not very good title, which can't be changed during the AfD because of technical reasons. Grey Hood   Talk  20:07, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure pages can be moved during an AfD. Like when list of spoilers was moved when it's AfD was still ongoing.


 * Keep I do not think this page should be deleted. Wikipedia's ideals clearly call for a body of knowledge accessible and informative being free of cost. This knowledge can be in different presenting formats, such as this page, making the knowledge more comparative. I have not read anywhere that the information on this page is wrong or baseless. So if the page contains data why delete it. The page is clearly amongst the popular articles of wikipedia as evident by its usage stats. I think the rigid structure does not help. Information must be fun and presentable. Wikipedia's goal was to build a database for those who could not afford it and I do not see how deletion of a comparative list helps that goal. --119.153.97.89 (talk) 18:55, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep I started off thinking this was trivial crap and ended up finding it really interesting. Not least Egypt (Largest date producer - but that's all) and Somalia (7,000,000 camels for goodness sake!) and the very smug Scandinavians (so frightfully free and democratic and gender neutral etc etc etc). If only all the tedious sporting trophy nonsense could be deleted. Fainites barley scribs 23:07, 1 December 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.