Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of the largest country subdivisions by area


 * 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 keep. Randykitty (talk) 18:42, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

List of the largest country subdivisions by area

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

This is the companion article to List of country subdivisions by population which was deleted in July 2021 on the basis of WP:NLIST, i.e. there being no reliable source which covered the explicit topic on a worldwide basis, only stats for each country individually which had been collected together. I see no obvious evidence in the sources here to suggest this article should remain when placed under the same scrutiny. 'Comparable country' is actually interesting to me and I'm sure to many others, but it appears to fall under WP:OR unless refs can be produced stating 'did you know X is as big as Y', preferably for all of these but individually if necessary. But then I'm sure there are sources stating 'did you you know X has a bigger population than Y', but it didn't save that article from deletion. I fail to see why one should survive but not the other. If this article is deemed suitable to remain, I suggest the decision to delete the Populations article is revisited as the topics and sources which would support them are so closely related. Crowsus (talk) 22:20, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Countries-related deletion discussions. Crowsus (talk) 23:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Crowsus (talk) 23:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Crowsus (talk) 23:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom for NLIST and OR. Canada is big, and most of our provinces and territories are too. Same with Russia and Australia. So? Clarityfiend (talk) 22:37, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep and I question the consensus at the AfD you linked. Per NLIST, (emphasis mine) I think it's quite clear that this list, and List of country subdivisions by population for that matter, are both valuable information sources (8000 pageviews this month, so it seems like some of our readers agree). Elli (talk &#124; contribs) 02:53, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete This is unsourced WP:OR - there are no sources verifying that these 50 subdivisions are indeed the largest.Pontificalibus 08:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's what "original research" means. The administrative subdivisions of all countries are a matter of public record, and complete sets of these data can be found anywhere online. There is a finite space to search from, but even disregarding that, we can use common sense: Yakutia, for example, is #1 on this list and has an area of 3 million square kilometers. Basic logic dictates that, per List of countries and dependencies by area, it would be impossible for a subdivision larger than Yakutia to exist in a country smaller than 3 million square kilometers. So it would have to be in one of the seven countries larger than that. It does not seem conceivable to me that some global conspiracy would be capable of concealing the existence of a secret 3 million square kilometer province in Russia, Canada, China, the United States, Brazil, Australia or India. jp×g 14:12, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * If "complete sets of these data can be found anywhere online" it should be easy to cite one or more sources that on their own provide a complete list, which can then be sorted by area and compared with this article to verify it. Then it wouldn't be OR, because we could cite a single source showing there are no missing areas from our list. Otherwise though, it is OR, because we're relying on editors to work out which are the top 50 areas - that's literally original research.Pontificalibus 15:07, 18 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. The claim that this is OR does not make sense to me, for reasons explained above: this information is all publicly available, there's no kind of secrecy about it, and you can find it quite easily. I don't understand what the "original research" here is supposed to be -- it's not like we got this information by editors looking at Alaska from an airplane and holding a ruler against the window. The area figures of the provinces in question are documented to reliable sources in their respective articles, and these references would be trivial to add to this list. As for NLIST, I am not seeing this here either. It seems to me like this is a clearly defined topic (and not a weird cross-categorization as outlined in NLIST). It is not really a stretch of the imagination to ask what the largest subdivision of a country is, and I'm not aware of any policy or guideline saying that any putative list article writer must be able to demonstrate that some third party RS has compiled an identical list. jp×g 14:29, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Reply. Per OR: "This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources." I could no doubt compile an equally well-documented list of redheaded road racing cyclists by number of victories too. It's the synthesis of a ranking that is the problem. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * That's not what original research is. For example, we can freely say that Neil Armstrong was a Boy Scout before he was an astronaut: we can use one source that says he was a Boy Scout in the 1940s, and another source that says he became an astronaut in the 1960s. This is not what WP:SYNTH means: we don't need to cite that the sky is blue. It would only become synthesis if we said "Neil Armstrong's experience as a Boy Scout motivated him to become an astronaut" (without sourcing). There is no such subjectivity, or claim of causality, in the list under discussion. jp×g 01:52, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Per WP:SYNTH, "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any source," and by conclusion, I mean that a ranking like this has any significant worth. Show us such a ranking in the wild, so that WP:NLIST is satisfied. Wasn't one for population, isn't one for area. Clarityfiend (talk) 04:13, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * There exists no consensus for such an expansive interpretation of WP:SYNTH; "Greenland is larger than Alaska" is not a "conclusion", it is an objective fact derived from ordinary subtraction (one of the explicit exemptions per WP:CALC). There is, furthermore, a lack of consensus for so stringent an interpretation of WP:NLIST. Are you saying, for example, that we cannot have an article at lists of deaths by year unless someone produces an academic paper listing various yearly lists of deaths? I think it would be hard to find a paper of record saying that lists of covered bridges (not covered bridges themselves but rather lists of them) are themselves a notable topic, yet we have a list of lists of covered bridges. Rather than encyclopedic subjects themselves, lists are navigational aids to assist readers in correlating large amounts of information from data that would otherwise be abstruse and difficult to traverse. jp×g 12:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You claim the ranking of these places by area is objective fact that needs no sourcing, but it's not that simple. For example the Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan) views mainland China as an occupied subdivision of itself. We can't leave it to wiki editors to decide what isn't a subdivision, but must refer to one or more third-party lists where the absence of subdivisions not included in our article can be verified.Pontificalibus 12:55, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * No, everything needs sourcing -- the reason it isn't an issue is because we have sources for this stuff. The size of a country and its subdivisions is not a matter of opinion: yes, it's possible that they are counting the fjords differently in Norway and Greenland, but nobody says it's "original research" for our article on Greenland to say how big it is. I do not see a huge issue with disputed areas, either -- your example of Taiwan is included in List of countries and dependencies by area, List of countries by population growth rate, List of countries by GDP (nominal), and List of countries by income equality, et cetera without problem. jp×g 12:16, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Also, every argument made in favor of keeping "by population" applies equally well to "by area". So why should we keep one and not the other? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:36, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Populations are measured by a variety of methods, which can vary wildly between jurisdictions and go out of date quickly. If I recall correctly, this was a major point raised in the other deletion discussion, which does not apply here. jp×g 12:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep or perhaps expand to include a list of all subdivisions, so it becomes a list that users can toggle to rank by area and population on their own.-- Earl Andrew - talk 19:48, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Reply. So, after the list by population has already been deleted, you want to revive it? Clarityfiend (talk) 23:39, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Ideally yes, but failing that, have one article with all of the information in it.-- Earl Andrew - talk 17:49, 23 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep There are too many lists comparing countries in Wikipedia. People often forget the fact that some country subdivisions are larger, more populous, and have a higher GDP than a lot of countries in the world. For example, Sakha is bigger than Argentina, the world's eighth largest country; Western Australia is larger than Algeria, the world's tenth largest country; Uttar Pradesh is more populous than Bangladesh, the world's eighth most populous country; and China has eight provinces whose GDP are Top 20 in the world if they were countries.


 * We need more lists comparing these significant country subdivisions, not less. This article is one of the most basic lists for comparing country subdivisions. Of course we should keep it. Not only should we keep it, we should also revive the population list. I don't know whether we have a list comparing the GDP of significant country subdivisions. If we haven't, we should create one. These three lists are so fundamental that there is no reason not to have them.


 * As for the sources, since we are only listing the most significant ones, the relevant figures have all been well sourced in each country subdivision's own article. James Ker-Lindsay (talk) 23:57, 19 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep. Perfectly encyclopaedic list. Certainly not OR. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:43, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The individual stats are not OR. It is, however, OR to combine them all in a ranking, just as it would be to have a List of actors by number of adopted children. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:01, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Except this list is of valid interest, whereas that one is clearly just silly. If you think this list is OR for that reason, then I assume you will go on to nominate List of countries and dependencies by area and many, many more similar lists which are just as much OR by your definition as this one is. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:00, 25 November 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.