Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of wealthiest people by percentage of GDP


 * 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.  Sandstein  20:08, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

List of wealthiest people by percentage of GDP

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Indiscriminate collection of information, mostly original research or synthesis of published material. Probably also wrong, because I doubt that in more than 100 countries there are just four people whose net worth is more than 1% of their country's GDP. Huon (talk) 14:09, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep. It's a bit of a stretch to describe math as "original research." I'm also not sure what makes this list "indiscriminate"; the qualifications for being on the list are described in the list's title. Fumoses (talk) 14:44, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - while I don't doubt that the people given on the list actually had the net worth given, both absolute and as a percentage of their country of residence's GDP, saying that these five are, as the list claims, the five wealthiest by percentage of GDP is purely OR. That criterion is useless in any practical sense, too. As an obvious example of its absurdity, I might make the list if I moved to Tuvalu. Huon (talk) 15:10, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete This would be the type of OR referred to as "original synthesis"; the information about the figures for a person's net worth and a nation's GDP are sourced, true; it's the process of creating a new measurement that gets into the original research problem. I think there's a reason that there hasn't been a previously published list of wealthiest people by percentage of GDP, and that reason would be that it doesn't actually demonstrate anything.  The Gross Domestic Product is not the total worth of a nation's assets, but rather the total market value of goods and services produced during a year's time.  If Bill Gates had earned $101 billion in 1999, it might make sense to compare that to the 9 trillion dollars worth of goods and services produced that year in the US.   Or, one could compare how much Gates's net worth (assets - liabilities) to the USA's net worth.  It's originally-produced and pointless at the same time.  Mandsford (talk) 15:53, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per items 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, and 11 of WP:LC. See also WP:SYNTH and WP:NOR. As Mandsford suggests, comparing net assets to GDP makes no economic sense. Stifle (talk) 16:00, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep The Listcruft essay is not even a guideline because the criteria there are purely subjective, and many of t hem have been repeated rejected when raised at afds. In particular, 1)"just for having such a list" is obviously not subject to evidence, 2)"interest to a very limited number of people" is both unprovable and irrelevant--wp includes notable obscure information--thats what an encyclopedia is for.  4) "unverifiable" is not correct, the figures given can easily be verified from the sources given in Wikipedia. 9) "non-neutral POV" does not apply  10) As for OR, Long division is not OR, at least not with a calculator, & so I cannot see how arithmetic of that sort   can amount to synthesis; the extent of the synthesis is composed of going through the list of most wealthy people and picking out the highest for each country. .  11) volatile require much upkeep-- no more than any other of the most wealth people lists--this is just a derivative of them. But I do agree with Huon that it is incomplete, asthere are probably a number ofsuch people in the less developed countries we havent yet gotten data for, so the answer to that is expand. I also agreewith Mandsford that net national worth  be a more meaningful figure, and encourage him to do that also i the data is available.  DGG (talk) 00:07, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions.   -- raven1977 (talk) 02:18, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete per Mansford. Pavel Vozenilek (talk) 21:57, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep per DGG. I know I've seen a list like this in the past decade in a mainstream US magazine, Harper's?  - list of all time richest people in order of gdp percentage - didn't find in a quick search.John Z (talk) 01:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
 * A statistic this pointless would more likely be in the bottom left hand corner of USA Today. Bear in mind that if someone were to find a list like this in Harper's, USA Today, People Magazine, etc., it isn't original research.  Even if it's been done before, this particular list cannot be attributed to a mainstream publication, and the original synthesis problem remains.   Mandsford (talk) 16:29, 25 October 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.