Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nobel laureates by country


 * 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. For what it's worth there is a category structure that isn't well populated; people interested in this topic are welcome to help populate those categories. Carlossuarez46 21:34, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Nobel laureates by country

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There are many problems with this article. 1) The list makes it so that each country is allocated the maximum possible number of laureates no matter how many times they are counted, what affliation they use, or what the person's personal viewpoint is on their association with the given country. For example, several laureates are listed under countries purely because they have a parent from that country (ethnic affliation), others because they are citizens (national affliation), and still others because country-borders change and their birthplaces are now under a new government. 2) The article doesn't give any information on the importance or relevance of this type of listing, and so does not work as a stand-alone article. It is merely a grouping of small lists. 3) Much of the statistics given at the bottom and implied through the map are heavily original research, again tying back into the way the laureates are listed by country. Bulldog123 23:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Introductory paragraph deals adequately with the issue of persons being included under more than one country. (Persons can have more than one nationality, and nationality often passes automatically from parent to child. People often self-identify with two nationalities, especially if they immigrate as an adult.) Grouping like this is probably better than having a category for Nobel laureates from each country. –SESmith 23:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep this is probably the best way to handle it because of its flexibility. The national aspects of the prizes have from the start been considered as important, and are included in almost all lists of winners anywhere.DGG (talk) 01:10, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Nationality has traditionally been important in many types of award, for example sport. Cases of complex nationality are no reason to delete this useful list, though the criteria might need clarifying. If the map and table are original research or are flawed, then deal with it on the talk page of the article. Espresso Addict 02:57, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep per the above points; nationality is an important part of the awards. Take your issues to the article's talk page. —Disavian (talk/contribs) 06:51, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep This is an article I would expect to find, and the list of reasons given for deletion is a little desperate, to be honest. None of the alleged problems require a response greater than minor cleanup. Golfcam 17:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * If you see this as a minor cleanup. Please, be my guest and clean it up. You'll see for yourself the unsolvable problems you'll come across. Nationalities merely cannot be prescribed for some of these people. The categories function much better. Bulldog123 20:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * A good example is Lavoslav Ruzicka. Born in Austria-Hungary, in what was then to become the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, then Yugoslavia and finally Croatia. Which should he go to??? Bigdaddy1981 21:26, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The simple answer is to categorize as reported by the Nobel committee. That's not hard and is quite a minor clean-up job. Deleting the whole ball of wax is not the answer. –SESmith 22:37, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete unless causality is argued (e.g. natives of country X inherently more likely to win prize Y) then this list is a pointless intersection of two unrelated traits of the individual winners. Since causality isn't argued (thank god), this list must go. Bigdaddy1981 20:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: the Nobel committee itself records the nationality and posts it on its website. Causality is not the only reason to keep track of nationality. It can also be useful in analyzing how government funding of science and the arts is "working". –SESmith 21:49, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Why not then a list of Nobels by sex - that might be useful for seeing how women are underrepresented in higher echelons of, say, physics or another field? There are lots of lists of information that are useful but that violate WP:SYNTH. Bigdaddy1981 22:01, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Mainly because the Nobel committee doesn't indicate the person's sex when awarding the prize. They do indicate the person's nationality. Thus it is not a violation of WP:SYNTH if we stick to what Nobel reports. If it's gone beyond that, that's another matter than can be dealt with by editing the page and using the talk page. –SESmith 22:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * You are changing your criteria - first it was usefulness and now based on what the committee does. That's okay - I still disagree. Firstly, is the sex of a recipient not obvious? I assume that is why it is not reported. It is *not* the case that the Nobel committe thinks sex unimportant. To wit, there are two lists available of all Laureates on nobel.org- one by university (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/universities.html)and the other by sex (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/women.html) there is not - so far as I can see, a country list on the website. Try changing the url of either of the above to country.html or countries.html and you get a page not found. Bigdaddy1981 22:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I am not changing my criteria. I was merely suggesting that there may be legitimate reasons that nationality is tracked, by the Nobel committee or whomever, because you suggested tracking this may be only useful if one is concerned with causality. If you re-read my initial comment to your post you will see that I mentioned that the Nobel committee reports the nationality, which has been my consistent position. As for sex, this is a bit off topic, but it is not always obvious when all you are dealing with is a name from the past, particularly if the person is from a culture that uses given names you are not familiar with. Ask someone who doesn't know about Aung San Suu Kyi if it's a man or a woman, and there will be a signficant percentage who guess wrong. Giosuè Carducci? Pär Lagerkvist? Rabindranath Tagore? I'd be guessing. I have not searched for a particular list of nationalities on the website either, but when a prize is awarded the person's nationality and primary place of work or residence is listed. See, e.g., here: Indian national, works in UK. I believe this information is even printed on their official certificate. -SESmith 23:35, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Fair point with the names. I suppose the photo is meant to suffice, but given the obvious importance of gender to the organisation (which I infer from the list I cite above) I'm surprised that sex isn't also given. I'm not sure whether the fact that the committee reports nationality is a compelling argument - for instance they also report birthdate (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2006/index.html) but I doubt anyone would think an article about prizewinners by year of birth is a good idea. Bigdaddy1981 00:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - There are valid reasons nationality is a good way to sort this. Smmurphy(Talk) 04:09, 26 July 2007 (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.