Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Requirements of IFRS


 * 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. No consensus to delete, but many editors suggest merging or moving the material.  Sandstein  08:13, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Requirements of IFRS

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Contested PROD. Existing discussion can be found on the talk page; my rationale in a nutshell is that the article relies on primary sources (and with opaque referencing), is overly detailed beyond merited coverage in a generalist encyclopedia, and is presented as a sort of how-to. In conclusion, it's not encyclopedic content. I would not object to a merge/redirect back to the parent article International Financial Reporting Standards if editors see merit in this. BDD (talk) 18:23, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. BDD (talk) 18:24, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete User:BDD proded the article which I endorsed.  Sources that were provided were howtoguides by accounting firms such as KPMG and Ernst & Young, not government body literature.  The main idea is that the +4000 IFRS pages of rules are all requirements, and to cherrypick only a few would turn any accounting statement into either GAAP statements or an ad hoc statement for a client.  This is a sui generis case in that secondary sources are not appropriate when every single rule is an International Financial Reporting Standard.  To use secondary sources would be WP:SYN.174.3.125.23 (talk) 22:41, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. This article is the "Summary of standards" that is linked on navigation International Financial Reporting Standards.  It has been tagged with messages like "too technically detailed", but in the context of the article series it is proper, it is the overview of main features of the IFRS standards, while more technical details are included in separate articles about individual IFRS standards.  It could About it referring to the primary sources of the IFRS standards, that is best.  The standards themselves are summary works reflecting tons of discussion in requests for comments and debate among academics and politicians and experts, much as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards reflect industry comments and political pressure, too.  It would be easy to add secondary/tertiary references to accounting textbooks that teach the standards.  "How to guides" by KPMG and others are quite definitive, reliable sources, too, as they have to be: they provide authoritative guidance for KPMG auditors and KPMG is on the line financially if anything is wrong.  If anyone wishes to dispute the reliability of these sources, nonetheless, they should post to the sources noticeboard and please notify me to come join discussion. -- do  ncr  am  15:06, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I few points of false facts your you stated: IFRS are international rules and is not a government body.  The standards were not created with any sort of political discussion or influence, but a set of business standards that allows consistent comparison between financial statements.  Those who adhere to International Financial Reporting Standards do so because it is advantageous when comparing these accounting statements across polities, which do have their GAAP.  Ultimately, it is up to the organization or business to decide what set or group of accounting rules they would like to follow.174.3.125.23 (talk) 17:16, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I didn't say IFRS was a govt body, i compared its set of standards to U.S. EPA (a govt agency)'s set of standards promulgated. And, accounting standards are very much outcomes of political processes.  There are organized comment periods about drafts and so on.  And, to some extent a business can choose what set of standards they follow...but often not.  Businesses listed on public exchanges (i.e. which sell shares to the public) in Canada must provide IFRS-consistent financial statements.  Businesses listed on the U.S. New York Stock Exchange used to have to provide U.S. GAAP statements (even if the business was headquartered in Germany and it was required to provide IFRS or whatever there);  now i think NYSE allows either U.S. GAAP or IFRS. -- do  ncr  am  23:12, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't see how the WP:NOTHOW violation is being addressed.174.3.125.23 (talk) 23:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment Discussion of deletion already occurred at Talk page, where some criticisms were already addressed. Quoting:


 * Oppose [to the suggestion of deletion, there] A quick search found secondary sources for IFRS reporting requirements like, , , and . A GBooks search for "requirements of IFRS" netted 7,330 results and GScholar 464 results. This seems a highly notable field with ample sources on which to build an article. I don't think this is a howto, in the sense that this is very far from a detailed manual for how to report financial information. But in any case, removal of any content deemed howto or synth can be accomplished with ordinary editing; deletion should be an action of last resort. For these reasons, I am deprodding. --Mark viking (talk) 22:16, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * IFRS are a body of requirements. The sources you cited and those on GBooks (Google Books) and GScholar (Google Scholar) are simply secondary sources of the actual IFRS accounting rules.  I can't see how providing sources could take this article's subject into a nonoriginal article.174.3.125.23 (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Secondary and tertiary sources like the ones quoted above are precisely what is needed to avoid original research. If I was to read the entire set of of primary IFRS documents (heaven help me) and decide what the main points are to put in the article, that would be an evaluative judgment in the realm of OR and likely SYNTH. But if experts in the field write books or papers describing "these are the main points, and this why they are important", then a simple straight summary of those source is all that is needed, no OR required. The section WP:PSTS within the WP:OR page describes the policies. --Mark viking (talk) 23:19, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I've gone through the sources and there is no consistent reference to any set or specific group of "requirements". In reality, all International Financial Reporting Standards are requirements and rules.  Ultimately, those sources are sources of private companies, and handbooks to use IFRS.  IFRS rules must be followed in order for accounting reporting to be considered to be under International Financial Reporting Standards.  Otherwise, they are ad hoc rules or sometimes GAAP rules, if they are following a national body's rules.174.3.125.23 (talk) 14:52, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

My point is that there are sources, and there could be improvement such as finding summary reviews of IFRS that themselves state the main points, to avoid synthesis/OR, but that is doable. This AFD would eliminate a sensible encyclopedic topic, an overview of IFRS standards. Consider, wouldn't a "List of IFRS standards" be a valid topic, which provided summary of various standards. That is what this is. -- do ncr  am  15:14, 19 February 2014 (UTC)
 * There's nothing you can summarize. All accounting rules have to be followed to International Financial Reporting Standards.  Accountancy is quite different from other fields in that representation of financial figures with consistency is an imperative.174.3.125.23 (talk) 17:01, 19 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Note I have placed a notice of the AfD discussion on the talk page of the Accountancy task force of WP Business at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Business/Accountancy Taskforce --Mark viking (talk) 19:05, 19 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep the article; oppose the deletion. The article is a fair endeavour to summarise the key points of IFRS. It already has clear referencing to the primary source, being the standards themselves.  The format of these references can be edited to Wikipedia-standard.

Secondary sources exist which summarise the IFRS standards, highlighting the key principles of IFRS. IFRS is generally considered to be principles-based and the standards lend themselves to summary. The article currently lacks references to those secondary sources.

The article is not overly detailed. The article is not presented as a “how-to”. The subject matter of the article merits coverage in a generalist encyclopaedia. Swinnow16 (talk) 07:42, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I am assuming that the keepers believe that with secondary sources the article should be kept because information from these secondary sources can be collated into an articled that would be accepetable under WP:NOT. This is not true because when refering to "principles" versus "rules" in accountancy (which I believe you are refering to Accounting ethics), this ultimately comes down to the discrection of the accountant, on how they interpret the rules, not whether a rule can be ignored or omitted.


 * The fact that the secondary sources that have been provided are not neutral, from private comapanies, and from third party sources casts doubt in the ability to reliably source the article.


 * Lastly, the concern that these reasons have not been dismissed results in the article being a howtoguide, which violates WP:NOT.174.3.125.23 (talk) 17:57, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Merge to International Financial Reporting Standards. Wikipedia's articles on the topic of accounting are generally quite poor, and this is no exception, being full of accounting jargon and I suspect completely impenetrable to someone who is not an expert on the topic.  I don't think that the main IFRS article is so unwieldly that a discussion of what's actually required would be out of place there, and it may be possible to salvage some of this content for that purpose.  Lankiveil (speak to me) 09:57, 26 February 2014 (UTC).
 * I agree with the comment about poorness, but an editing improvement campaign would best be done by developing the IFRS main article and moving summary points to the summary of standards article. The way to improve the series is not to delete the natural summary of standards article. -- do  ncr  am  23:12, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I take that you believe Requirements of IFRS is a summary standards article. How, then, logically, would you address the howto nature of Requirements of IFRS?174.3.125.23 (talk) 23:11, 27 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Break up by merging mostly into the main articles for each section, e.g. merge Revenue section to revenue recognition; then redirect to the main IFRS page, keeping the page history (good practice under GFDL). The IFRS page could also have a list of these dispersed sections as "key requirements of IFRS". The aspect of the overall topic that might interest readers most is where the requirements of IFRS differ from their historical national standard accounting practice, and this could be cited from accounting journals for any particular country, but it would not be practicable to build a global view of the differences in Wikipedia. – Fayenatic  L ondon 09:37, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Keep Nominators arguments speak to rewriting, not deletion. It is not a 'how to' but a description. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 18:17, 28 February 2014 (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.