Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/World's largest employers


 * 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 of the debate was delete. --Sam Blanning(talk) 14:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

World's largest employers
I can't find any sources to back this up at all and I don't think a list of 4 companies is appropriate for such a broad topic. Metros232 00:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. - and I think combining military or national forces with commercial enterprises is not so useful. Crum375 01:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. --Osbus 01:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. DarthVad e r 01:47, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete what? this article made me laugh. It's a list of the world's top employers, but it only has four employers? This article literally made me LOL. M1ss1ontomars2k4 | T | C | @ 03:27, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment So why delete it? Why not expand it instead?  Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete here's a source for the data: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1047265,00.html but the article should still be deleted Bwithh 03:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Why? Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete listcruft. --Arnzy (whats up?)  03:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Paddles 04:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep and greatly expand It's no more listcruft than a lot of Wikipedia lists. If no sources can be found to expand it, however, delete. Morgan Wick 06:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete Original research, and I don't like its chances of ever being anywhere near complete or accurate. Choalbaton 07:55, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Agglomerating already-available data does not constitute "original research"--in fact, that's precisely what this encyclopedia is: An agglomeration of data available from many disparate sources. Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Either keep and expand, or merge data into employment then, redirect. Information appears to be accurate based on various sources. &mdash;Viriditas | Talk 09:59, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand. A potentially useful list. Zocky | picture popups 11:10, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete for now as unverified substub. Unopposed to recreate as a sourced and more extensive article. - CrazyRussian talk/contribs/email 12:06, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Unverified or unverifiable? The latter is a reason to delete; with the former, no need to delete--just find sources and list them.  No need to delete and recreate.  Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand, this list has potential. -  Erebus555 Chit chat.
 * Delete. Useless list. Probably created as a WP:POINT violation about the NHS. — Cuivi é  nen T, Sunday, 21 May 2006 @ 14:56 UTC
 * Comment This is a VERY useful way to organize information. And your last assertion is just utterly baseless.  Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, unverifiable, original research. --Ter e nce Ong 15:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Umm...employment data is readily available for a shitload of employers, public and private. Agglomerating available data does not violate NOR.  Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Nothing wrong with organizing information in as many ways as possible. That the list only has four entries is not a reason to delete it; it is a reason to expand it.  Remember, deletion is a discussion on whether the subject itself deserves an article, not on the content of that article.  Content can always be fixed.  Kurt Weber 15:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the point was made above that including such an article would mandate, almost in principle, WP:OR and would be extremely hard to maintain even at that. Crum375 15:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And I explained how it wouldn't. Agglomerating already-available data does NOT constitute original research.  In fact, that's what this whole encyclopedia is: an agglomeration of already-available data.  Doing that is the OPPOSITE of original research--you're simply putting together data provided by others rather than going out and getting your own.  Kurt Weber 15:35, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I beg to differ. In this case, imagine you are down to item 10 on the list. There are multiple references online to which is #10 let's say. And the 'real' one may not even be referenced anywhere. Then how would you resolve it? Then imagine you get to number 11, 12, 13 - the problem gets harder, exponentially as you go deeper down the list. These are not easy and simple references - this is absolute, and very hard, original work, and may easily be disputed as such also. This is not the normal encyclopedic process of collecting information about notable items. It is the very imprecise and controversial ranking process which is the WP:OR. Crum375 16:56, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * We find contradictory sources all the time. What's any different about this?  If it is impossible to come to a consensus, you just notate all the disputed entries.  Kurt Weber 17:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * You are missing the point. The ranking is the issue. It's one thing for 2 editors to argue about whether source a or b are notable enough, and reach some consensus (which may change over time, and then source c may be added, etc.) Here the issue, again, is ranking - you will have to argue who is #8 and who is #9 etc. all with limited and conflicting information. It won't be even about opposing POVs - you'll have (say) 2 fairly reliable published sources conflicting about a company's size - whom do you believe? which numbers do you accept? once you open it up into ranges (which are controversial also), then the ranking becomes even more ill-defined mathematically. Of course any small change can immediately change all the deeper level in the ranking. IOW, IMO this is MI (Mission Impossible), WP:OR to define a ranking, and gets tougher exponentially with every step. Crum375 18:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * And let me add again that not all organizations will publish their size - military forces come to mind. What do you do then? Use estimates? whose? and couple that into the main ranking problem... Crum375 18:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. If you want to join a magazine and present a yearly list of largest employers, feel free to do so. Then, we can use your list to create an encyclopedia article. However, it can't originate on Wikipedia. That's the whole reason for the NOR policy. Morgan Wick 20:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * You don't understand NOR. Original research would be me going out and sending letters to everyone asking how many people they have working for them. Simply putting together numbers obtained by others is NOT original research.  Crum is raising a good point about verifiability (although I don't think he realizes it), which is starting to give me second thoughts--but there are no NOR issues inherent to this list.Kurt Weber 21:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I should add to that that I don't entirely agree with the NOR policy anyway (and as a result I often try to keep articles that DO violate NOR), but that was never actually an issue with this article; those who claimed otherwise simply don't understand the policy. Kurt Weber 21:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree in the sense that NOR is kind of fuzzily defined, and can be stretched to kibosh almost any article on Wikipedia if anyone wanted to make a WP:POINT (and to some extent, I do think it might not be OR, which is why I focused on WP:NOT), but I don't think you realize that what you propose is a lot closer to your example of NOR than most of us are comfortable with. We're not supposed to be the source of first record on anything, and if we cobble together a bunch of disparate sources into the first cohesive list of its kind in the world, one which the companies on it will cite as being the "#8 largest employer in the world", that raises some issues as to whether we're really trying to follow our goal of building an encyclopedia, as opposed to an almanac or something else. (I HAVE seen at least one list cobbled together from different sources on a completely unrelated topic, one in which the main concern was that it was approaching cruft level, but I actually didn't think much about the issues raised here.) I should make clear that my vote has always been a keep on the condition that reliable sources be found to expand it on. I only want to delete if a) reliable sources can't be found (i.e., the sources you're looking for turn out to not be easily accessible or not existent at all) or b) any source turns out to be inherently unreliable, as has been raised here. Morgan Wick 23:53, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep  'Probably created as a WP:POINT violation about the NHS.'  - ha, not everyone is that bitter about the world. It could be useful - would need a lot of research to make it accurate, but holds potential. --Pwilko 16:02, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete after noting information on companies' pages. That is, say in the WalMart article that it is the second largest employer in the world, employing X number of people, etc. --Fbv65 e del (discuss 01:42, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Merge & Delete - unmaintainable after the first couple of entries (as the 1.3-1.6 in # of employees for NHS clearly shows) - be sure the amounts & likely ranks are noted in the company articles (and who is higher as a reference) but the ist itself should go--Invisifan 10:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep and expand. I just found a source and updated the page to match it, so it's not unsourced anymore. It should obviously be expanded beyond a simple table, and probably should be broken out by different definitions of "largest" and "employer" à la World's tallest structure. But there needs to be an article here. —phh (t/c) 15:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * IMO, creating a ranking is WP:OR. Keeping track of first place, e.g. largest x or tallest y maybe OK, properly cited, but as you get into the runners-up the work becomes progressively more creative and hence original, i.e. WP:OR. Crum375 16:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, actually the Department of Health created the ranking, or at least the one that's in the article now. —phh (t/c) 16:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * You can cite a ranking by any reliable neutral source, but you cannot create a fresh one on WP, per my understanding of WP:OR. Once you have multiple sources with multiple rankings, how do you reconcile them? Crum375 16:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Who says we have to? Why not just present each ranking on its own with information about where it came from? If a ranking is different from others because it uses different criteria, explain the difference. If we get several lists, presumably there will be some commonalities between them, and we can highlight those commonalities without establishing an explicit ranking of our own: "With an estimated 2.3 million active-duty troops, the People's Liberation Army of China is considered by many to be a strong candidate for the world's largest employer, with the U.S. Department of Defense a reasonably close 2nd, although some list-makers dispute the notion that a nation's armed forces should be considered an "employer," and others lump all employees of a country's government into a single group for the purposes of ranking. Most list-makers consider Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. to be the world's largest private employer, although McDonald's can be said to rival it in size if the employees of all of the chain's independent franchisee restaurants are included in its total." Etc. —phh (t/c) 17:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * For the first few, say 3 or 4, it is possible to create a ranking, with a lot of qualifications that may tend to obscure the picture. When you get to higher numbers, I think the problem to present a fair ranking will get exponentially harder, with the picture to the casual reader becoming ever more obscure. Also, as someone else mentioned here, imagine the conflicts with other WP articles that claim a ranking. To summarize, IMO creating a ranking, especially of dynamic and fuzzy targets, is WP:OR. Crum375 18:02, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Poorly written article, but should be kept. Keep. It's a very interesting subject, too. &mdash;M e ts501 talk 00:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Please read my comments above. I think that ranking fuzzy values is WP:OR, not allowed under WP policy. Citing existing tables, pre-ranked, with proper sourcing, if such existed, would be OK, but this is not it. Crum375 01:58, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete, NOR.--Peta 06:23, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep -- with references added. - Longhair 03:56, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * References to what? If it is to other hypothetical Web sites that have a complete ranking, you will have to present each in its entirety and you will then have multiple conflicting rankings, which will get very confusing. If there is an attempt to reconcile the differences, it would constitute WP:OR IMO. Crum375 11:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: actually, compiling and summarizing data produced by secondary sources is exactly what a tertiary source like Wikipedia is supposed to do. —phh (t/c) 17:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * In general yes, but rankings of fuzzy values are extremely problematic. Of course you can refer to any published reliable source for such rankings if you can find it, but once you have several, and they differ (and they would by the nature of the fuzziness), it becomes confusing to the reader. It would be nice if you could point to an example anywhere on WP where this is done. And comparing exact values (like tallest buildings or largest countries by area) is not relevant here because they are not fuzzy. Note also that due to fuzziness the values will start becoming ranges (like 2.6-2.9) and then the comparison or ranking is even more ill defined, so this whole concept, regardless of the source, is shaky at best. Crum375 19:43, 26 May 2006 (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.