Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of sovereign states

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. Issues regarding content disputes should be settled on talk pages, not here. Thanks --Neutrality^talk 19:31, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

List of sovereign states

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Problematic list that has been subject to various disputes. The list admits that it is controversial. It is mainly composed of (duplicates) the Member states of the United Nations with some extra territories added, such as Northern Cyprus. The criteria for deciding the extra territories is dubious as it is not based on any official list, but on personal interpretation of complex laws and definitions - which is against WP:OR. Wikipedians should not be arguing/debating/deciding what constitutes a country or a sovereign state - we should be reporting what reliable sources have determined. Suggest that useful sourced material relating to the UN list should be merged to Member states of the United Nations, and this title redirected to Lists of countries and territories. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 19:58, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy keep. Of obvious interest to our readers to have a list of states. The criteria is problematic, yes, but it is being revised as we speak. Nightw 20:29, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. — I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} 20:30, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Keep The nomination is proposing merger and redirection, not deletion. All the rest seems a matter of ordinary editing and dispute resolution too. Warden (talk) 21:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep One of the most rediculous noms I've seen in a long while. When you have a content dispute go to the talk page, if you want to merge a page (or move it) go to the talk page. You do not nom for deletion, this is an extreme proposal for a core and highly visible page that is heavily edited by commited users. Outback the koala (talk) 21:05, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
- After looking at the talkpage, I also do not beleive this nom was made in good faith and violates WP:POINT and is in reaction to a discussion there where the nominator was on the losing end of a discussion regarding the direction of the page and redirects to it. Outback the koala (talk) 21:09, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep Agree with Outback's assessment of reason for nomination. --Taivo (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
speedy keep AGF assuming the nominator is attempting to solve a content dispute with a deletion-request and did not realize that was out of policy. L.tak (talk) 21:16, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep If the US or any other country dropped out of the UN, this nominator would no longer consider it to be "sovereign." Likewise, a new nation does not need to join the UN to gain sovereignty. References such as the CIA databok on the nations of the world and other references can be used as references to establish whether any borderline countries are sovereign, such as "breakaway rebel-held territories" of existing countries. Likewise, some UN members have not been sovereign, but have been fictional sovereign states, fully controlled by some superpower. Edison (talk) 21:29, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Relisting comment: I snow-closed this, with the wording "The result was keep, under WP:SNOW. No sense dragging this out, and editors are coming a bit close to using this AfD as a platform to insult the nominator; I want to head that off." The nominator has asked me on my talk page to reverse my close, so of course I have done so.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —S Marshall T/C 08:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I deplore the use of this page to make borderline attacks on the nominator, but I also think this nomination is severely mistaken and fails WP:BEFORE. List of sovereign states is a plausible search term and should at absolute minimum be a redirect of some kind. I can't imagine how it could be thought wise to turn it into a redlink. WP:ATD applies.—S Marshall T/C 08:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The arguement of "Problematic list that has been subject to various disputes" isn't a valid one for deletion. If it was, say goodbye to George W. Bush, Microsoft, Osama Bin Laden, <insert your sports team here>, etc. Lugnuts (talk) 08:33, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I agree that my nomination could have been better worded. To hopefully make it clearer - I am not nominating this list for deletion because it is subject to various disputes, but because I see it as a WP:CONTENTFORK of Member states of the United Nations and along with the duplication of the UN list it contains contentious WP:OR. My intention in remarking upon the disputes was to highlight that editors are arguing over how criteria should be interpreted, and that the disputes are indicative of the original research nature of the list.

My proposal is that the content is deleted as not belonging on Wikipedia as it is a list that does not exist beyond Wikipedia; and, it is giving the appearance that such a list is authoritative, when it is editorial conjecture. However, there may be material on the valid UN list which may be worth keeping. And the title itself is a valid search term which could be pointed at Lists of countries and territories. It is not the title itself that I see as the issue, but the contentious original research of the contents. This may be a case where I see myself what I mean, but I'm not communicating it clearly. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 10:18, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a very significant difference between a list of sovereign states and a list of UN member states. UN member states are not necessarily sovereign (e.g. Belarus and Ukraine, 1945-91) and sovereign states are not necessarily part of the UN (e.g. Vatican City). This is not a content fork except inasmuch as every entry listed at lists of countries is a content fork of Member states of the United Nations. I also note that the recent disputes have primarily focussed not on what belongs on the list, but on how the list should be organised. Pfainuk talk 10:37, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Question for the nominator: Are you proposing outright deletion of the page or redirecting it to something else? You stated in your nomination that the page should be redirected. Given the incoming links, this would be a requirement. But this means that your proposal is not a deletion request, so it doesn't belong here. Nightw 10:47, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - this is the sort of topic that you would be surprised not to find in an encyclopædia. As such, I think it should be kept. Could it be improved? Of course - we aren't finished yet. But let's not demolish the house while it's still being built. Pfainuk talk 10:37, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. A list like this is bound to cause disagreements about which borderline cases should be listed, and in what way, but this is not a reason to delete it. The nominator's claim that it is a content fork of Member states of the United Nations makes little sense to me, as the article was clearly not started as a content fork, and actually seems to predate the article that it is claimed to be a fork of (though it's hard to be sure with such old articles - the incomplete edit histories and cut-and-paste moves of the early days make tracing article histories very difficult). While the two articles obviously have a great deal of overlap, they are different things, and are both worth having. (Disclaimer: although the surviving edit history starts with my edit of 12 November 2001, I did not create this article: it already existed on 27 February 2001, which was before my time. Incidentally, this means that the article was at least 10 years, 4 months and 18 days old at the time of nomination, which is probably an AfD record.) --Zundark (talk) 13:04, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Snow Keep Subject very clearly is not a content fork of anything. Subject being contentious is never grounds for deletion. Editors engaging in original research instead of citing sources is a prblem of those editors, not an inherent flaw of the article. Edward321 (talk) 15:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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.