Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of countries by Internet connection speed

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. Consensus herein is for the articles to be retained. Discussion about how to improve them can always continue on their respective talk pages. (Non-administrator closure) NorthAmerica¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:13, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of countries by Internet connection speed[edit]

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Per WP:NOTSTATSBOOK, ~~this article is also incomplete as it does not fully reflect all the countries in the world. That can be misleading.~~
There is not enough information for it to be a standalone article.

I am also nominating the following related pages for the same reason.
List of countries by 4G LTE penetration (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
List of countries by smartphone penetration (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
List of countries by mobile banking usage (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) JayJay^{What did I do?} 18:20, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any of those lists violating any points you raised through Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. You're not being specific at all here. Much of the data presented is self-explanatory or explained in the article itself. The lists illustrate highly relevant and emerging new technologies that is highly valuable to Wikipedia researchers, neglected for too long in my view. For example, we have lists of countries by telephone lines or mobile phones but no smartphones. You will find plenty of lists like these at Wikipedia and none of them have been nominated for deletion. Being incomplete is certainly no reason for a deletion. Look at list of countries at Wikipedia and you will find many of them are incomplete. Claiming them to be "misleading" based on this sounds like WP:OR. None of them have been nominated for deletion for that reason. Besides, List of countries by Internet connection speed is as comprehensive as you would get with the data that Akamai published - All the countries with data have been listed. The other three lists you nominated are fully listed and complete, so your second point would be invalid in this case. I suggest you do some research into these lists first before nominating them for deletion. YJAX (talk) 18:29, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Other stuff exists is not that great of a argument either. Let me rephrase my point, having a list like the 4G LTE article that lists 10 countries does not provide enough information to have a standalone article. Now the Internet Connection speed, for statistical purposes (the irony), has about 70 countries listed, out of the 206 "official countries" that list provides only 1/3 of the total countries. I look at several other lists and they have 200+ countries, territories, whateveryouwannacallthem listed. If you could provide a better source that accurately reflects all or a majority of the countries in the world, I may change my view. However at the current time I don't think these articles provide much encyclopedic value. JayJay^{What did I do?} 18:45, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also please look up what WP:OR means. It has nothing to do with my opinion on how these articles could be misleading to someone because these articles do not list all or most of the countries in the world. JayJay^{What did I do?} 18:52, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Anything that requires personal judgement is considered WP:OR. An encyclopedia should be free from personal judgement - In this case you're applying your personal judgement that these lists are "misleading" because they don't include every single country in the world. We would need a source on that for evidence. I don't think we have a Wiki policy saying a list needs to cover every single country in the world just to quality not being nominated for deletion. More on that later. It's a highly relevant argument to compare with other similar articles because look, other lists like List of countries by number of mobile phones in use or List of countries by number of telephone lines in use have been highly scrutinized and existed for nearly a decade. Nobody has ever nominated them for deletion. Smartphones, LTE, mobile banking and internet speed are the same thing, just newer technologies. You may not believe it but there are only 10 countries with any significant 4G LTE coverage. It's that simple. There are simply not any more countries to list in that case, so it is fully complete. If you're living in one of those countries, it should be treated as a privilege. The internet connection speed has more than enough listed to cover all major countries in the world. The whole reason why Akamai publishes data for those countries is simple - They only do it for the major countries. And this is what matters and where the value lies. Look at many list of countries articles and you will find it only lists a particular sub-group of countries like the OECD or EU. None of them have been nominated for deletion either. More often than not those micro island nations in the Pacific which are included in your "200+ countries" are insignificant to most Wikipedia readers. There is no need for another source because for the purpose of illustrating major countries' internet speeds which is exactly what the Akami intends to show to readers, it's complete. Besides, your concern has already been addressed by mentioning this very fact at the top of the rankings to prevent any misunderstandings. I can show you plenty of lists that only include the top 10, top 20 or top 30 countries and none of them have been nominated for deletion because that's what Wikipedia users are looking for. Wikipedia policies state we need to show what's relevant, not the whole thing, which could be cluttering and irrelevant, actually violating the very points you raised to us in the first place. If we follow your logic, we need to weed out any top 10 lists at Wikipedia. YJAX (talk) 19:02, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a deletion discussion, in no way does WP:OR apply to my opinion. WP:OR applies to unsourced claims in ARTICLES. We do not need a source to verify MY OPINION! Where the hell are we gonna find a source that verifies that. All I am saying is that these articles may OR MAY NOT be misleading to somepeople! JayJay^{What did I do?} 19:34, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have argued as if it is a Wiki policy to include every single country, which is why I have brought up WP:OR. Either way, since you have striked out your view that the lists are incomplete, it seems you agree we don't need to cover every single country in the world. It now appears you have moved on to claiming that they're not significant enough to be standlone articles. Actually, I agree with you on that when it comes to 4G LTE or mobile banking, these could be nominated for deletion and be more valuable in their respective articles. However, I can't agree with you with the Internet connection speed and smartphones. For one, internet connection speed is an entirely different topic from any articles at Wikipedia and has sufficient explanatory notes and countries to be standalone. Same goes for smartphones except here, smartphones themselves are self-explanatory so the comprehensive list itself is sufficient. More importantly, both cover more than enough countries worldwide to include all major relevant countries. YJAX (talk) 19:40, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any of the nominators reasons as deletion worthy. As for not covering every single country...I doubt that is any policy, but if it was, that's a fixable problem, and one that should be discussed on the talk page. We don't delete articles over fixable problems. We could even just put a disclaimer that this is an incomplete list. Secondly, if the argument is that this is not enough information to be a stand alone article...that's probably better handled with a merge request. Personally, I think it's fine, but you could make an argument that the information would be better suited redirected to one of the articles that deal with internet speed. Either way, neither of those is a good argument to delete. Bali88 (talk) 22:04, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see JayJay's comment about being misleading is crossed out in the opening, so presumably it doesn't matter, but I thought I'd add that I think that sort of issue can be handled through the normal editing process, rather than deletion. In the case of List of countries by Internet connection speed, the source and limitations of the data seem to be explained within the article text quite clearly. Agyle (talk) 15:50, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as all are relevant, encyclopaedic and of interest to anyone, The articles should be sourced better tho. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 18:47, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep again, for reasons above. There's no reason to delete any list just because it doesn't have every single country covered in the world. For the purpose of illustrating the data in the sources, they're fully complete. YJAX (talk) 19:07, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - I'm not seeing any way in which this article fails to fit within wikipedia guidelines. Also, and this isn't necessarily a reason to keep an article, but if you look at the page views, it seems to consistently get a very respectable number of views. More than any of the articles I've written. It's not exactly what I'd choose to spend my time reading, but other people seem interested in reading it. Bali88 (talk) 21:53, 5 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:POPULARPAGE is not a good reason to keep. JayJay^{What did I do?}

Why wouldn't it be good reason? One of the most important Wiki policies is notability and pageviews are an important piece of evidence showing there is clearly inherent value in these articles to many Wikipedia readers. YJAX (talk) 04:22, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just because an article has X number of views does not make it notable or non notable. JayJay^{What did I do?} 18:00, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What User:Bali88 was saying is that it certainly shows interest from Wiki users, which is a substantial piece of evidence of value. This was also echoed by User:Davey2010. YJAX (talk) 19:53, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly don't think it is the only criteria we should look at. If someone created a popular gossip page, certainly viewership should't override other wikipedia guidelines. But when notability is what is being discussed, I think it adds a valuable piece of information to the conversation that the article is of interest and use to a large number of wikipedia readers. I disagree with anyone who insists that it is irrelevant. Bali88 (talk) 21:08, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Internet-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:21, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:21, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I think the activity of copying some company's compiled data from a website and essentially republishing this on WP is a very dubious activity. Why do this? Is it noteworthy to record this data? Instead articles should refer to those documents as supporting references and or simply list such sites as external links. In case of the list of "Internet connection speeds", the article now reflects company jargon, that is misleading the readers into interpreting that this is the bandwidth of users Internet access and the editor who created the list, took no effort to explain the data in conventional terms and insists on reusing company jargon by reverting improvements. In case of any of these types of lists, I would argue it is not WP's or any encyclopedia's intent to replicate in essence proprietary but published data. Kbrose (talk) 23:22, 6 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Kbrose, by dubious, I assume you mean you think it's legal but inappropriate; if you do think there's a copyright problem, see WP:COPYRIGHT for how to proceed. Copyright law does provide protection for collections of data, but I don't think that applies here. I am not sure about the claim of the data being proprietary; certainly their report is copyrighted, but no restrictions on the use of the data are mentioned. Wikipedia is full of articles that cite facts and figures from published reports, such as the viewers of last Sunday's broadcast of Game of Thrones, the power of last year's Ford F-series V6 engines, and the average wing length of an Australian cockroach. Newspapers, encyclopedias, and other publications rely heavily on data from copyrighted works. Agyle (talk) 02:46, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add that User:Kbrose is a highly involved user in the internet speed article, who has been blanking out sourced content, moving the page to a completely different one from the one stated in the source, violating WP:Verifiability. He invented his own title for the article, which violated WP:OR. His contribution to the article has been far from positive and I would take his opinion with a grain of salt as it is apparent he is not neutral in this matter. YJAX (talk) 12:22, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep List of countries by Internet connection speed (I'm not considering the other lists, as they are dissimilar enough that they should be individually considered). I don't agree with either of the nominator's suggested reasons. WP:NOTSTATSBOOK would seem to hinge in this case on issue #3 "excessive listings of statistics"; while entirely subjective, my subjective opinion is that the listings are not excessive. It's a short list of just 63 countries, listing only the average connection speed for each country. The "not enough information for it to be a standalone article" again is a subjective issue with which I disagree, but I wonder if perhaps the nominator was considering Wikipedia guidance for non-list articles; there is a separate page of guidelines on stand-alone lists at WP:STANDALONE, with broad guidance on appropriate topics described at WP:SALAT. Agyle (talk) 02:46, 7 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for reasons listed above. Excessive statistics are entirely relative, and wouldn't exactly apply here. It would be nice to include stats from other sources and to expand the list, but that is not grounds for deletion. Zach Vega (talk to me) 20:36, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - There are two issues here: (a) whether there are problems with the current content of the article and what needs to happen to improve it, and (b) whether "list of countries by internet connection speed" meets the various requirements for a page to exist on Wikipedia (notability and whatnot). Generally speaking, for the purposes of a deletion discussion the primary way these two questions have a direct bearing on each other is if the content of the page is so egregiously bad that it would have to be completely rewritten in order to comply with encyclopedic standards (as frequently is the case with overly promotional articles and such). There are huge problems with the page, but none that would require scrapping and starting over. So, focusing on (b), I would say it easily passes WP:GNG and WP:SALAT. There are a number of such lists out there that have been covered by every major news publication in the last few years. WP:NOTSTATSBOOK is about overrunning encyclopedia articles with statistics and isn't applicable when the encyclopedic subject is a meaningful kind of measurement. Otherwise we'd have to get rid of List of countries by population, List of countries by number of Internet users, and hundreds of others. So keep, but the article as it is needs some serious TLC. --— Rhododendrites ^talk | 04:11, 13 June 2014 (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.