Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of sovereign states in xxxx

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 (thus keep). -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of sovereign states in xxxx

This is deletion for a number of articles:

• 2001
• 1991
• 1981
• 1971
• 1961
• 1951
• 1925
• 100 BC
• Master list:
  Sovereign states by year

I hate to do this, but clearly, this is not a way to organize such information. Besides, as of right now the lists are unsourced and therefore very much available for POV wars. Just see List of sovereign states for various discussions on what's "sovereign," what's "autonomous," on de facto, de jure, and all the other stuff. I don't believe anyone could handle such discussions spread out on 5000 different lists. Renata 18:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all. It seems like a lot of work to have made, but it's still more work to get
  WP:V compliant and yet more to maintain and protect from stealth edits either out of POV or vandalism motives. Also, terms such as "sovereign states" are mushy for non-Westernized areas and pre-Westphalia Eurasia. --Dhartung | Talk 19:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete all per nom and Dhartung. The
  Aaron 19:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Don't delete There is no other side in Wikipedia able to have a map for each year as has been requested. The political geography is changing each year. I see absolutely impossible to put in a single page all the changes of all the hundreds and hundreds of German, Greek, Italian or Arabic sovereign states. (Who can reading tables like
  this?) If there are static years, redirections exists. It's absolutely impossible to have an idea of what exactly existed in a year with only a list of what appear and disappear. The possible divergence of opinions never are a reason for delete an article. The POV says that if there are more than one opinion both them must be written but never is a reason of deletion. The laziness never is a reason for don't write an article. I think that be able to know the countries that were sovereign in a year watching a single page would be very, very interesting. Excuse my poor English level, please. Sobirà 19:46, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• I think that this section as a concept won't have more problems that
  Religious leaders by year and similar. 81.32.208.229 19:55, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete all As per nomination, and horribly annoying to watch being edited repeatedly on RC ;) Pursey 20:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all as per Dhartung. - fchd 20:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete not very important and rather problematic. ReverendG 20:58, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak keep There were only 9 sovereign states in 820AD? I expect a few hundred kingdoms scattered around the globe might have disagreed. An historical atlas would be a useful reference for questions such as, did Croatia exist the year Nikola Tesla was born, or where was historical Macedonia, or when were Israel, Judea and Palestine sovereign states, but there would clearly be differences of opinion and hair splitting definitions, so the articles would be huge. In theory, the history of sovereignty could be argued and settled in the article for each state, but the claim of so few in 820 is troubling.Edison 21:39, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Sorta Keep I'm doubtful of the viablity of the arguments made against it. POV wars? If there is any disagreement about whether a state existed in a given year and was sovereign, then the problem is with the Wikipedia article on it, which should be sourced itself. If there's diagreement about what constitutes a sovereign state, that's a seperate problem, worth addressing on its own. And that one person can't handle 5000 different lists? I think that's why Wikipedia has more than one editor. That said, I don't think we need a page for literally every year. Grouping by century and listing the years of sovereignty in there would be simpler. FrozenPurpleCube 22:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Poor way to show this data. Ideally would be a time-lapse map or maps with links. Also debates over sovereignty and sourcing makes it even more unwieldy and impractical Bwithh 22:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep until we have a better way to present this information. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 23:22, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep A world political map as suggested by Sobira for each year or decade is an excellent idea. The lists are second best but better than nothing. If the editor reponsible is heading towards dated world political maps encourage them. If knowledge of years such as 820 is small Areas for which information does not exist would have a separate colour code until that knowledge is found and cited. As for possible arguments, aren't they fantastic?
  Martin Cordon 00:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Comment I'm not an active community member, so I won't vote, but I stubled across a pag with this deletion notice and have to say that I think this information is potentially very valuable to readers who don't want to sift through a few dozen pages to get an idea of the geography of the world in a given year. Maybe this isn't the best way to organize this data, but if done well this data would be incredibly useful.--Isra1337 01:28, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but prune This strikes me as being highly encyclopedic, but horribly overdone. With the exception of some years, there is no reason why these lists could not be pruned down to a decade level, rather than yearly. Note the nations that existed at the beginning of a decade, then note changes over that time. Or, basically, merge and delete 90% of the content. Resolute 03:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep Cannot see what deletion criteria these articles meet. They are definitly encyclopedic and are a similar idea to the lists of
  State leaders by year for which we already have almost all of the last 2000 years. I do think that changing the articles to 'List of states in xxxx' would be better to sidestep the arguments over sovereignty. Davewild 07:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Delete - WP is
  not a repository for lists, categorized or otherwise — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blaxthos (talk • contribs
  )
• Prune/merge as per
  MC♠ 07:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Comment The concept of having world maps showing the sovereign nations is fundamentally flawed and impossible to realize. World maps are extremely poor vehicles to show countries: there just isn't enough "bandwidth" to accommodate the necessary data. The problem starts with the fact that the earth's surface is 3/5ths water, so only 40% of the map can be used. Add in problems with projection, and you end up being able to show only the very largest countries, and being unable to even label these adequately. Look at the problems inherent in this map of Europe in 800 AD and this is just 8 - 10% of the world's surface. MapMaster 16:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all, per nom, Aaron Bwithh; histlistcruft meets original research. Contrary to Davewild, the inaccurate and unmaintainable State leaders by year cruft should be deleted too and renaming these ones would not help. Angus McLellan (Talk) 14:51, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per problems with scope and definition. The modern definition os State arose after the Peace of Westfalia, so lists of "states" before then are most likely to be misleading. This is compounded by the problem of when an entity can be said to be sovereign: For instance, were all the entities of the Holy Roman Empire sovereign states? Should they be included in these lists?. It also seems overkill to have a list for every single year; listings by decade or longer periods would allow for more commentary which could be used to provide context to most of the controversial claims, though I wouldn't be entirely satisfied with that solution.

Also, I can't see how this cannot be solved by creating a bunch of country-specific Timelines and sticking them in related articles; these could easily cover long periods and show the evolution of several countries at once. For example, think of a timeline showing simultaneously the different kingdoms in the Heptarchy then their gradual merge into the Kingdom of England an so on, until modern times. That'd be one Timeline in about 10 articles, all showing the same info and being a navigational aid to boot. Much better than clicking 100 articles just to see when the Kingdom of Great Britain became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 13:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, keep, keep! That's what I've always wished and never found in all the web, and I think that only Wikipedia and its more than 60 millions visits per day can get. My experience is that if you are interested in know what existed in a year (something absolutely important for understanding the changes in the History) you won't find this information. You will have to search in more and more hundreds and hundreds of pages crossing information for each year. I don't want to know the year when the "Kingdom of Great Britain" became the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" I want to know how many states there were in the south of Spain, Italy, France and Germany when bore the "Kingdom of England" and the expansion in the same time of the Asiatic states. How many pages I'll have to check for having this information? Please, keep all these information! I need all them! If there is more than one opinion about the sovereignty of a nation, well, <reference/s> code was created for a reason of showing different sources and opinions. Llull 14:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Prune/merge as per
  List of wars series gives an example of what this might look like, I think it would be a lot more manageable. Kmusser 16:19, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Keep, as per Llull's most interesting comment above. Smeelgova 04:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC).[reply]
• Keep per Llull above. Neier 13:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete (or at best Merge into
  List of religious leaders in 1701 (there are only 3!) and you'll see similar silliness. The fact is that for most of the world's history, we just don't know what the sovereign states and who religious leaders were and, as noted earlier, if you go back far enough, the concept is meaningless. MapMaster 20:43, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Comment: That's not as you say. In the Middle Ages there were sovereign states with the same leader, and and feudal states to a bigger state but with different leaders. Today, an approximation to this situation is the "Commonwealth", with 16 sovereign states but all them with the same king. 80.39.162.25 22:36, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Jeffklib 06:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Very strong keep - I would be open to alternative proposals on this topic. But simple deletion is quite absurd. I can easily imagine siutations in which this would be useful. I once had a world history project of drawing a world map in several given years, for example :/ savidan^{(talk) (e@)} 03:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep: They should all be marked as unreferenced and uncited and maybe renamed but the idea is pretty good and the articles are mostly accurate. The concept is just as good as any yyyy in subject article so deletion doesn't seem reasonable. Needing cleanup and verification is not a real good reason for deletion except in extreme cases. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:19, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep but cite verifiable resources.--Jusjih 10:50, 27 October 2006 (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.