Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations/Archive 7

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

An example being Russia–United States relations, which is the first section of the article after the lead. I am rather neutral on this issue, but I can see arguments for keeping and removing. While there is information that compares and contrasts information between both nations, it seems like it belongs more in like a world fact book and much of the information on there doesn't really seem to fit the overall topic of bilateral relations. WikiCleanerMan (talk) 20:55, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Pinging LibStar and Lollipoplollipoplollipop who commented from a previous short discussion last year. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 20:59, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't support country comparisons because I don't see how they are meaningful in terms of bilateral relations. One country being bigger in area than the other doesn't add value, or other aspects such as currency used or who the leader is. I support Wikicleanerman's statement seems like it belongs more in like a world fact book and much of the information on there doesn't really seem to fit the overall topic of bilateral relations.. LibStar (talk) 14:05, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I support removing them. //Lollipoplollipoplollipop::talk 14:48, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• In general, these should be removed. They're a collection of randomly accrued stats. There are cases where country comparisons are useful, and these are when some comparison is commented upon by a few reliable sources that note its impact on some aspect of bilateral relations. However, these cases should produce information that is limited and specific, as well as in context. (Looking at the specific example of
  WP:OR. The "Economic alliance" and "Military alliance" rows are nonsense.) CMD (talk
  ) 14:45, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• It should be an article-by-article decision. Summoned by bot. In some cases, the information is fascinating. While I wouldn't put the table as high in the article as it is, the table in Russia–United States relations is very interesting because the relative military might of these two powers is a major focus of international relations in the last year. If you had the same table with the same rows in, say, an article on U.S.-Haiti relations, well, that would be weird. At a minimum, it is very hard to support an RfC saying we should delete {thing} from {set of articles} without seeing more than one example in support of the assertion that these are bad and without knowing how many things are we talking about here. Chris vLS (talk) 22:07, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Here's three from France related articles, France–Germany relations, France–Spain relations, France–Russia relations. You have pretty much the same thing as the Russia-U.S. article. Are you saying that it should be kept on more important bilateral relations articles? --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:45, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• Remove. I see little relevance to include comparisons. Without additional context and explanation, it's violating
  WP:NOTSTATS. SWinxy (talk
  ) 23:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Kill it. Kill it with fire.

• Rationale:
  WP:NOTSTATS
  ).
• Precedents / background discussions include:
• 29 October 2018: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations/Archive 6#Country comparison sections – Common source for all / most of these cruft sections: User:128.117.10.25.
  • An anonymous user, 128.117.10.25 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) has gone on a spree adding large "Country comparison" tables to articles about bilateral relations. In my opinion, those are redundant, visually distracting and certainly not helpful to readers. I don't think such layout is endorsed by the wikiproject, but bringing the matter here for a broader input. No such user (talk) 20:31, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
  • I agree that this should cease. The IP user doesn't engage in discussion and merely reverts anybody trying to remove their cruft. Sandstein 22:41, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
• 6 October 2020: Many country comparison sections have already been removed by User:Drmies. Example:
  • 6 October 2020: removed from Azerbaijan–Pakistan relations: rm trivia
  • 6 October 2020: User talk:Zeex.rice#"Country comparison" in international relations articles: Xeed.rice, I appreciate your work, but I need you to stop adding those comparisons. These statistics and comparisons are not inherently relevant to the subject matter, and those details like capitals and flags and whatnot are really irrelevant. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:28, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
• 8 October 2020: Talk:Singapore–United States relations#October 2020: Telsho agreed with Drmies to remove "country comparison" sections.
  • (...) Removing them here would suggest that it's justified to remove them on other articles as well for similar reasons, which obviously would end up in a lot of useful information being removed. Telsho (talk) 01:29, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I see you removed them as well, I guess there's that. Telsho (talk) 01:30, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Yep, Telsho, there's that. At least some of those were added by a longterm disruptive editor, they never came with any explanation or argument, and why would we do that in the first place? I mean, the coats of arms and flags, who cares and what is the relevance of it? I've seen comparisons between a country and the EU, where lists of "important cities" are given--for what? I appreciate the idea that we should be consistent--but in this case, the better consistency is to remove that information. BTW I worked on a whole bunch of these articles a decade ago, and that stuff wasn't there at the time. Drmies (talk) 01:47, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
• 20 October 2020: removed from Russia–United Kingdom relations: not relevant to the article as agreed (removed by Telsho)
• 4 May 2022: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject International relations/Archive 6#Country comparison tables/charts
  • (...) Should we start removing these altogether in your view? --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 14:18, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
  • absolutely LibStar (talk) 04:10, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I figure we can, but I think we need a wider consensus. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 15:27, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
• 10 June 2023: The 7 to 1 Deletion of Comparison of the Turkic states at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Turkic dynasties and countries.
• 19 June 2013: The 12 to 1 Deletion of Comparison of the Baltic states, Comparison of the Benelux countries, Comparison of the Nordic countries at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of the Baltic states. Exchange there:
  • In many instances these tables are an affront to "summary style", and the duplication of basic country statistics to such articles virtually guarantee they'll be out of date. Draken Bowser (talk) 19:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Agreed. If they mention dates at all, the basic country statistics will be outdated eventually. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 21:04, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Disagree. Most of WP content is going to be outdated. This is a reason for updating pages (and yes, providing dates and references), not deletion. My very best wishes (talk) 19:31, 15 June 2023 (UTC) (Note: This user is the only 1 opposing deletion against 12 in favour of deletion at the "Comparison of the Baltic states" AfD)
  • Infoboxes are regularly updated, demographics articles are regularly updated, but those comparison articles/sections? Why bother? Unless we're making some sort of Template:Excerpt construction, so that the contents of comparison tables will always synchronised and up to date, I really don't think it's worth the trouble. And even if we do, we are admitting we are duplicating contents anyway. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
• 15 June 2023: User talk:Nederlandse Leeuw/Archive 3#"Comparison".
• Examples to Delete/Remove:

• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dumps, although at least with a non-arbitrary scope.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dump.
• WP:UNSOURCED
  "comparison" data dumps.

Let's get rid of it, once and for all. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 04:08, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

PS:

WP:NONDEFINING for countries, and Comparison of the Turkic states

serves as a compelling precedent.

WP:UNSOURCED

"comparison" data dump.

WP:UNSOURCED

"comparison" data dumps, not all of which may have added value.

WP:SYNTH). Why should readers care? They are probably wondering which ones there are in Latin America as a whole. This section should probably be replaced by just links to List of World Heritage Sites in South America, List of World Heritage Sites in the Caribbean, List of World Heritage Sites in Central America, and List of World Heritage Sites in Mexico. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk

) 09:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

FYI Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Germanic-speaking world. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Update

Iberophone and Finno-Ugric countries have now indeed been Deleted. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk

) 07:01, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Keep with improved guidelines – assuming there are 195 countries, that means a potential ~18,000 articles (195*194)/2) which is presently beyond our capacity to rigorously maintain and keep cruft/OR free. That said, the structured naming would also make it easier to monitor such articles (okay along with tracking categories), as well as for readers interested in this very notable/reasonable topic to expect in a Wikipedia and this amount of articles don't exist either. What we should NOT standardize, is the presumed type of content covered. Sometimes military is covered in secondary sources, sometimes trade/diplomatic relations etc... and just because US/Russia are two super powers, doesn't make two smaller countries non-notable. Instead of debating whether to delete/rescue articles, let's focus on improving the content, whether it's more rigorous sourcing, guidelines on what makes bad cruft (the military comparisons seems to be a common offender) etc..

  I misunderstood the RfC. Am neutral/leaning remove about comparison charts. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 13:10, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

• It should be an article-by-article decision. In some cases (see at the bottom of page Anglosphere), such comparisons seem to be just fine. In other cases (like Russia–Ukraine relations), the comparison is interesting and useful, but I would rather keep them as separate standalone list pages, with linking from other pages like "relations" and Russo-Ukrainian war. In other cases they better be removed. And so on. My very best wishes (talk) 22:26, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
• Remove as a general rule. The reader is just one click away from finding this info in country articles or two clicks away from lists of countries by any conceivable attribute. The data are often not updated regularly thus misleading the reader. Alaexis_¿question? 08:32, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
• It is possible that in individual cases this information can be useful, but as a general rule, no--and I say this because I would like for us to have it as a general rule. Too many articles suffer from this typically overlinked and overfetishized material which often accretes--material with emblems and flags and overlinking, with randomly picked data, and often in the most disruptive and conspicuous of places, such as in this article. I'll add that in many of the articles, it was the work of an LTA operating a variety of IPs from Turkey. Drmies (talk) 16:17, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

• Remove as a general rule; this is not inconsistent with article-by-article decisions so long as the justification for inclusion is pressing and valid, which is what article-by-article aims to do in the first place. Making a general rule would head off most of this
  WP:NOTSTATS clutter. Iseult ^Δx parlez moi
  15:45, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I think we can close this RfC as it has run for several weeks and consensus seems clear. LibStar (talk) 10:36, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed. I think I'll nominate

  WP:UNSOURCED "comparison" data dump sections in existing articles, which can otherwise be Kept. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk

  ) 10:43, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I'd welcome anyone to remove it despite the automatic removal date by the bot account. It's been almost a month since I started this and the consensus is clear. --WikiCleanerMan (talk) 23:22, 3 July 2023 (UTC)