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 delete. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 17:46, 19 September 2021 (UTC) reply

List of top international rankings by country

List of top international rankings by country (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log)

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Much of the same concerns as the first AfD (which closed as no consensus a decade ago). This is blatant WP:NOTTRIVIA disguised as a WP:NOTSTATS violation too. The only thing even "interesting" here (besides, I assume, the WP:ITSINTERESTING votes to come) is that someone even bothered to do this, but it's clear that this could never be made into a good, encyclopedic list (which records should be included?), a fact which certainly is not helped by the WP:LISTN and the WP:V (having no reliable source which reports on this makes it even more likely that this is incomplete and incorrect) issues. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 14:41, 12 September 2021 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood ( talk) 15:12, 12 September 2021 (UTC) reply

As someone with a fair number of (largely cleanup) edits on this article, I'm fairly conflicted on this. A couple problems I've observed with the article:

• List criteria. The introduction is pretty specific about this (entries must be linked to an article or map that has the corresponding ranking of countries). However, these criteria (even though they've been in the article for many years) have not been well-observed by editors adding new entries. Also, even with these criteria being observed, it seems the list could still become unmanageably large. For example, there are a lot of international sporting competitions whose articles have a medal table by country. That narrow subfield alone could easily account for hundreds of entries.
• Maintaining accuracy. A lot of these statistics are subject to change from year to year, with the result that a lot of the rankings listed here are out of date. When someone goes to update List of countries by infant and under-five mortality rates with new data, it's never going to occur to them to seek out List of top international rankings by country to update the corresponding entry there.

But a lot of that comes down to "it attracts bad edits" or "it's hard to maintain", which are not really reasons for deletion per se. I do think it plausibly satisfies WP:LISTPURP, in that reading the superlatives held by a given country can provide a useful lens for understanding the country's character. Colin M ( talk) 16:08, 12 September 2021 (UTC) reply

But wouldn't that purpose better be acccomplished by having this information on the page of the relevant country/country-specific-topic-subpage (where I assume that, in most cases, it is)? Like this, it is not much different from outright being WP:INDISCRIMINATE. If the purpose truly is helping the readers ( WP:RF), then, as suggested, "data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources." - and this is far more easily done on specific pages about the countries (where the statistic becomes more than just some interesting trivia) then as a separate list. RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 03:14, 13 September 2021 (UTC) reply

I mean, I don't think it would be appropriate to take the table at List of top international rankings by country § Denmark and plonk it down in a new section in Denmark. Possibly these facts could be integrated into the prose of that article in relevant sections, but there's something to be said for a simple list presentation of "these are the areas in which Denmark is #1". As for the data being put into context, I think the links mandated by the list criteria provide that. (But I'm sort of just playing devil's advocate here. I've thought of nominating this article for deletion myself a couple times, but I don't think the policy argument is totally obvious.) Colin M ( talk) 03:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC) reply

Going through the list, the most important ones appear to already be mentioned: for example, the high proportion of arable land is not mentioned directly as a statistic, but "Although once extensively forested, today Denmark largely consists of arable land." and "Once a predominantly agricultural country on account of its arable landscape, since 1945 Denmark has greatly expanded its industrial base and service sector."... RandomCanadian ( talk / contribs) 03:39, 13 September 2021 (UTC) reply

• Delete - I'm pretty sure that this would fail WP:LISTN or at least fall into the grey area of this guideline that I am not comfortable with. I think there are also issues with WP:INDISCRIMINATE and a large amount of WP:SYNTH is necessary to generate this list. The criteria for inclusion itself is WP:OR as editors have just decided what makes something notable for this list rather than referencing a sourced standard for notability. There are also massive WP:V issues with this - especially trying to keeping such a diffuse list up to date. Lastly - Argentina is the largest exporter of footballers? Really? Just from a quick Google most sources say Brazil but that's besides the point. The list is just a housing point for WP:TRIVIA. Vladimir.copic ( talk) 07:48, 13 September 2021 (UTC) reply
• Delete - This is an insane list without limits, and with no restrictions WP:INDISCRIMINATE on how many lists per country, would quite clearly blow the data limit on page sizes. Deathlibrarian ( talk) 09:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC) reply
• Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. This is a massive collection of trivia with very little context. Ajf773 ( talk) 10:26, 13 September 2021 (UTC) reply
• Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Santosh L ( talk) 16:43, 17 September 2021 (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.