Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of longest-lasting empires (2nd nomination)

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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. Delete, the keep arguments are mostly by assertion, reference to other articles or akin to its useful. Spartaz Humbug! 10:18, 23 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

List of longest-lasting empires

AfDs for this article:
List of longest-lasting empires (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)
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Original research, synthesis, lack of (reliable) references. The scope of the article is ill-defined to the point that the whole exercise becomes completely arbitrary. It does not know what an empire actually is, nor how its time span can be measured in an objective and comparable way.

To name but a few problems: Haiti, the Venetian Republic and the Delian League (Athens) and Ireland are classified indiscriminately as empires. The various Iranian dynasties (Achaemenians, Sassanids, Parthians, etc.) are only listed separately, whereas China is listed both as one entity and separately as different dynasties. For Rome there are different criterias applied. That the Holy Roman Empire and Russia (Third Rome) were widely considered as continuation of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire is also overlooked. And so forth. Pharaonic Egypt may be the longest running empire, certainly state, but only selected periods of its history are included. What encyclopedic value can the reader expect from a list which applies almost as many different criterias as individual entries? Gun Powder Ma (talk) 14:39, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Absolute OR. No way to find commom criteria for classification. This types of list, in fact, seem to work as kind of contest between editors who get carried away with an identity agenda (sort of "my empire is/was bigger/stronger/longer than yours...!"). The Ogre (talk) 15:27, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Delete What Ogre said. There's no way to compile such a list with verifiable, consensus information. There is the can of worms question of what constitutes "empire," and the can of worms question of what constitutes the -end- of an empire. Even the Roman Empire, arguably the most famous of all empires, suffers from significant debate in terms of when it actually "ended," and what that even means. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 19:09, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Changing mine to weak delete after reading the previous AFD and its discussion of the similar List of empires article. If that article is considered okay for inclusion, then half of my above argument goes away, leaving only the question concerning how one legitimately establishes the duration of an empire. I would argue in favor of incorporating this list into the List of empires article. ɠǀɳ̩ςεΝɡbomb 19:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. —Polarpanda (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Well, WP:ILIKEIT, and its WP:INTERESTING, but it's all original research, so there's no standard that it lives up to and it's up to the latest editor to define an empire. By definition, an "empire" is ruled by an "emperor", so I get it that Bokassa the First's "Central African Empire" is on the list, but "The Third Reich"-- WTF? I guess the Thirdreichian Emperor was Adolf the First. Mandsford (talk) 01:58, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. OR and listcrufty. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 02:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete fascinating but ultimately cannot be sustained here. an individual writer may compare various govts for their length of rule, and establish their own definition of what constitutes an empire and what determines the start and end dates. but since there is (and can be) no consensus for such a broad idea, this list is inherently original research, synthesis, and has undefinable inclusion criteria. IF WE FIND A BOOK THAT COVERS THIS, ie, a major work by a historian comparing in this manner, we could summarize the book. if there are more than one, we could write an article comparing them, IF OTHERS had compared them. minor notes: listing by length is inherently OR, as its hard to give precise dates. name of article doesnt even match list. list of longest cannot include empires lasting 1 year!Mercurywoodrose (talk) 03:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep There's no IF about it. There are multiple books which cover historical empires as a general topic - see Empires: the logic of world domination from ancient Rome to the United States or Empires, for example. All we have to do is summarise and cite the work of these various scholars and we're good. Issues of definition and measurement are unimportant because all topics have difficulties of this kind - see List of rivers by length, for example. As usual, it's just a matter of doing some sourcing and then discussing the results. Deletion is quite unhelpful in this and there seems to have been no attempt to engage with the topic per our deletion policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:57, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: The comparison does not cut. "River", unlike "empire" is a clearly definable subject, and determing length can be done much more objectively than determining duration. The proof is in the pudding. List of rivers by length appears well-sorted, whereas this list has not seen any improvements since the first AfD one year ago. And I venture to say, it won't for another year, given its complete lack of interest of WP editors to support their entries by references. Better to delete the 'list' altogether and give someone else the opportunity to start all over again. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 14:27, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • You do not seem to appreciate the difficulty of rivers. As Heraclitus explained, "you can never step into the same river twice" - they are constantly changing. Their structure is fractal and so, even if you take a snapshot, their length depends upon the size of your measuring rod. And then there's the issue of the tributaries, the exact position of the mouth and so on. Empires seem comparatively simple because the reigns of the emperors are well-documented. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:00, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why does it even need to exist when List of empires exists? The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 15:21, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is no button to press on Wikipedia that changes an alphabetical list, to a chronological one. When you want to see it listed chronologically, you need to have a separate article. Wikipedia never runs out of space, so no reason not to have this here, if its useful to some people. Dream Focus 16:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The only people it is useful for are the editors that like constructing such lists and placing them on Wikipedia. As noted below, your objection about buttons couldn't be more misplaced. There is a button you can press to do exactly what you say. The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 19:30, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Actually, List of empires is a sortable table, and you actually can press a button (or click on a column) to see it listed chronologically. Plus, it's a more reliable article than this one. Mandsford (talk) 19:18, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, cool. Both list have things which the other does not though. I guess some didn't consider certain empires to be important. And duration isn't listed at the other category, so some useful information is still here. Not sure how those at the other article would feel about a merge. Dream Focus 22:56, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's not as difficult as it might seem. It's just a matter of adding a column to the table to show duration, which I agree is an important piece of information. Here's how it would look: [1]. I only did the "A"'s and then reverted it back to the old form, but it was actually fairly easy-- you take the difference between the two numbers (i.e., 2010-1776 would be "334") and then make sure to put two uprights afterward-- 334|| in this example. Remember, nobody "owns" a Wikipedia article, and a lot of people have edited that one so far. Mandsford (talk) 21:37, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
List of empires is a chronological list (if you choose to sort by start/end date). This is a filtered list purely relating to the duration of the empire, and who is to say what the cutoff is between a "long lasting" and a "not long lasting" empire? The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick t 16:25, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How is this original research? Do you mean that someone counted the number of years themselves? There are ample historical sources for when an empire started and ended. It isn't original research to state how many years they existed. Dream Focus 10:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, there aren't these sources because empire is a) a Latin term which strictly only applies to Western political entities following in the footsteps of the Imperium Romanum. For all the others it is an anachronism, as they did not even know the term, but used terms such Middle Kingdom, Caliphate, Khanate, Sultanate etc. for self-reference.
It is, moreover, b) an inherently vague term. Vagueness means that, just as you cannot tell how many grains of sand constitute a heap of sand, you won't never be able to tell at what exact date an empire started and ended. Did Alexander's empire began after he won his first, second or third victory against the Persians? Or only after the Persian king Dareios was killed or perhaps only after Alexander returned to Babylon ending his conquest? And even if you can establish a definite beginning and end, you are obliged to follow this through for all the other empires for reasons of consistency. But then you will quickly find out that the established common criteria makes little sense for the history of other empires.
You can only compare like with like, but this list utterly fails to pass even simple consistency tests for both its main criteria, "empire" and its "duration". It is moreover the kind of nationalistic chest-beating list which quickly becomes the focus of identity agenda posters and is therefore rightly strongly discouraged at other language Wikipedias. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 21:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That makes absolutely no sense at all. You can easily find history books and encyclopedias among other sources, which refer to those on the list as empires, and establish when they started and ended. I don't think any nationalist chest-beating guy off in the city of Rome is going to be trying to make his empire seem more important by changing a number on a list somewhere. And on what specific Wikipedias is this strongly discouraged at? Can you link to even one example of this? Dream Focus 05:53, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, I am afraid I can't link to other language articles when they do not exist. And you still seem not to understand the main point: Obviously, there are books which refer to empires and possibly also give some precise dates, but throwing these widely scattered sources altogether into one article is pure synthesis because they do not remotely share a common criteria. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 02:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not so! The unique value of this article as opposed to List of empires is that it is sorted by duration. There is no way to sort List of empires by duration, and while that may seem no big deal to you, it's a very big deal if that's what you need (and if, lacking this article, you have to actually more-or-less create it anew out of the data in List of empires). And no, the fancy new sort-buttons at the top of each column do not achieve what I'm talking about. BenRussell (talk) 20:28, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep (albeit, to be fair, the "strong" part is because I spent four hours trying to help clean this article up one night recently). I ABSOLUTELY would not suggest that this article is great: there is a lot wrong with it, and it was worse when I found it. However, I stumbled on it in doing some research in Wikipedia and, lo and behold, it contained more than a few answers I needed. It was helpful. It was NOT "original research" but a list of facts (albeit one in need of serious editing and a more objective standard), facts that are frequently needed in certain fields (and, I suspect, especially for certain students). And more to the point, it does NOT violate WP:SYN (which prohibits synthesizing materials "to advance a position"), nor is it "original research" (unless each and every list in Wikipedia is also). Shall we next do away with the list of Heisman Trophy winners, the list of Stargate SG-1 episodes (which actually IS filled with original research, since the editors added their own plot descriptions literally minutes after watching each new episode)? No, we won't, because those articles are popular. And that's your real standard here: none of you would dare go after an article that was frequented by large numbers of people. This article is useful to historians and history students and a handful of political researchers, so you're all for dumping it.
Let's keep this article and improve it. I literally took four hours and tried to improve it -- after stumbling on it randomly and finding it very useful for a specific project, where no other resource was answering my question. I'll certainly pledge to help work on the article more if you guys won't delete it. I think it can become every bit as good -- and a whole lot more encyclopedia-worthy -- than "List of The Andy Griffith Show cast members" and "List of English football transfers 2009". Don't you? BenRussell (talk) 20:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I apologize for responding to myself, but I just looked through the "See Also" section in List of Empires. Folks, when I was a history student, this would have been a little bit of heaven. Some of the articles -- this one definitely included -- need all sorts of citations that are currently lacking; however, by the standards being proposed to delete this article, you'd need to delete all of those too. And none of them should go! I don't mean to belabor the point about "popular" lists like "List of Harcore Punk Bands", but isn't the list we're debating EXACTLY what we'd want Wikipedia to be: a treasure trove of real information about things that truly matter? Can't you just see some sixth grade social studies student stumbling across this, going "Wow, that's cool!", and embarking on a path that makes him the next Paul Johnson or David Stevenson? I certainly can. Let's get this article up to standard. But let's not kill it. This sort of gem (albeit in the rough) is exactly why a lot of us love Wikipedia: you can find anything. And when the "anything" is real stuff and not pop culture gibberish, so much the better. BenRussell (talk) 20:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: At the risk of getting repetitive, the complete lack of agreement among scholars is also my main criticism. Such a list will only ever reflect which reference the latest editor thought worthwhile to keep and which better to ignore. And these are, as Ogre already had it, likely the identity agenda editors who are willing to devote the most energy and time in such affairs. In other words: Tell me which empire is on top of the list, and I tell you who made the last edit. Not the path the Wikipedia project should follow. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 03:08, 23 January 2010 (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.
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