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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. The most common arguments for delete were WP:NOR and WP:NPOV, but the strongest argument was that while this is tied to a reliable source, it's a single source, and thus puts WP:UNDUE emphasis on a single source's point of view. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

List of dictatorships

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List of dictatorships (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Violates WP:OR and WP:POV. List of dictators had been deleted for multiple times, as well as those lists in Dictators and Dictatorships. Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 14:05, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Notice: the corresponding articles on Chinese Wikipedia created by the same user are either deleted or nominated for afd. The user is currently blocked on Chinese Wikipedia.--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 14:09, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - It's a pretty map, but GIGO. First off, the word "dictatorship" is tendentious and undefinable. Are we talking about a unitary leader? A clique or junta? A single-party state? A bourgeois state with a rigged political system offering a choice between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich every four years, thereby empowering a single ruler to spy and launch wars and govern by executive orders? Not so easy, eh? And: the concept "dictatorship" — which is really out of vogue among serious academic historians and political scientists alike and has been for several decades — overlooks the very real decision-making processes and lower level authorities in even political systems topped by a unitary leader, such as, for example, the Soviet Union in the 1930s or North Korea today. There are a multiplicity of political actors exerting very real power in even the most tightly cloistered one party state. Essentially, this is a POV essay pushing the notion of a dichotomous world in which "we're good" and "they're bad." As such, it is a violation of the policies of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Carrite (talk) 18:39, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, basically per Carrite. Parsecboy (talk) 19:43, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, While I am sympathetic to Carrite's personal political views (as I am myself left-libertarian who criticizes the pitfalls of states), this deletion discussion should not be about exchanging persoal political views among editors.
    • I agree that definition of dictatorship and its selection is understandably challenging for academic researchers, and a job that should never be done among Wikipedians per WP:NOR.
    • However, I will remind @Carrite: and @Parsecboy: that no value judgement is made by editors (currently mainly me in this article) to present major findings from the political science literature. I did not and will not argue that these two datasets are the most authoritative, but rather asks other editors to consider WP:SUBSTANTIATE by adding more datasets and/or comments on the reliability and validity of these regime-classifying schemes and the datasets they produced, if these critical comments are also well-sourced and published in reliable sources. So clearly, there is no WP:NOR for this article. As for potential violation of WP:NPOV, this alone should not suffice for an Afd.
    • Carrite said, 'the concept "dictatorship" — which is really out of vogue among serious academic historians and political scientists alike and has been for several decades'. May I ask if recent "vogueness" among academic research a criteria for Afd? Please try Google scholar dictatorship [1](not sure if your localized version will produce the same results). I see the "Democracy and dictatorship revisited", the same author who produced the DD index published in 2010 with at least 548 citations. I am not sure how can one measure academic vogueness even I use scientometrics and webometrics concepts and tools for my research on Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia, but I believe that this provides enough evidence for the academic attention on the dataset, along with it, on the concept and measurement of dictatorship, as being done by democracy index, Polity data series, etc.--(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng) 03:50, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Special note to other editors: See m:User:Hanteng/personal_attacks_by_some_Chinese_Wikipedians, I am currently blocked in Chinese Wikipedia not for any subjects on Dictators and Dictatorships, as Jsjsjs1111 implied in this Afd. You are warmly reminded that Jsjsjs1111 was previously checked (and confirmed) by CheckUser to have registered an account with the same derogatory name that was used to attack me personally (one other Chinese Wikipedian was blocked and another was warned). Normally this deletion discussion should not discuss this. However, I am afraid that the way Jsjsjs1111 proposed this Afd has misrepresented some important facts, and thus the clarificatoins made here. --(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng) 03:56, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Notice to administrators: User:hanteng has been canvassing on multiple user talk pages of those people who said "keep" on Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_dictators asking them to vote "keep" here: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 16:05, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't notify some of the discussants because they are either indefinitely blocked [8][9] or inactive[10][11] when I first quickly sent out the messages. I guess good will from Jsjsjs1111 is lacking towards me. I also sent a couple of the same messages to those that I have missed . --(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng) 09:09, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Social science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • DD index and other dictatorship research: garbage or not?: The DD index may be garbage in User:Carrite 's eyes, but not only it is published [12] in a peer-review journal and cited more than 500 times since its publication in 2010 [13]. (More see User_talk:Hanteng#GIGO.2C_exactly and User_talk:Carrite#but GIGO)--(comparingChinese Wikipedia vs Baidu Baike by hanteng) 09:15, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- I was lobbied to participate as a result of participating in a previous AFD. The problem is of how one defines what is a dictatorship. Another problem is that some of the countries concerned maintain a facade of democracy, so that there is a grey area, where it is a POV issue whether it is a dictatorship or not. The present article is a list of counties quoting an index that is not expalined in that article, from one (probably academic) source, and for 2008, not 2014. If kept it should be List of 2008 dictatorships. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:27, 6 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep What is a dictatorship? Is it a grey area? Is it tendentious and undefinable? Awesome questions to chat about at the pub, but not here as editors. Here we should just stick to what reliable sources state about the issue. Now, since it seems that there are indeed reliable peer-reviewed sources in the political science area that do such a classification, we can and ought report that. --cyclopiaspeak! 12:08, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- I agree with Js. Apollo Augustus Koo (talk) 13:33, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: WP:OR and WP:POV. Wikipedia should not be used to give highlight to the results of one or several scholars, especially when it comes to political problems that involve actual ideological controversies. There is no clear and universal criterion of dictatorship. Thus Wikipedia should not accept one as orthodox and make a list from it. --Snorri (talk) 15:48, 7 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. No policy-based reason for deletion. WP:EDIT does not allow labeling certain topics as "too difficult to write, intrisically POV, cannot be ever made neutral etc." How can we have a list of titles used by dictators, if we cannot know who is a dictator and who is not? Note that list of dictators was finally deleted after a really under-participated AfD and before that because a certain leftwing troll admin (now banned) had a crusade to whitewash WP with his POV. jni (delete)...just not interested 20:14, 8 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. (content deleted) so I strongly support him. Wikipedia should not be used to give highlight to the results of one or several scholars, no matter how many times the source has been cited or how popular it is. Wikipedia also should not be used to give a list in grey area, although I can't see anyone mentioned any citation that mostly contradicts to those listed in the article. And if there is, this article still should be deleted rather than list various opinions. I consider an article's neutrality according to handsome Wikipedia editors like (content deleted) rather than reliable sources, so it's a very tendentious article. --The Master (talk) 12:52, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Could use some cleaning up, and when that happens, it could be a very useful article. Adamh4 (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, the point is that the question of "what is a dictatorship" is an inherently subjective one. And, if we look at the contents of the article, we see that even in cases where we restrict ourselves to published sources, there can be disagreement (see, for example, the entry for Botswana). A more accurate title for the article as it currently says might be "List of dictatorships according to a couple of think tanks", because there are no agreed criteria for what is and is not a dictatorship. As such, I think the current article under its current title is misleading and should go. Lankiveil (speak to me) 23:53, 11 April 2014 (UTC).[reply]
  • Delete largely per Carrite and Lankiveil. The cited groups are not fringe groups, but their opinions do not necessarily reflect the broad scholarly consensus either. Some of the entries may be controversial (e.g. labelling Russia as a "dictatorship" which has elections and opposition represented in the Duma, even though there are severe limitations in the freedom of media and speech as well as an awfully powerful president). It is far from clear that all countries can be classified as either being a "democracy" or a "dictatorship", and by presenting the issue as if it were like that, we are giving implicit endorsement of that view, in violation of WP:NPOV. List of freedom indices broadly overlaps this subject and is a better way of doing this. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:36, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Given the title, I expected to find original research, but the list is sourced to two apparently reliable political science databases and is transparent about its inclusion criteria. Evidently, what constitutes a dictatorship is a controversial issue, but that alone is not a reason not to have a list or an article about it - it's why we rely on reliable sources rather than our own opinions. As such, I see no policy-based reason to delete the list.  Sandstein  07:21, 13 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete or merge to DD index or List of regimes — The WP:NPOV policy violation becomes more apparent when you look at List of regimes (latest as of this post), which is the non-selective version. This article is a culled, otherwise WP:A10 version of that. The WP:OR policy violation stems from the Polity data series in no way using the term "dictatorship;" it simply ranks on a sectioned, continuous scale from autocracy to anocracy to democracy. The only thing that makes the assertion of "dictatorship" is DD index. So, by combining "autocracy" with "dictatorship" to round to "dictatorship," the list is asserting and advancing a conclusion for the reader and using the assertion of "autocracy" as a way of backing up the assertion of "dictatorship." To take it even further, because that assertion of "dictatorship" rests solely on DD index, we then have on our hands something between a WP:POVFORK and WP:UNDUE, especially when taken in concert with List of freedom indices. --slakr\ talk / 04:16, 15 April 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.
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