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 the result was delete as original research.. Daniel J. Leivick (talk) 07:27, 7 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wealthiest families in history[edit]

Wealthiest families in history (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

A morass of original research and synthesis from reliable and verifiable sources but suffering methodological problems, principally that of comparability across time and country. Worthy though it may be in itself, the way it's been constructed makes it improper to be a Wikipedia article, and its talk page already raises these concerns. Rodhullandemu (Talk) 22:40, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep This article is notable and should be kept Ijanderson977 (talk) 22:43, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, per nom. Notability is not drawn into question here; original research and methodological concerns are the issue, and those points are well-taken. Pop Secret (talk) 23:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: Original research and it suffers from a lot of compounding problems. seicer | talk | contribs 23:11, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep the compatibility problems are explained there, and do not really amount to OR. They can be discussed further there. DGG (talk) 00:22, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: An author does not erect a shield from deletion simply because he has been forthright about the limitations of his article. The author has compiled of data from several sources (not all of which are identified) and has applied an unidentified and unsourced algorithm (endnotes 1 and 2 in the article are dead-ends). If this isn't OR/synthesis, what the hell is?Pop Secret (talk) 00:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, conflicting reasons given for nomination. Is it OR or is it competing methodologies? Doesn't look to be OR, and readers are not dumb, and could probably handle properly annotated conflicting methods, or you could add different columns for the different totalisation methods. MickMacNee (talk) 00:37, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Delete Most of the stuff can be cleaned up but the REAL crux is the creation of both a list and figures for each family. Methodology IS the problem here. This is right on the edge, but a novel method for computing wealth in USD across time periods and governments is OR. A list of the 100 richest people in the US isn't OR because A: it has been done and published before and B: Even if it weren't published in that form, creating it on wikipedia would not require substantial transformative or creative effort. If the original author of this page wants to come on here and show how the applied formulas were applied by sources and that the page itself is not OR, then I might switch. Protonk (talk) 03:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Clean up If this is original research, then most lists are original research. Further, most WP articles are then original research. Should take out the poor methodology and build a more straightforward list instead. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs}

• The fact that it is listed doesn't make it OR. It is the fact that an unknown and novel formula is used to figure exchange rates, property valuation and inflation for each family in order to rank them on the list. Protonk (talk) 15:39, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• After looking closer, I agree that the methodology is mysterious, which means it should be taken out. It pains me to see such an interesting article disappear. If it wasn't ranked, and presented its numbers in the historian estimated values at the same, I'm guessing we could keep it? I also don't think that calculating inflation adjustments (as long as the inflation measurement is made clear) or rates of growth is OR -- if such calculations are, then that should be changed. Calculations like that are not opinion at all, they're just a useful addition for the reader. It's like sourcing the universal laws of mathematics -- perfectly verifiable. Since we're a wiki, they're likely to be correct, anyway, since anyone can verify whether they were done correctly based on the sourced numbers. ImperfectlyInformed | {talk - contribs} 20:32, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that there is some worth to the article; but to take just one example, item 2 is the British Royal Family, whose wealth (as far as I can see) has been extrapolated from the year 1090 , let alone the problems of defining what constitutes "wealth" then compared with now; and how can an adjustment for inflation properly be made across that timespan? Likewise, The Medici, from the late Middle Ages. I'm wondering how any historical economist could give the article any credence in its present form. --Rodhullandemu 20:40, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well...not exactly. economics (especially historical economics) is not really pure mathematics. Even if it were, the new WP consensus on that is that original proofs and theorems still don't belong here. but in this case what is troublesome isn't the calculations, those are checkable and probably simple. In other words, it is relatively simple to take some fixed number in US Dollars in 1923 and correct for inflation (of course even then there ought to be some external work that does this, as the methods can vary). However, the assumptions behind the model are what may be suspect. How did the author decide to value property? How did they value fiefdoms for older families? Were contested holdings included? Does this valuation reflect the normal method of doing so in historical scholarship? honestly, these are not questions wikipedians can reliably answer. These are questions that scholars can answer and once they do, we should put the material up here. In this case we have a novel valuation system which raises questions that the WP:OR policy was written to avoid. Protonk (talk) 21:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Questions about the methodology of inflation estimates is outside our purview. I agree that the methodology here is way off. I'm saying that we should be able to use, say, the US GDP deflator to adjust some US asset for inflation, as long as we say "Using the GDP deflator, that would be x amount of dollars in 2008." And sure, we don't want original theorems published on Wikipedia. But simple mathematics, like growth rates, reasonable inflation adjustments or percentage changes, are quite different from that. Maybe OR restricts us from doing that, but if so, I don't like the policy (I may have to abide by it, but that won't stop me from attempting to change it). ImperfectlyInformed|{talk - contribs} 22:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think OR would reject that (again, I'm just spitballing on what OR and SYn say). Any naive set of operations can probably be done (see the vairous lists of countries and cities by different metrics). However (and I think we agree on this), what is going on in this article isn't that. What we are seeing is a novel estimation of wealth from explicit measures and various unknown assumptions. More to the point, I'm not sure a list can be created without some significant novel work from disparate sources. Presuming that each family has a verifiable source, how to we concatenate that? Do we assume that all measures are accurate and just rank from there? Do we correct for inaccurate information? How do we adjust for differences in valuation and estimation? How do we rank families where the original work probably didn't list a dollar value, but left it as dollars and illiquid assets (consider the Windsors)? Those are the fundamental questions and the fundamental problems. there probably needs to be some clarification for WP:OR and WP:SYN for the problems you mention. But as it stands, we don't even need to ask those questions here, IMO. Protonk (talk) 00:11, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. I agree with the nominator with respect to OR and synthesis arguments. The problem is the methodology used to create the list. It's not just a simple combination and tabulation of data already presented in outside reliable sources, it's something more. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - blatant OR and synthesis. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:47, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Unless someone has done a proper study of this that we can work from this can only be original research and synthesis. Spartaz ^Humbug! 09:50, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Clearly OR, and why no Pharaohs, etc? :-) --Doug Weller (talk) 18:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists of people-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 15:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as OR. Undeath (talk) 07:02, 7 May 2008 (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.