Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of cities by surface area

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 keep. Sourcing issues are not a deletion reason, but rather an opportunity to fix the problem.. - Philippe 19:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

List of cities by surface area

Fails two of Wikipedia's core policies, Verifiability and Original Research. This list lacks a single cohesive source, but rather has been built up by individual editors adding their own cities. Some are completely unsourced, some cite Wikipedia articles as sources (I understand that's a no-no) and the rest cite a mishmash of municipal websites and national statistical agencies. How do we know that these are the world's largest cities, in order? We don't, not at all. Unless an external source can be found that actually ranks the world's biggest cities, by area, this is sadly both unverifiable and original research. A shame because it's an interesting topic. Aucitypops (talk) 05:11, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Weak delete due to sourcing issues. This is "notable", in that Mount Isa long held the Guinness record for this, but I have no idea now. The basic problem is twofold. First, how are they measuring area, and second, what is a "city"? When you have things like Hulunbuir, which even our article says isn't a "real" city (whatever that is), but indicative of some kind of metro government. Population and urbanization comparisons made by NGOs tend to recognize things like "built-up areas" for this reason. Unless we have a UN or other highly reputable NGO or almanac-type source, this is going to be a problem article. --Dhartung | Talk 07:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. In addition to the reasons above, "height of city" could mean the average height of a city or the height of the highest point in city, which will cause confusion. Lily1104 (talk) 09:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I don't think that altitude is one of the thinks mentioned on the table. I agree with everyone, however, that there are problems with the sources for the individual facts. In addition, I think that the "single cohesive source" referred to by the nominator probably would exist somewhere, and would be more reliable than this constructed table. Mandsford (talk) 12:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Since the Guinness Book of Records has something about this, we should see what they say. Colonel Warden (talk) 10:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Clearly this is a notable list, and is little different than city lists by pop or lat/long. Bad sourcing is no reason to delete an article, just do a rewrite. Joshdboz (talk) 13:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Surface area is defined by: "political jurisdictions which (in their own language) identify themselves as cities". As this will be different for each country, comparing/listing them seems useless to me. Joost 99 (talk) 13:50, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment Aren't all borders just political delineations? How would the list be any different than List of countries and outlying territories by total area? Perhaps the lead should be rewritten, but that doesn't change the topic itself. Joshdboz (talk) 14:25, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  - Borders for countries are (for the best part) internationally agreed on. The definition for cities is not. Please take a closer look at the list. There are 72 cities on the list of which 19 (!!!) are Finnish and only 2 are Russian (if the list is correct). This just tells me Finns have a totally different way of laying down their city-borders than Russia. Nothing more. Joost 99 (talk) 17:56, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Even the nominator thinks its a good topic for an article, so sourcing issues can be address by editing.DGG (talk) 14:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Perfectly viable and of value, not to mention easily verifiable as these are cities we're talking about; most have their own webpages, and cities are inherently notable meaning there's plenty of sourcing out there. 23skidoo (talk) 16:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 20:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment as nominator: people are suggesting the article remain with a new source. Please realise that as the list stands the whole thing will need to be removed, and as the article is pretty much just a list it will have no content until a new source is found. It is specifically the ranking that is unverifiable and original research, something that won't be fixed by just going to every city in the world's website as 23skidoo etc. have suggested. A single source is essential. - Aucitypops (talk) 20:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with that. The list is WP:SYNTH in a nutshell. There may be a source that says that Sitka, Alaska, is 4,812 square miles in area. But find me the source that says it's the "14th largest city in the world", by area. Although I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has published a ranking of cities by how many square kilometers each one is, Guinness certainly has not, other than to recognize a few contenders, based on varying definitions. Is this much different than one of us constructing our own ranking of "coldest cities" from different average temperature reports? Good topic, bad executon. Mandsford (talk) 02:04, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- So, in the interests of clarification -- would you still voice a "delete" opinion if the table was missing the first column, the "rank" column? I agree, we don't know Sitka Alaska is the 14th largest city in the World. But, with reliable sources, we can verify that Sitka is smaller than Heyuan, Guangdong and larger than Huizhou, Guangdong. Geo Swan (talk) 23:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete WP:SYNTH. Could be rewritten as several editors have suggested. Vints (talk) 07:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep -- As others have said this article should be carefully sourced. As others have said, sourcing concerns should not be used as an argument for deletion. I think this list would be useful even if it were cut back to half a dozen well-sourced entries, which also listed those cities population. Geo Swan (talk) 23:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I'd change my opinion if the list were made of "cities of greater than 1,000 km²" or greater than 500 mi², or whatever standard is used. As Geo points out, removal of the ranking would remove most of the synthesis problems. The other improvement I'd suggest is to make the sources visible as endnotes, which is simply a matter of form. If there are sources that say that Altamira is 68,758 mi², and that Chonqing is 31,815 mi², that's encyclopedic information and a list of such large area cities would meet Wikipedia standards. Ultimately, I'm hoping that someone can find a published ranking, but until then, Geo's suggestion is a good solution. Mandsford (talk) 23:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per DGG. Hobit (talk) 03:17, 6 April 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.