AdamFouracre

Hi Adam. Generally nation-state articles (including Brazil that you mentioned and the listings like List of countries by GDP (PPP)) are using UN and World Bank figures for these comparisons, not the CIA World Factbook. The latter is somewhat deprecated in Wikipedia. Parts of it are accurate but a lot is either out of date or subject to allegations of either bias or incompetence. Worth checking out what other articles do before making this type of change. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think that a consistently cited source therefore needs to be developed in order that the correct ranking can be allocated across all countries pages such as the UK, Brazil, France etc. Whether it be the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank is not really of concern to me, as long as one source is consistently cited. AdamFouracre (talk) 11:47, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

That may well be true, but the place to do that is the relevant project page. Just looking that up for you.... Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:49, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

OK, it looks like there has been quite a saga about which sources to use in past archives, but you could raise it at Project Economics and also at Talk:List of countries by GDP (PPP). Evidently the core problem is imprecision since sources vary and I suspect it will be difficult to gain a final ruling on which should dominate. It is obviously less of a problem in cases like Germany or Japan where all major sources agree on their ranking. Harder for the UK, France and Brazil which tend to change places with each other in different sources. There are two questions - one is the infobox data and the other is what main article text says. Sometimes there are differences between the figures in main text and infobox, and between those and the listings pages. A lot of work is needed and I agree it is not always best. The difficulty is that national ego comes into play. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 11:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I agree entirely - I have to say I have sympathy with the belief that the EU is not a country - and you also have the duality of countries like the UK, Germany, France, Spain etc being included in the measure of EU GDP by PPP and as such to me I would be inclined to disregard it in the rankings - but you can see easily how the ranking can be of some debate - and after given it consideration I have reverted the rankings to the position excluding the European Union but still using the same CIA World Factbook source. I do not contend that any source is not capable of being influenced by bias. However, In my mind there has to be an executive decision taken as to which source to use, and then that source has to be consistently cited throughout, otherwise any meaningful comparison is just a waste of time. AdamFouracre (talk) 12:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think that agreeing on just one source in such a complicated area would prove very difficult. One way out might to be cite several leading sources each time it is mentioned, or to agree a panel of "reputable" sources. The latter is what was done at the listings page only, where it was agreed to use World Bank, IMF and CIA. Personally I would strongly argue against using the CIA figures as their basis is entirely seperate from government's own assessments, which is how the EU, IMF, World Bank and UN all begin their calculations. The CIA basically thinks that it's own economists know better than the national economic authorities of each country unless they are allies of the US, in which case they are taken more into account. However, I agree there is scope for similar biases in the others. There is no easy win in this debate. It could be argued that the whole question of quick-ranking statements in national article intros is unhelpful, but then readers want to know it. My own opinion is it might be wise to quote several reputable ranking sources each time. There is debate in some cases and readers could know about that. Jamesinderbyshire (talk) 12:21, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

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