This article was nominated for deletion on 7 February 2008. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Deletion

I've flagged this article for deletion. It doesn't take a genius to look at that list and see many things wrong with it. First of all, the mere suggestion of ranking a subjective concept like satisfaction on a scale is laughable (Who's more satisfied, the billionaire who lost half his fortune in the stock market, or the poor kid in Africa who got to eat dinner for the first time in 4 days? Or is it the serial killer in Columbia who beat the national record for most murders in a week and gets bragging rights to all his junky pals??)

Second, the list itself completely and utterly contradicts real world statistics. It doesn't correlate at all with homicide/crime rates, poverty rates, income equality, civil rights, suicide rates etc.. in short, I could make up a list based on my current knowledge of the world that would be more credible than this one. This is just one big work of fiction.

Sbw01f (talk) 01:05, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

According to their website:

This data on SWB was compared with data on access to education (UNESCO, 2005), health (United Nations, 2005), and poverty (CIA, 2006). It was found that SWB correlated most strongly with health (.7) closely followed by wealth (.6) and access to basic education (.6). This adds to the evidence that from a global perspective the biggest causes of SWB are poverty and associated variables.

So health, wealth, basic education, poverty.

Now, based on this, let's make a comparison using CIA and HDR data. I'll use an extreme example: Russia (ranked 167th, on par with the likes of Niger, Pakistan, Sudan)) vs. Columbia (ranked 34th, on par with the likes of Germany, UK, Australia).

Wealth - GDP PPP (per capita):

Russia - 14,600
Colombia - 7,200

Health - life expectancy:

Colombia - 72.27
Russia - 65.87

Education - Adult literacy rate & Human Development Report education index rating:

Russia - 99.4% (0.956, on par with Germany, Japan, Switzerland)
Colombia - 92.6% (0.869, on par with Malaysia, Mexico, Jordan)

Poverty - Population living below $1 a day, and population below national poverty line:

Russia - <2% and 17.8%
Colombia - 7% and 49.2%

Percent of population suffering from malnutrition:

Russia - 3%
Colombia - 14%

And lets not forget that Colombia has the highest homicide and kidnap rates in the entire world. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1410316.stm)

In conclusion, Russia beats Colombia hands down in every single category, except one. It's not even a matter of debate as to which country should be ranked higher than which based on "subjective well-being" as they put it. But somehow, based on these criteria that I just presented, using the same sources, they've ranked Colombia as one of the happiest or "most subjectively well-off" places in the world, on par and even ahead of many first world countries. Further, they ranked Russia as one of the worst or "least subjectively well-off" countries, on par with some of the worst, most miserable places to live on Earth. Make sense to you? Me either.

Basically it comes down to some guy saying "Hey, I think I'll colour this country red because I don't like it, and this country blue because I had a great vacation there one time". This is a joke and has no place on wikipedia. And by the way, living in Canada myself, I can tell you right now that we ain't so happy.

Sbw01f (talk) 05:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The data is based on surveys of life-satisfaction in different nations. It is not based on those criteria you cite above, that is correlations done later. The results have been published. A discussion of only two countries, or your own experience, is not a statistical trend. Regarding Russia, the very high prevalence of alcoholism and suicide certainly speaks against a happy nation.[1][2]Ultramarine (talk) 09:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surveys are largely subjective and very open to manipulation. In this case, because you make the argument that statistics don't matter one iota in the end, you support my point that this is nothing but blatant pseudoscience where one can control the list completely based on opinion while making it appear to be legit and scientific. I only used Russia and Colombia as examples. Japan, Hungary, and various other countries have equally high suicide rates, so that argument doesn't hold up. And it still doesn't explain how the worlds "kidnap capital" where one is risking his life by simply going for a walk around the block is ranked better than the UK and Germany.

Now in terms of this being suitable for wikipedia, I'll direct you here: Wikipedia:Verifiability

Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included.

Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, forum postings, and similar sources are largely not acceptable.

Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.

All it takes is a few quick searches to find out that this "Adrian G. White" is not a credible source, nor is he an established expert. His website is indeed a personal website. In fact, if you look at the bottom of his website, you'll see a nice little disclaimer which states: "The views expressed in this document are those of the document owner."

This article is not suitable for an encyclopedia and I'm re-flagging it. Now it's quite clear that you're not going to take "no" for an answer regardless of all the evidence in the world since people who support this sort of pseudoscience are more often than not pushing an agenda, so I'm going to ask that you do not remove the deletion tag, and simply wait for either someone else to make an argument, or for the article to be reviewed.

Scholarly, published material is a verifiable and reliable source. The online article is just a copy of the published material. Many scholars have such copies on their homepages. It has been cited by for example the BBC (and many others): [3][4]. Also, since the deletion is contested, do not put back the speedy deletion template, if you want to continue this, do an ordinary deletion request.Ultramarine (talk) 09:28, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That wasn't a speedy delete, it was a regular delete. Speedy delete actually says "speedy delete" in the tag! See: Wikipedia:Proposed deletion

Until we distinguish Adrian G. White as an expert in the field, and until we find out the methodology of the surveys involved and can verify the claims so to be sure it's honest, this is still not up to standards for wikipedia.

Sbw01f (talk) 20:24, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Read your own link: "*Contested deletions: If anyone, including the article's creator, removes Template:Prod from an article for any reason, do not put it back, except if the removal was clearly not an objection to deletion (such as blanking the entire article, or removing the tag along with inserting blatant nonsense). If the edit is not obviously vandalism, do not restore tag, even if the tag was apparently removed in bad faith. If you still believe the article needs to be deleted, list it on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion."

If you put the deletion tag back again I will report you. Do an ordinary deletion request.Ultramarine (talk) 21:07, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps instead of falsely accusing me of using "speedy delete", you should have verified exactly what you meant in the first place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sbw01f (talk • contribs) 21:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. When Philippines is number 78, and the United States is 23? there is definately something wrong here. Punkymonkey987 (talk) 17:12, 20 July 2008 (UTC) Actually, I would just like to change that if possible. lol![reply]

???

Do we need the huge table? Can't we just list the top ten or so? Whispering^(talk/c) 20:58, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is that a little better? --chris 16:56, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

=

This page is absolutely ridiculous. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.27.210 (talk) 00:02, 21 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SWB?

Sorry, just want to ask what is SWB that is mentioned on the page? Perhaps a further elaboration on this will be good for those readers who found this article by chance or from search engine. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.91.136.203 (talk) 11:35, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, googled it out already. subjective well-being (SWB). Added it in a minute ago. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 133.91.136.203 (talk) 11:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Resolution of conflict

Neutral POV: Although I have a certain sympathy with the user requesting deletion, in that I feel this study is floored, wikipedia DOES LIST disputed and even discredited theories and studies, if they are notable. This study is clearly notable, having been reported by main stream news sources.

When dealing with a controversial article, the advice is at Wikipedia:Controversial_articles. tl;dr, we are to present both points of view, and present references for both. Any study as clearly controversial as this will have replies in the accademic press. I sugest someone who wants to show it is suspect present these, and we can make it clear that it is disputed in the introduction. Certainly it substancially disagrees with other studies such as this one from the reputable Economist Buisness Inteligence Unit [5].

Conversly, I am sure reports, papers, and news articles exist asserting its validity, and these MUST BE GIVEN EQUAL PLACE.

I personaly feel is not appropriate to delete mention of such a notable study, however, such controversy as exists should be clearly noted in the article.

Is this compromize acceptable, or are there further disputes? 86.9.57.55 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 02:06, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Colombıa Poor But Happy!!!!!

http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/ Bye! —Preceding unsigned--Rubashkyn (talk) 17:13, 20 August 2008 (UTC) [reply]

Chill friends

I don't see what some Colombia enthusiasts have a problem with in this. It shows columbia as being ranked right up there with the United States, and higher than russia, effectively proving that it already takes into account exactly what you are complaining about. -(71.202.181.87 (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC))[reply]

grossly inaccurate labeling

someone had this thing labeled as if it was a happy planet index map. it is nothing of the sort, that is a completely different measure that takes into account environmental impact, and has different numbers than in the table. i replaced that with the correct citation to where the information comes from.-(71.202.181.87 (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC))[reply]

dont delete, just add contrary citations or make a new article about other published measures

also, dont delete this, there is high interest in it and it is based on studies. wikipedia policy says that any significant academic views should be covered. if you disagree, find some studies that dispute its import and provide citations so that people who read the articles can have access to those views also. there certainly are other studies compiled with their own rankings and methodologies. consider making an article and free map for those studies which will have different labels for their measures. for example, the economist article pointed to earlier is "quality of life index", not "subjective well being" or "satisfaction with life scale". the economist article says that its quality of life index "links the results of subjective life-satisfaction surveys to the objective determinants of quality of life across countries." so that means it is involving additional measures into its index other than sastisfaction with life surveys. there will be a different methodology behind it which is important to the results. for example, the White 2006 paper uses information from a metastudy. there are issues with metastudies because they try to collect results from other studies which are not all done in the same way, yet metastudies have to be done. White's paper then compares the results of subjective well being with other measures to find some correlations. the economist paper by contrast is not finding correlations to other factors, but trying to include those factors into a new scale.

-(71.202.181.87 (talk) 20:40, 24 August 2008 (UTC))[reply]

If I laugh because of this article, am I happier then? :)

I won't talk about the methodology, which is not arguable, just wrong.

But Italy only 50th.. Ah ah.. Don't talk about comparisons with other countries because of the respect I have for any of them.. But please: isn't it in one of the many wikipedia guidelines the pre-requisite of having some intellect before writing..? :D

For the dumbest ones I'll say just one thing: if I buy anything or get the salary, if I get a diploma or stay alive 95 years in my country it goes to the (reliable and encyclopedic in fact) statistics as National GDP and HDI. No one asked me if I am happy :P

P.S.

Sorry for mispellings or wrong methods, I'm not a native speaker naither a wikipedia commenter..