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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

Splitting these by continent is somewhat disingenuous since many of the oldest civilizations and settlements are at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe.

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There are many awful lists like this on Wikipedia as it seems the criteria for them are a lot less strict than for articles.

I guess whoever creates the list can argue that each individual item is sourced, even though the selection of items and their organisation is original research [0], and thus should not be allowed.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research

I agree, I don't mind lists like "Largest countries" as that is fairly definitive but when you get into subjective lists of things that are hard to properly define, measure or record like "costliest hurricane damage"[1], "longest-living organisms"[2] or "deadliest animals"[3] then the articles become a joke.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricane_rec...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longest-living_organis...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_h...

How would you approach those things? Do we altogether avoid making those lists because they don't fit a strict criteria? I think they serve a very useful purpose and taken in the correct context, are incredibly informative. At the very least it stimulates curiosity which is a positive effect in itself.

An age old question.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Conflicting_Wikipedia_philos...

I think your analysis is overly critical. The stated purpose of Wikipedia's no-OR policy is not to "reach or imply a conclusion not stated by the sources". The only novel conclusion being drawn here is that one can conceive of a list of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Wikipedia policy also notes that "The potential for creating lists is infinite." and prohibits lists that do not comply with Wikipedia's overall content policy as being "trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stand-alone_lists#Ap...

I personally think that this list is really interesting and does in fact advance the state of human knowledge. The fact that it's currently at the top of HN and has garnered comment interest shows that you're probably in the minority in your disagreement.

If you feel strongly that this list is trivial, poorly organized, or simply "awful" you're absolutely free to join the discussion and contribute edits at Wikipedia.

I dunno if it's disingenuous, but it is kinda clunky.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold

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