Proposed alternative approach

This is an interesting article. It is not nonsense, as stated by one of the editors on its Articles for deletion page. It contributes to the interesting and important debate on how to comparatively evaluate different societies in the world. I'm not an expert on this subject, but some quick research suggests that at the level of nations, it is rooted in the concept of the gross national product and its successor international indices, gross domestic product, human development index, gross national happiness, and many others. While several Wikipedia articles on these discuss comparisons among their subject indices and others, I don't see an article on the basic subject of these international indices overall, comparing and contrasting them. There is a list of such indices, but not an article about them. (Someone please correct me if there is one.) I think this article proposes some data that could be behind such a comparison.

This article with the title Functional states index probably will be deleted because as conceived it is original research. However, there is a way to reformulate the concept and content of the article to present useful information that ought not violate the NOR policy. This would be a table of the elements of the FSI calculation, i.e., the six indices used in the FSI. The table could present three data elements for each of the three indices: raw score, rank, and a normalized measure such as is proposed in the FSI calculation. It would be interesting to sort the table seven different ways: by rank according to each of the component indices and by an additional column giving their average.

The new article could have a title like Comparison of international indices. I addition to the suggested table, it could have text about the comparisons presented in the articles about individual indices.

I don't think presenting a normalized measure alongside diverse raw scores would constitute an NOR violation. It would simply be a mathematical means of comparing a variety of well-sourced data. Neither should an additional column with the averages of all six indices and a ranking by this average violate NOR. However, I suppose it would violate NOR to give a weighted average, as does the FSI proposed in this article.

The author of this article says he wants to stimulate creation of a new index that incorporates more relevant measures than existing indices do. The table and article suggested here might help with that aim without the need to create a new index in the process, and thereby remain within the bounds of what can be presented in Wikipedia until the new index is launched by the desired "legitimate organization."

WagePeace (talk) 17:54, 24 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]