User talk:Wikiuser552

Thanks for including sources in your recent edits at List of cities by GDP. Unfortunately, while including sources is paramount to ensuring WP:Verifiability, it's not always enough, and demographic articles such as List of cities by GDP containing tables of demographic data need more care than, say, articles on historical topics because tabular data can be interrelated in complex ways. In the case of the tables in this article, the tables contain derived data (GDP per capita) and if an editor performs these calculations (as opposed to finding the GDP per capita in the source) then they must be done correctly or else they will yield nonsense results. Your two edits had to be removed, because although the figures you added were sourced (thanks again for that), they were sourced to different years, which yields a data row with incomparable values, and when you use them to calculate a figure like GDP per capita from inherently incompatible values, the result is nonsense.

I'll give you one example from one row of the table, the one for Abbotsford, but this applies generally to every row: the population of 205,847 (which was there before your changes) is sourced to "statcan1", but that page doesn't contain that value. It does contain "205,843"–pretty close, so let's accept that figure–but it's data for 2021. The GDP per cap of 29,831.03 resulting from dividing 2019 GDP by 2021 population is nonsense. You'd have to either change the GDP figure to 2021, or back up the pop figure to 2019. Multiply this by every row you changed, and you'll see the full extent of the issue.

You are still fairly new here, and it's hard enough ensuring that all assertions are verifiable, as required by policy, and it's extra difficult in tabular demographic data tables, because of the interdependencies. If I were you, I'd work on non-tabular data for a while until you get more experience here. We're all volunteers, here, so I can't tell you what to do, but if you do decide to continue working on demographic articles, you'll have to pay more attention to verifiability and WP:SYNTH if you want your edits to stick. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 06:10, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Let's keep the conversation all in one place. I can see that having to calculate the per-cap for every column by dividing values is a pain (and also prone to error, when someone comes along and changes one of the fraction values and doesn't realize they have to recalculate the per-cap value as well).

First of all: it's nuts that editors have been doing the currency conversion calculation to convert CAN$ to USD to come up with the GDP figure in US$, when we already have two templates for that: {{To USD}} and {{To USD round}}. The whole page should be using that template for the GDP column, because the template knows all the currency conversion figures for every country and year back to 1960, so all you have to do is provide the value, the country, and the year, and it converts to USD for you.

Secondly, and back to your original question: providing the per capita GDP should also be a template, based on the currency conversion one above, and adding in the division of currency by population. I couldn't believe there wasn't one already, so I wrote one for you: it's called, {{Per capita}}. Here's an example, using the Abbotsford data for 2019:

{{per capita|8.148|202497|CAN|2019}} → 30,321.44

Here's an example table with two rows in it: the first row is an exact copy of the "Abbotsford" row in the table from the article. Then below that, I duplicated the row, but instead of converting the statcan figures of "8.148" I just used {{To USD round}} to get the USD value (different, because 2019 data). For the per capita value in the last column, I just plugged the values into {{Per capita}} and didn't calculate anything (figure differs because the test row uses both figures from 2019, whereas the real row in the article uses mixed years, which is invalid):

More information Rank, City proper/metropolitan area ...

Rank	City proper/metropolitan area	Country/region	UNSD sub‑region[1]	Official est. GDP up to date (billion US$)	Brookings[2] 2014 est. PPP-adjusted GDP (billion US$)	Metropolitan population	Official est. GDP per capita
300+	Abbotsford, British Columbia	Canada	North America	6.119 (2018)[3][4]		205,847 (2021)[5]	29,725.96
300+	Abbotsford, British Columbia	Canada	North America	6.141 (2019)[3]		202,497 (2019)[5]	30,321.44

Close

Notice that I never did any math, I just plugged the Canadian dollar values directly into the two templates. (Also notice that there's one less reference in the bottom row, because you don't have to reference the currency conversion source anymore; the template already does this for you.) Both of those templates will work for any country, and for any year, and also guarantees that the right IMF (or other) conversion factor is used, and that they are all compatible from country to country. So, the whole table should be redone to use them (but not yet; see below), and editors should stop making currency-conversion calculations, and per-capita calculations on their own. Also, these templates are used in demographic articles all over Wikipedia and are our currency standard, so in case the currency conversion factors used by the IMF and other sources in the templates differ from StatCan conversion factors, we want the values in the template, to keep them in line with every other demographic article.

Converting the tables in the article is not on you, by the way; I'm not suggesting you redo the whole table (unless you want to), but at least when you make changes to it going forward, please use the templates, and don't calculate your own conversions; it should be much faster and easier for you this way anyway.

One last thing: this template is brand new, and before anyone converts the whole table, they should test it out on a few rows first. There may well be some differences from the values you got before due to possible slight differences between StatCan and the IMF, or due to rounding, but if you see anything suspicious, please leave a message at Template talk:Per capita with an example showing what you think is wrong, and why. If there doesn't seem to be any problems after a while, we can declare it "official", and then all demographic articles that use "per capita" figures should be converted to it. If there's anything in this message that isn't clear, please {{Reply}} below. If it's a question about the {{Per capita}} template, how it works, or anything in the documentation that isn't clear, then please respond at Template talk:Per capita. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:29, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Just a heads-up: in order to make the existence of the new template more public, I added this discussion at WT:WikiProject Countries. Thaks, Mathglot (talk) 19:55, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi, Wikiuser552. Good job in this edit at List of cities by GDP using the templates to update the tables. I just wanted to give you another heads-up, to let you know about my follow-up edit right after yours, which, if you look at the History tab, might look to you at first glance as if I reverted your edit, because my edit removed 19,691 bytes from the article, almost exactly the amount you added. But don't worry–everything you added is still there; that is, the rendered page, i.e., the article the way a reader sees it, is exactly the same as before—nothing has changed. But, if you edit the wikicode and look at it, a lot has changed: it's a lot shorter now, but still produces the same output as before. What I did was to consolidate the named references for "statcan" and "statcan1", and I also used template {{R}} to save even a few more bytes. The result is table wikicode which is much shorter and easier to read and modify.

I'd be interested in hearing your feedback about what it was like, adding the data using those two templates, and if it made your life easier; also any other comments you'd like to make about them, or ideas about how to make them even better, or easier to use. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 07:20, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

help. the template doesn't seem to work with Beijing. Wikiuser552 (talk) 19:01, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

I am away and can only edit on my phone, but I’ll try and look at the template issue in the next few days. In the meantime, your manual approach is the best workaround for now. Please ping me Monday if you haven't heard back before then. Mathglot (talk) 22:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Wikiuser552 (talk) 01:50, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

@Wikiuser552: I’m away and can’t help till mid-June. Please ping me then, or try the Wikipedia:Help desk for assistance. Mathglot (talk) 21:42, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of cities by GDP, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

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Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of cities by GDP, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

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Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of cities by GDP, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

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Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 02:20, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of cities by GDP, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 02:20, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of cities by GDP, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL" error. References show this error when one of the URL-containing parameters cannot be paired with an associated title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

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Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page List of countries by corn production, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

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Hello, I'm Isaidnoway. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to List of largest airlines in Africa have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse or the Help desk. Multiple citation errors, scroll down through the References section and see all the cite errors your edit introduced into the article Isaidnoway (talk) 06:32, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Please do not add original research or novel syntheses of published material to articles as you apparently did to Middle East. Please cite a reliable source for all of your contributions. Thank you. Skitash (talk) 00:10, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Azeris, Nubians, Iraqi Turkmen, Yazidis and Greek Cypriots are not in the cited source (^[1]) either. Wikiuser552 (talk) 00:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you violate Wikipedia's no original research policy by inserting unpublished information or your personal analysis into an article, as you did at Middle East. Skitash (talk) 00:42, 18 July 2025 (UTC)