Talk:National longevity recordholders

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	The National longevity recordholders article is part of WikiProject World's Oldest People, an attempt to expand, update, and improve all articles relating to the World's Oldest People.
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Why is "Australia" stuck under "Netherlands?" -- 131.96.14.23

Sorting by country name might be preferable. -- User:Docu

I have now done so. One gets involved in the strangest things! I editted this article because of a VfD by alphabetizing and mergin an entry, now I am going to fix some grammar and clarity, perhaps bringing some consistency to the page as well. Yet I really have no interest in the subject! Just one of those things you end up doing because it needs to be done. HyperZonk^talk 01:14, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for sorting the entries. I reversed #Switzerland to its previous state as I don't know who is the national record holder (according to the reference 3 others than Bonzo-Wrede may qualify) and I think the list given instead is just as useful. If we wanted to limit sections to just two persons, Supercentenarian#National_longevity_recordholders would be sufficient. -- User:Docu

Well, Docu, I am not going to get into a revert/edit war with you on an article I actually don't have that much interest in, but to me it seems perfectly clear who is the oldest person in your list of Swiss citizens ... can it be too much of a stretch to say it is the person who made it to 110 years old instead of the ones who made it to 109? Secondly, the references are not in English, which is of limited usefulness to English speakers except those who speak German. However, references are references, but they should be in standard format instead of just bare numbered links. Third, I had attempted to make the format consistent, and you have broken that consistency. The content format was Person holds the [fe]male record at yyy years and ddd days (date-date). And then followed by any supplemental data, such as disputes and/or locations. Fourth, the page intro clearly sets a cut-off point for this page, currently at 110 years; you have introduced individuals under that age (see first point). Fifth and last, this page presumably exists beyond the Supercentenarian subhead because that list contains only one person, has no place for extended comments, and does not speak to alternate claims and other disputes. Feel free to own this page if it means that much to you. Perhaps you could clean up the grammar a little though: it should say, "The oldest living Swiss are said to be:" with no italics. HyperZonk^talk 16:15, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I had read only title, list and part of the introduction, but I missed the idea that the list is supposed to be limited to countries with supercentenarians.

That is actually a fallacious concept pounded by Mr. Epstein (12.144 whatever). In truth, the "national longevity recordholders" concerns whoever holds the longevity record, whatever that age may be. The "national longevity recordholder" is the oldest verified person for a particular nation, whether they be 108 or 110 doesn't matter (intuitively). But Mr. Epstein doesn't go by logic. 131.96.14.57 00:41, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Obviously if we don't have a cutoff age we can have records for every country under the sun.But keeping a high cutoff age keeps the article size AND the number of disputes manageable.The assertion that my concepts are fallacious is just a way of cultivating disagreement without offering sensible counterargument to the reasons I have given for the decisions I make.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 00:47, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I suppose we should either re-write the introduction or delete the Swiss section, as Bonzo-Wrede alone is of limited use. She is in fact just one of four known Swiss supercentenarians (that is stated in the article). Dying just ten days after her birthday, it is unlikely she was even one of the three oldest. You might want to search further to identify them. -- User:Docu

Hmmm, indeed, who knows why the original author chose the age s/he did (in fact, it was originally 112, I changed it to 110 so we could incorporate Ireland, Switzerland, and others in my last edit). It seems arbitrary ... as, indeed, does 110. I guess the thought was that we don't necessarily want to catalog countries with a maximum age of 60,

Of course not! Any nation with a standard of documentation decent enough to have a recordholder will have as their oldest person someone older than 100, probably over 105. Even in Afghanistan, there are clearly people older than 80 or 90. 131.96.14.57 00:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

for instance (are there any such?). That still seems arbitrary to me. So I think maybe we should get rid of the cutoff line. By the same token, I think pounding out a list of the top four candidates of a given country is probably unfair to the countries that can only muster one recordholder ;). Seriously, I think we should be only talking about claimants, and as I cannot read German, I do not know what the alternating claims are for the four Swiss citizens listed. I had tried to deal in a reasonably (though not perfectly) standard way with countries that have alternate claimants, also. If it were solely up to me, I would suggest that we should try to bring Switzerland at least into some semblance of conformity with the other entries (if that is, in fact, possible). And I assume that there is a consensus between you and I at least that the maximum age qualification in the intro section should be dropped? Also, as I said before, I think that the web references should be more than bare numbered links (especially since the reader may be a bit surprised to land on a page in German from the en. site). As I have said, I don't really have any serious interest in this subject, but if you want to collab to form a more perfect article, I am always happy to help with cleanup chores (still trying to do three or four cleanup-tagged article a day). HyperZonk^talk 01:55, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Before they died, the four listed were all living national longevity recordholders, at least according to the included news reports. I will edit the introduction to make this clearer.

So, you're missing the point, eh? Is this a list of the oldest LIVING recordholders, or is it a list of the recordholder for the nation? Because if it's a list of the "oldest living," then we could add in quite a few...Japan's data goes back to at least 1976, as does the U.S. list... 131.96.14.57 00:46, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Probably due to decentralized record keeping and data protection, many are cautious about declaring one as the oldest. The number of supercentenarians (4) is reported to come from the Swiss Federal Statistics office. I speculate that it's based on data from the Swiss public pension scheme (AHV/AVS).

I don't mind if you remove the references, but news sources are sometimes linked that way, and we could update the introduction to remove the minimum age, afterall the text is no longer a section of the supercentenarian article. -- User:Docu

I don't actually have any trouble with the links, it is the absence of anything other than bare number links. I've seen those links in other places, and think that it is bad form for such cases. My suggestion for good formatting would be based on the WP reference style recommendation to be something like:

(see "Älteste Schweizerin im Alter von 109 Jahren gestorben". (9 July 2004) Neue Zürcher Zeitung. [German only] [1]).

Though the "German only" part may not be necessary, as the title is clearly in German (or, at least, clearly not in English if the reader isn't familiar with German). Though it is, of course, WP style, I'm also not sure that I like the way the linked date looks; perhaps it would be better to leave the date in the style of the cited paper. With those two alternatives, the reference looks like this:

(see "Älteste Schweizerin im Alter von 109 Jahren gestorben". (9 July 2004) Neue Zürcher Zeitung. [2]).

Source code for these entries:

(see "Älteste Schweizerin im Alter von 109 Jahren gestorben". ([[9 July]] [[2004]]) Neue Zürcher Zeitung. [German only] <small>[http://l005sys0.nzz.ch/2004/07/09/vm/page-newzzDWG1QDEE-12.html]</small>).

(see "Älteste Schweizerin im Alter von 109 Jahren gestorben". (9 July 2004) Neue Zürcher Zeitung. <small>[http://l005sys0.nzz.ch/2004/07/09/vm/page-newzzDWG1QDEE-12.html]</small>).

Of course, such suggestions for inline reference style should probably go to the overall community, but we can always use them here for the time being. I'll touch up the intro text to the overall article, see if you like it. HyperZonk^talk 17:17, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

Another thing: having just tried to make the intro paragraph on links/boldface/biographies more encyclopedic in tone, I have to say that I think the paragraph is altogether unencyclopedic. I think maybe it should be deleted. Your thoughts? HyperZonk^talk 17:32, Mar 5, 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed that 12.144.5.2 has reverted all the changes made recently fixing up the punctuation and ordering of the countries in the article. Before this turns into a revert war, I think maybe we should get a consensus about how the article should be structured. Firstly the punctuation changes are a no-brainer, I (and 30+ other people) explained to 12.144.5.2 on his talk page that it doesn't comply with the style policy of Wikipedia. Secondly the countries should be in alphabetical order in my opinion, if you want to have a list of people by country, make a small table at the top. 12.144.5.2, please participate in this discussion if you can and make your argument, don't just revert contributions. -- Meesham 14:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

see my earlier statement below on the revert--L.E./12.144.5.2 19:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To the user who didn't log in but mass reverted: I've spent a cumulative total of about an hour cleaning up the punctuation and spacing on this article, and to have the whole thing reverted to a version (from a few weeks ago, apparently) which undoes not only my work but that of a few other people is rather irksome. I have no patience with experiments in non-standard punctuation in the article space, so please don't do that. Punctuation is nothing more (or less) than common courtesy to the reader. Keeping that in mind, make changes and add to the work several people have done, as you will, to your hearts content, but please do not revert way back. Jonathunder 16:44, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

Also, I agree with Meesham on the alphabetical order. Since the article is on *national* recordholders, and organized by name of country, it should be alphabetized that way. If someone wants to add a table, as Meesham suggested, I think that's a fine idea. Jonathunder 16:55, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

I created this article essentially as overspill from the supercentenarian article,since national recordholders weren't really a good fit with the lists of oldest-ever and oldest-living there.If you want to put spaces after my punctuation marks I am not going to revert that (I'd be doing it everywhere if that were my practice).However,the organization of the article I think is absolutely ruined by the substantive edits I reverted (alphabetization and abandonment of the conventions for who gets listed and how).There are reasons for every way I did things and I don't see coherent counter-arguments for any of them.--Louis Epstein/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 19:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Louis Epstein. Do Not Alphabetize!! This is how I want it:

• Nations in order of the age of the overall recordholder.
• Overall recordholder first,female unless otherwise stated (see intro),then the recordholder of the other sex where known.
• Only verified cases (Guinness Book etc.).

Contents 1 No one born in 20th Century is a supercentenarian? 2 Back to the original! 3 Do Not Alphabetize!! 4 RFC regarding article formatting 4.1 Order 4.2 Inclusion 5 Flags 6 Algeria 7 Finch, Stefan, Vietoris 8 Sweden 9 Age in years and days 10 Iceland 11 Citations 12 Oldest polish people 13 Migrants 14 China or Hong Kong 15 Bolding 16 Maria Tomson claim 17 Emigrants

[edit] No one born in 20th Century is a supercentenarian?

You will note that I have once again reworded the section of the article introduction dealing with persons born in the 20th century. This is because there are clearly persons born in the twentieth century who are supercentenarians — a person born in 1902, for instance, is now 102 or 103 years old. However, none are yet longevity recordholders (at least, none have yet been reported to be in this article). As I am sure you know, supercentenarian only means "more than 100 years old." And there are certainly people born in the twentieth century who are (or, if they have passed on since 2001, "were") more than 100 years old. HyperZonk^talk 17:17, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that supercentenarian means greater than or equal to 110 years. Centenarian is for people 100 - 109. See the supercentenarian article. Matthias5 00:37, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. That will teach me to simply assume definition from prefixes! However, is supercentenarian a necessary attribute of a given nation's recordholder? (See discussion above regarding artificial limitations to this list.) Perhaps we should remove the language about supercentenarians altogether, as it would seem that several countries may not have recordholders that have achieved the age required for such a distinguished title. [Perhaps this whole thing will also teach me to get heavily involved in articles on subjects that I am so disinterested in. *sigh* Probably not, though.] HyperZonk^talk 01:10, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, what do you know, I had already actually taken care of that in my last edit. Therefore, I am requesting comment on whether or not the language regarding the current supply of 20th century supercentenarians should be left out as it currently stands (the bit at the end of the intro would seem to me to be something to leave in place in either case), or if it should be restored. HyperZonk^talk 01:13, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

There is NO logical reason to have ANY reference to "no 20th-century recordholders." It's like saying "no one under age 100 is over 100 years old." By definition: 2005-1901=104 years. By definition, a recordholder should be the oldest person in the country. By definition, that age is generally reserved for those persons 105+. Thus, having no 20th-century recordholders has NO BEARING on the quality of documentation in the 20th century. It's like saying that since there are no dodo birds at the zoo, the zoo must have sub-standard care. Hello? Since dodos are extinct, they cannot exist at the zoo and therefore have no bearing on zoo care. Likewise, since 20th-century SUPERCENTENARIANS (persons 110+) are excluded, by definition, until 2011, there is simply no reason to suggest that this has any bearing on the quality of 20th-century recordkeeping. 131.96.14.57 00:59, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That's fine with me -- it seems that 100 is as appropriate as a cutoff as 110. I'm not terribly interested in this topic either. Probably 100 is going to be as hard to prove for the vast majority of countries anyway, keeping the list manageable. Any arbitrary cutoff date is just that -- it seems that we're constrained more by the record keeping in the country than anything else -- because this is for documented old people, not myths. I'd be interested to see what age the oldest person achieved in Nigeria, but that question doesn't seem to answerable currently. Matthias5 21:55, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Back to the original!

I created this article,rescued it from deletion attempts (not VfD,deliberate blanking),and turned my attention elsewhere,only to come back a couple of weeks ago to find it massively altered.I left a note on Hyperzonk's talk page explaining why I preferred the original format,but he has not responded in weeks,so I am going ahead and putting it back the way it was:

• Nations in order of the age of the overall recordholder.
• Overall recordholder first,female unless otherwise stated (see intro),then the recordholder of the other sex where known.
• Only verified cases (Guinness Book etc.) (the authenticated Irish recordholder is Katherine Plunket,not Margaret Dolan).
• No countries where no one reached 112.

If you want to discuss these policies please do,but erasing them out of not even understanding that they exist doesn't help things.--Louis Epstein/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 16:54, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

In short, Mr. Epstein views this as his "personal playpen," not a Wikipedia article. If he doesn't want to use proper spacing, punctuation, capitalization, etc., there's no one that's going to stop him! (Unless they ban him, of course). But aside from the aesthetics, there is the issue of content: Mr. Epstein wants the article tailored to his every idiosyncracy, with no standards. Are we to include the "oldest man" for every article, or just for those where the oldest man happens to be 110 and older? Emigrant records should only be included where their age exceeds that of the national recordholder. 131.96.14.57 00:51, 7 Apr 2

I fight efforts to drag it down to the lowest common denominator,yes.Recordholders of the opposite sex to the overall recordholder who are not supercentenarians are not traced.And where does an emigrant who does not break a country's record appear?--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 18:48, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Do Not Alphabetize!!

A couple of people have said they like the idea of the countries being in alphabetical order,but nobody has given a reason.As I see it there is every reason to leave the countries in order of recordholder's age,from the world recordholder's country down to the country with a record closest to the cutoff age.This makes clearer down to where countries are all listed,and below which no countries are listed (the catch-as-can additions some have offered are disturbingly selective).Anyone who wants to look up a country should have no trouble with the TOC.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 20:07, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I see some argument for alphabetizing given in the discussion above, but since they are evidently being overlooked, I will restate the ones I gave. I agree with Meesham on the alphabetical order. Since the article is on national recordholders and is organized by name of country, it should be alphabetized that way. There is already an article, supercentenarians, which lists people by age. We don't need to duplicate that article. I do see others who generally agreed as well. Jonathunder 20:13, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)

Alphabetizing is fine with me, but Jonathunder, perhaps you shouldn't be editing the main text, as you introduced several errors in logic and fallacious statements. 66.64.156.146 20:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If there are any errors, please do correct them. I made no changes at all to the text, but I did spend considerable time fixing spacing and punctuation. When another user (who also wasn't logged in) did a mass revert to a version from a few weeks ago, I reverted back. Jonathunder 21:40, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)

Ordering countries by record holders would only make sense if this article was named Longetivity recordholders by country or something to that effect. Since this is listing record holders for each country, alphabetising the country list is the most readible (although readibility doesn't seem to be some peoples concern here) and sensible way of sorting the country list. Meesham 05:03, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

But the countries qualify for the list based on having produced documented persons of sufficient age.And it's much easier to see that by having them in the order in which their recordholders have survived (though this does shuffle...Portugal has just moved ahead of Australia,so the next time I update my fork I'll have to retype those two).The country list is there in the TOC for anyone to look up a particular country...--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 16:15, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And here we go again.I add updated,relevant facts to the form of the article in the only format that makes sense,and Jonathunder,who cares about nothing but spaces after punctuation,reverts the facts out and puts the article back to randomly including countries that have no documented 112-year-olds rather than uniform treatment down to that cutoff age and uniform exclusion below it.--Louis Epstein (never anonymous)/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 22:27, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

It is the consensus of every other editor who has commented here that the formatted, aphabetized version with a space between sentences is easier to read. Please do not keep reverting against consensus. Jonathunder 23:07, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

I created this article to serve as an extended,more informative version of a table in the Supercentenarian article that was in age order.'ALPHABETIZATION MASSIVELY REDUCES THE USEFULNESS OF THE INFORMATION.' The casual alterations that have piled up in the non-alphabetized fork of this article also detract from its content.That a consensus are clueless doesn't mean the article should have to put up with the flaws of that fork.If you don't like my efficient spacing,then let the User:Mathbot come along and put spaces after the punctuation marks in the version that has the countries in order by age of the recordholder,does not go below a pre-declared cutoff age,and does not randomly include or exclude countries,and treat them in different ways,below that age.--Louis E./12.144.5.2 04:14, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

And I note that Jonathunder has not been remotely convincing in justifying the alphabetized version,and I continue to regard only the age-ordered version of the article as remotely useful.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 04:07, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RFC regarding article formatting

There is a long-simmering edit war here regarding the order, formatting, and content of this list. The important content issues seem to be

1. Order. Should countries be ordered alphabetically or by age of longevity record holder?
2. Inclusion. Should countries with longevity record holders below a cutoff age (112 or some other threshold) be included?

If anybody has any other issues they would like to bring up, please add an appropriate subsection. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:01, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Order

I find the list easiest to read with the countries in order alphabetically. We can include a reference and link to supercentenarian for people who want a list by age. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:01, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

The list makes most sense with the countries in order of the recordholder's age.I originated this article as a replacement for the table of national recordholders I considered inappropriately added to the supercentenarian article,where I think it foolish to list people multiple times (aside from living persons on the oldest-living and oldest-by-sex list,and a few historical oldest-livings on the oldest-ever list).It follows the format of the national-recordholders lists published in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1970 to the 1990s...oldest first,down to an age below which they're not tracked.--Louis Epstein/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 23:44, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

To me it makes most sense to sort alphabetically too. I think even the article title would imply that, it is about oldest living person by country, so it has to be sorted by country, not by age. Besides, there is sorting by age at supercentenarian.

By the way, I have a disclaimer to make. I have a bit of tooth against Mr. Epstein with the punctuation issue, but that only brought me to the article, the decision on which position to support was based on objective reasoning (I hope). Oleg Alexandrov 04:30, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

There is sometimes debate over whether people are as old as they claim or are claimed to be; sometimes this represents genuine uncertainty, and the position of countries in "by-oldest" order depends on whether or not they are accepted as genuine; at worst, someone who disagrees might put in a duplicate entry with a different claim. If the countries are listed alphabetically, however, all that is needed is a suitable caveat on the doubtful claim. As mentioned above, it also make life clearer for readers. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 11:42, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

But the non-alphabetized version carefully excludes all doubted cases,only the people who alphabetized it started adding ones that shouldn't be here.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 13:00, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Susvolans on annotating dubious claims and leaving it at that. At the same time, ordering alphabetically removes some of the appeal of adding a dubious claim to this list—your country doesn't get moved up. Louis, please refrain from describing the well-intended edits of others as vandalism (we can, and do, see your edit summaries). Also–while you are indisputably a recognized expert on the subject–it's not appropriate to remove any and all entries that don't receive your personal imprimatur. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:36, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

I also came to this article due to an interest in Mr Epstein's issues. As such, I am merely a casual reader of the page. Perhaps a proper solution would be to have a list of the ten oldest documented at the beginning of the article (name, age, country) and then each country listed alphabetically (with the other details on the country entry). I'll admit to not being particularly concerned one way or the other. I know if I came to the article to look, I'd both want to know who the oldest people were and how to quickly find a particular country without knowing in advance what place they are in by age. As such, it would seem to me that having a short numerical list followed by all countries alphabetically would make the casual user most satisfied. I defer to the other editors here and hope that you can all be reasonable. --Habap 18:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

The Supercentenarian article is where the overall oldest individuals are listed by age, and that should remain prominently linked to from this article, but there is no need to duplicate that article in this one. National longevity recordholders, as the name implies, is organized by nationality. Jonathunder 02:26, 2005 September 10 (UTC)

[edit] Inclusion

I don't see any reason to exclude any country from this list. This is an article on National longevity recordholders, and I don't why nations should be excluded because their particular recordholders aren't above some arbitrary threshold. Once again, the 'oldest of the old' are available on supercentenarian. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:01, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

If there is not a cutoff age the criteria become too random.The lower you go the harder it is to be sure you have every documented case,and thus every qualified country represented.To abandon a cutoff age translates to sacrificing data quality and consistency.(The non-age-ordered version of this list includes a number of doubted cases and entries are in a less consistent format).Below age 110 there is no recognized list that identifies everyone to have reached that age,and most countries have no documented supercentenarians.Not all supercentenarians are national recordholders,but a national recordholder who isn't a supercentenarian is frankly not worth listing.And a higher cutoff than 110 takes care of some of the less documented national recordholders and results in a higher quality final data-set.--Louis Epstein/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 23:44, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

I frankly see no benefit in an arbitrary cut-off by age. It does make sense to exclude countries where there isn't verifiable information, but judging purely on age rather than verifiability is daft. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 11:55, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Only by being all-inclusive down to a certain age is the inclusion or exclusion of nations not arbitrary or deceptive.The chance that someone has been missed increases the younger you go,and the appearance that there was no one from a country implies that the longevity of its residents is necessarily below that of any listed country when it may well not be.Keeping the cutoff age at 112 avoids including some of the more doubtful Guinness national recordholders (Philipovitch,Mielzcarak,El Mokri,etc) and thus makes the list more reliable.In creating this article I thought through a lot of issues that people just don't get,it seems.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 20:53, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

If dubious national recordholders start appearing, they can be annotated as such. A disclaimer to the effect that the younger national recordholders (if any are added) are often unsupported by reliable documentation could be added to the article. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:58, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Significant dubious entries are already there in the alphabetized version,a reason I revert to the correct non-alphabetized version.It is better to just hold the line at being inappropriately inclusive...Wikibloat is a blight all over Wikipedia,but in this little corner I've come up with good solutions that run into trouble because more people don't understand the reasons than do.People listed here should come from the same data universe [3] as the entries in the supercentenarian article.--Louis Epstein/le@put.com/12.144.5.2 15:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Flags

Personally, I prefer the version without flags. It also has the advantage that it loads faster. May I remove them? -- User:Docu

Ok, as you don't mind, I removed them. -- User:Docu

[edit] Algeria

Meanwhile, however, the French made Algeria an integral part of France, a status that would end only with the collapse of the Fourth Republic. Tens of thousands of settlers from France, Italy, Spain, and Malta moved in to farm the Algerian coastal plain and occupy the most prized parts of Algeria's cities, benefiting from the French government's confiscation of communally held land, and the application of modern agriculture techniques that increased the amount of arable land. People of European descent in Algeria (the so-called pieds-noirs), as well as the native Algerian Jews, became full French citizens starting from the end of the 19th century; by contrast, the vast majority of Muslim Algerians (even veterans of the French army) received neither French citizenship nor the right to vote. → R Young {^yakł_talk} 16:24, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Would you provide references for your additions to Algeria, or should we remove it? -- User:Docu

Yes, Docu, we should remove you from this discussion. You have not contributed anything substantive but have caused problems. Since this is NOT your area of expertise, you should bug out. → R Young {^yakł_talk} 03:09, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Finch, Stefan, Vietoris

Leopold Vietoris is deceased so he was de-highlighted (de-bolded); Elizabeth Stefan and Florence Finch are still alive (!!!) so they were created as redirects for the sake of consistency and bolded. Ain'tshesweet 02:23, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Who said the bold=still alive? Bold means the recordholder doesn't have an article written about them. → R Young {^yakł_talk} 03:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sweden

Astrid Zachrison claims that she was born in 1885; is this a hoax article or does this list need to be updated? Nevermind, back to the trenches for me. -- nae'blis 14:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

That should be 1895, not 1885. → R Young {^yakł_talk} 15:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Errr, right. That's what I get for editing before I'm properly caffeinated... it would appear that Astrid is roughly 111.25 years - I'll see if someone can find a source, since I can't read Swedish and almost all of the Google results are about this Wikipedia page/mirrors. -- nae'blis 15:56, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Age in years and days

There is a new template: {{age in years and days}} which may be useful here. —Moondyne 14:53, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Iceland

see this link: http://www.halfdan.is/news/newsletter_056.htm#gudrunarnason —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.137.105.43 (talk • contribs)

Lovely: thank you. Extremely sexy 23:14, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

It is about time to start adding more substantive citations.Ryoung122 04:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest polish people

Benedykta Mackieło born 1 may 1893 - 1 january 2007 documentation - http://www.rmf.fm/fakty/pic.html?id=111145&img=111145.jpg 113+days http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedykta_Mackie%C5%82o http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedykta_Mackielo

Józef Buszyło died 8 mars 2007

Janina Izykowska (Iżykowska) 27 february 1882 25 september 1998 +116 lat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.30.181.249 (talk) 06:35, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Greetings

These lists are proven records, not claims. Can anyone find the birth, marriage, and death certificates for any one of these cases? If so, e-mail me at robertdouglasyoung@yahoo.comRyoung122 07:39, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Migrants

Anyone been able to verify wether emigrants, like Herman Smith-Johannsen, have obtained citizenships in the countries they immigrated to, and/or given up their old citizenships? I checked some on the Danish-American Mortensen, looked like he'd obtained some kind of American citizenship (though I'm not sure that means he gave up his Danish one, he identified himself as Danish when he signed up for the old folks home?). I assume they should be listed under the countries they were citizens of, rather than how they identified themselves or where they lived. Lejman 13:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] China or Hong Kong

How reliable is the case of Nicholas Kao Se Tseien? Can he be added for China or for Hong Kong on this page? Rrsmac 23:38, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't like the idea. China has 1.3 billion people, maybe just for 'Hong Kong (China)' as a territory, like those at the bottom of the page.Ryoung122 09:53, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair point. Is he the longest lived Hong Kong person or is there a woman (or a man) who lived longer? Rrsmac (talk) 02:47, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bolding

For the sake of consistency with other articles, I think the people currently still alive should be bolded, not those who are the oldest people in the world. Either that or maybe use the green highlighting (see the List of the verified oldest people). Secondly, and again for consistency, I think Izumi should be highlighted in the same way as Calment (even though I personally do not believe his claim). Other articles are consistent with giving him the Japan record. Maybe he shouldn't have it, but I think it's best to just say that his claim is doubtful, and leave the use to come to their own conclusion.86.153.221.46 (talk) 02:25, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Maria Tomson claim

I have deleted the Estonian national records as one - Maria Thomson, who it is claimed lived from Dec 27 1853 to Apr 26 1966 - is not only unverified, the claim would contradict various other lists already here, such as the "Oldest Living People" list on Oldest people. If her claim was true, four or five long-established claims would have to be discarded, claims which in some cases have been proven some 40 years ago. For this reason alone, we should be very cautious to elevate a claim to a national record. Canada Jack (talk) 20:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

So in which article the Estonian recordholders Maria Tomson and Juhan Kallaste could be mentioned? There is no use of the articles if there are no relevant links. Andres (talk) 17:02, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

After checking the other articles, there is no other obvious place to put Tomson. The page for unverified claims lists only recent claims and older claims - but for 115 and older. How about a compromise here. Instead of putting Tomson on the main list on this page, we put her and Kallaste in the section below which discusses various national claims. In that way, she gets the mention and if down the road more information comes forward to verify her claim, she can be moved onto the main list. Canada Jack (talk) 15:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I've put Tomson and Kallaste on the page, but not in the chart, only in the section detailing each country. I believe I am justified in doing this for several reasons: In checking the list of supercentenarians here [4] which lists all verified cases to April 2007, plus many additional claims with some or no documentation, Estonia is the only country which lacks a claim anywhere here on the various wikipedia pages. Claims from Mexico and Chile can be found on the Longevity claims page, and they are the only other countries I have found which have no mention on this page besides Estonia. Further, Tomson's claim is from the 1960s and while not corroborated, has not been completely dismissed. Finally, there seems to be no better place to put her than here as she wasn't quite old enough to meet the standard of other lists of claims (115 years for past unverified claims). So, while there might be an objection that in opening this up to an unverified claim, the other potential countries which might be so listed are in fact covered elsewhere. Estonia, as far as I can tell, is unique in this regard and therefore should be included here. Canada Jack (talk) 21:39, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Emigrants

Who gets put under which country if they emigrated? Christian Mortensen (born Denmark, died USA) has been 'claimed' by the USA, yet Lucy D'Abreu (born India, died UK) is 'claimed' by India. For consistency, I think we need to decide which one to use, or to find some way of using both. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.140.199.9 (talk) 22:34, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

That's true, so maybe listing both countries is the best option. Extremely sexy (talk) 14:00, 2 May 2008 (UTC)