Deletion of List of largest empires (5th nomination)

Comment: The complaints above are insufficient reason to delete as it is our clear |policy to retain articles for improvement rather than delete them because of some supposed |imperfection.  The claim that the article cannot be worked upon without OR is incorrect.  Firstly, there are plenty of sources which are cited such as http://books.google.com/books?id=8DJKxgdJsWMC&pg=PA129 Taagepera's notable analysis.  Secondly, the use of simple arithmetic to rank estimates is not OR, as is well-established by precedent here
Stance: keep
Cited policy: Wikipedia:Editing policy (WP:PRESERVE||WP:IMPERFECT)