Talk:List of freedom indices

message: I noticed that there are some discrepancies between the ranking listed on the tables on this page and the latest data listed on the indexes' pages. Specifically, the latest data for the Press Freedom shows the US with fewer problems than the UK, but the table on this page does not reflect that. The tables should be updated, and clearly dated as to when the data arrives so we can prevent confusion and keep things as up to date as possible. 129.110.116.65 (talk) 09:13, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Update the Tables?

message: I'm not completely certain but i think the Economist Intelligence Unitis is based in London as is The Economist newspaper itself. Rokpok (talk) 15:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: EIU

message: Netherlands should not be considered a good situation for press freedom.  Recently Geert Wilders is being charged for criticizing Islam.
Currently the US is at satisfactory situation and Geert Wilders would not be charged in the US for what he said.  Lambedan (talk) 01:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Netherlands Press Freedom 

message: So what is the freeest country in the World. It appears to be Ireland, who are near the top in all three rankings. But I'm biased, since Im from there. --Richy 20:23, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Freest 

message: Not to mention that these rankings are based on western values, any suprise that western countries rank high?  That's like asking a person to write an essay on humanity-- chances are they will set the bar low enough to pass as good.
And the english culture was that of aristocracy; the ruling of the higher estates upon the peasants-- not freedom, that is why revolution brought that system down... I think what you mean to say is that those countries have democracies (which comes from Greek culture...).
- 4.152.102.64
: Regarding bias in measurement, it's not really a factor here I think since western culture values freedom higher than some other cultures.  The article is about freedom, it does not try to define best or greatest overall (that would be POV anyway), just list the degree of freedom (as measured by several western institutions, not us).  Second, the history of how English culture evolved from feudalism, monarchy, and aristocracy  is besides the point I was making as well.  Finally, democracy alone doesn't guarantee freedom, or the same level of freedom.  I should also point out that some (maybe all) of the countries listed have a fair claim to not being derived from Greek democracy.  Being first doesn't guarantee lineage.  For example, the Althing of Iceland.  Daniel Quinlan 23:29, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Zimbabwe and Myanmar are in the least free section, both were ruled by the English. The Estonians come out in the best group, but are not Western European or English. The Japanese and Mauritians come out generally good. They are largely or almost exclusively not of Western European descent.--T. Anthony 02:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bias in measurement

message: I just swapped the blue and green color codings because:
# When more colors are used than just green/yellow/red, blue typically means "better than green", and 
# This agrees with the color scheme used by the Index of Economic Freedom.
I acknowledge that this is potentially confusing, as now "all-green" isn't the best, but this is more consistent with external color usage.  Please change back if necessary.  –Ryan McDaniel 21:20, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Personally, I just came to this today (16 March) and I found the mix of colours for "best" confusing. Much better to have the top and bottom colours the same IMHO. Changing the top level for "Freedom in the World" to blue would work. -- Blorg 15:10, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be in favor of making all top colors blue.  If I don't see any objections here in the next few days, I'll do it. —Ryan McDaniel 04:53, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Color coding 

message: I wonder if there are any other widely-known indices.  It would be interesting to see one for religious freedom, for example.--Pharos 08:42, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other indices? 

message: It seems someone took it upon themselves to alter the entry for the United States, though they forgot to change the colour along with it. It is discouraging to such vandalism. I have made the correction.
How did the US only get a satisfactory rating for freedom of the press?
:Indeed. And how did the UK get a higher free press rating than the US? In the UK there are a number of things that reporters CAN'T report, like certain things relating to the monarchy and they can't reveal the names of suspects in certain criminal cases (whereas the US newspapers can). In the US, reporters can report ANYTHING, except for maybe the names of rape victims, youth offenders, or members of a ongoing jury. Even in matters of National Security, they can report what they want (see the Pentagon Papers), and if they hold off on a report it's only because they are using their own common sense. Of course they could get sued after the fact, but they are not prohibited from reporting what they feel like reporting. This map is BS.68.164.4.102 (talk) 23:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry but this isn't a forum, as soon as the source says those things it'll be in, if not it can't be included. G.R. Allison (talk) 06:46, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  United States 

message: Perhaps we should include the Economist democracy rating? Just a thought. QZXA2 18:56, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economist rating 

message: Index of Economic Freedom scale requires update, as do results for each country.  I.e., Austria is not free, it is mostly free. - MSTCrow 19:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update Tag 

message: Where is Morocco in the indices . It is included in the IPU - International Parliamentary Union- and is not a democratic country. --Nopetro 09:15, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Morocco 

message: This is a unique situation because their freedom has been steadily rising, yet still threatened by the sectarian violence going on in Iraq. So I have moved this into unique situation.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haha169 (talk • contribs) 16:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: = Iraqi Press Freedom 

message: Where is the source for the category names used in this article to describe the rankings of the Reporters Without Borders' Worldwide Press Freedom Index ? They are listed here as "good situation - satisfactory situation - noticeable problems - difficult situation - very serious situation" but all I see in the actual reports are numerical rankings. Was this an arbitrary decision made by an early editor, or is there a citeable source from RWB showing how these category names correspond to their numbers?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.241.198.109 (talk) 12:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming of press freedom categories 

message: Isn't this a list of indices of freedom
Such as 
Please fill if any of the blanks if you know them (with source)
*Indices of Freedom of press
** Reporters without Borders
*Indices of Freedom of Speech
*Indices of Right of Universal Health Care (freedom from insufficiently or unremedied health concerns)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_insurance_coverage
*Indices of Freedom of Religion
*Indices of Freedom of Assembly
*Indices of Freedom of bearing Arms
*Indices of Freedom of Commerce
**  the Heritage foundation
** the Fraser Institute
*Indices of Indices of Freedom of Labor (Freedom of/for Workers)
*Indices of Freedom of Information (government transparency)
*Indices of ......
Others I haven't organized
*http://www.freedomhouse.org
*http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_14.htm Freedom index of education state by state within the USA
*http://www.workerfreedom.org/index.php?content=iwf07 Freedom of/for Workers state by state
ZyMOS (talk) 01:21, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not all these indices's are applicable on a global sense. The list seems to US-centric. Seems like you just took the main part of the US constitution.....95% of the planets population is not American. 62.56.66.64 (talk) 21:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of those mentioned are only focused on the US, but the list at present is more likely UK-centric. The US does not rank in its "most free" section. However the United Kingdom does as do two English-speaking Commonwealth nations. (New Zealand and Canada) Then again two of the most unfree nations are former British possessions. (Burma and Zimbabwe) Or it could be Eurocentric, although Mauritius is in Africa and is included.--T. Anthony (talk) 11:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: List of indices of freedom?

message: I found that Portugal's freedom of press column did not match the supplied map by Reporters Without Borders. In the map Portugal is colored at the higher value of press freedom while the column only gave it a "Satisfactory Situation". From my own knowledge and experience of Portugal I corrected the column to "Good Situation" and colored it blue believing the Reporters Without Borders map as being the most correct.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.46.127.11 (talk) 16:28, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conflict in the table with the map supplied by Reporters Without Borders 

message: First of all who came up with this chart? Secondly how do i know what "partly free" or "mostly free" means? Please explain the criteria for this chart, because without more information this chart is useless.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.17.167.114 (talk) 23:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  who came up with this chart? 

message: If the data that says the UK is a flawed democracy comes from this: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/DEMOCRACY_INDEX_2007_v3.pdf then the UK isn't a flawed democracy, so I will change it unless it's based on newer data in which case feel free to change it back. 79.78.111.16 (talk) 16:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, we DO NOT rank the countries according to our will or personnel perception. The list is according to the 2008 data of the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index. You can see it here. Secondly, voting rights is not the only criteria in this list, there are other categories such as Functioning of government, Political culture, Civil liberties etc. So even if India does allow all its citizens equal voting rights, it might not be good in other categories. Kindly go to the list and see the individual score of India in each category for further details. Cheers. Marsa Lahminal (talk) 08:12, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  uk not a flawed democracy 

message: When you click the columns, the data should be order by free-to-not-free, rather than Alphabetically!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.76.213.203 (talk) 03:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: More people actually care about if a specific country is free/not free. If they alreaday know if a country is free/not free, why use a table? ABC is easiest way to cater to those who need to know. --haha169 (talk) 03:34, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ordering the table data 

message: There is no indication as to whether this article is using the most recent indexes. Perhaps the references should be listed in the references section for clarification?--Abusing (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updated information? 

message: I came by the article which is some subjective listing. I tried to neutralise it a bit. I categorised listings per country. One of the leading institution is funded more than half by US government. I added a notice. And table need some additional notices per source. Kasaalan (talk) 05:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV issues

message: Why is it that this article has the UK listed as "good situation" and the U.S. listed as "satisfactory situation" for press freedom, while the article specific to that one benchmark (Press Freedom Index) has them tied in 20th place for 2009? And how, specifically, are these numbers attained? It is well-known that the UK has laws specifically prohibiting the publication of certain information (as previous commenters have mentioned), while the U.S. would freely allow that information to be published without incident. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 17:40, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Press Freedom, U.S. vs. UK 

message: I updated Freedom House, Index of Economic Freedom and Democracy Index columns of the table to include data from 2010 reports. I also added years to the table header. Especially the Index of Economic Freedom column was changed a lot, as the latest report (http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking) lists only 7 countries as "Free" while the table listed many more. I'm not sure what the source had been, because Finland for example was listed as "Free" while it has never received such a score as there's still a lot of government regulation in place.
I didn't update the Press Freedom Index column because it's unclear to me how the the scores are split into the five categories "good situation", "satisfactory situation", "noticeable problems",  "difficult situation" and "very serious situation". The Reporters Without Borders report (http://www.rsf.org/IMG/CLASSEMENT_2011/GB/C_GENERAL_GB.pdf) only shows the categories on the map on the last page, and the map doesn't seem to match with the ranking. Germany for example is shown to have a "good sitaution" and Japan only "satisfactory situation", while Japan is actually higher than Germany in the ranking. Anybody have a source for the definition of the categories? --Antti Salonen (talk) 06:02, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I now updated the Press Freedom Index column to be in line with the 2010 report from Reporters Without Borders. The source is the map included in the 2010 report, and in the case of very small countries the individual reports for each country. It's still unclear to me how the category relates to the score, though. --Antti Salonen (talk) 17:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates to the table, Press Freedom Index categories? 

message: I updated the Freedom House and Economic Freedom columns to reflect the 2011 reports, and also updated the list of "all-blue" (just two now) and "all-red" (Vietnam and Syria are no longer) countries.
I have a problem with the section on indices by FreeExistence.Org . From their website it is unclear to me who exactly maintains their indices and if they are updated on a regular basis. Their "Freedom Index" is just a parameterized web interface to other indices, including their own. Their "Gun freedom index"  seems to use Wikipedia as a source in the case of many countries. The same goes for their "Drug freedom index". In the very least, I don't think that they (whoever they are) are well-established in the same sense as Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, Transparency International (whose index is currently missing from the article) and so on.
Finally, the maps in the article are out generally out of date. Would it not be enough to have these maps be in the articles for each index? --Antti Salonen (talk) 16:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I too can find nothing about it beyond its web site.  It looks like typical self publishing to me.  As such it shouldn't be used as a source for wikipedia.Dejvid (talk) 12:56, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  2011 updates, removal of FreeExistence.Org indices and maps? 

message: some of this article's colors for RWB are incorrect! for example Iraq is classified "noticeable problems",but it has RED COLORS! Palestine is classified as "difficult situation", and it ALSO got red links.
This is cracy, best wishes from 153.110.194.139 (talk) 11:48, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  incorrect colors 

message: This is a major index used in political science - http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
It is probably the least ideologically biased of these indices.
Someone really should add this to the article.
--SublimeWik (talk) 05:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polity IV 

message: The Freedom House (Freedom in the World) column and Economic Freedom (Index of Economic Freedom) are both out of date. The 2012 data is available. When will this article be updated? Thanks.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Merrick79 (talk • contribs) 18:56, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Freedom House (Freedom in the World) column and Economic Freedom (Index of Economic Freedom) are both out of date. The 2012 data is available. 

message: The article talks about two indexes or reports with similar names and some overlapping institutional sponsorshop. Are there really two separate reports or just one?  Here is what the article currently says:
:Canada based
:* The Economic Freedom of the World Index is a report published by the Fraser Institute. It is a numeric index and its results are not (yet) included in the table below.
:United States based
:* The Economic Freedom of the World Report, published by the Cato Institute and the (Canadian) Fraser Institute in conjunction with other liberal organizations around the world, measures the consistency of the institutions and policies of various countries with voluntary exchange and the other dimensions of economic freedom.
--Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 21:54, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: . My conclusion is that they are the same report. I deleted the duplicate U.S. entry. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 17:48, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Economic Freedom of the World Index vs. Economic Freedom of the World Report 

message: Czech republic is 16th above Germany in the press freedom index, but it's only "satisfactory situation" in the table below, where Germany has "Good situation". I think it must be wrong.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.78.117.1 (talk) 20:37, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Differences between the table and the "2013 Press Freedom Index 

message: What's the importance of listing the indices by country? Especially, since there are only three countries present. I propose to eliminate the country breakdown and arrive with one list. Objections? --Truther2012 (talk) 18:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: --Truther2012 (talk) 16:14, 12 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of indices by country 

message: We currently have the 2012 index, it's 2014 now, anyone want help update it? Charles Essie (talk) 03:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Economist's Democracy Index out of date 

message: I spent some time this morning correcting various entries in the table that didn't match the cited sources. But, I am thinking that the only way to be sure that all of the country ratings in the table are correct is to recreate the table from scratch using data taken directly from the sources. We could bring any out-of-date columns up-to-date at the same time. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 15:49, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correcting mistakes 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In March 2020, Germain think tank Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), in cooperation with Swedish V-Dem Institute (Univ. of Goetherburg), Germain FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg and American Scholars at Risk (SAR) published a near-global dataset and basic documents of new Academic Freedom Index (AFi).  Wikidata :d:Q104054373. This index (scaled 0-1, where 1 is maximum value) creates many possibilities for further use nationally and internationally. With AFi one can e.g. compare development of academic freedom in each country in time (e.g. due to  educational policy changes) and compare freedom of tertiary education between countries. 
The AFi was described by Grimm and Saliba in 2017. Further work and international cooperation was lead e.g. by professor Katrin Kinzelbach (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg). "First edition" of AFi was published in March 2020. This work is based party on assessments (110,000 data points) provided by 1,810 scholars (coders) around the world. Majority of the Globe was covered, with Portugal and Uruguay top the list with scores of 0.971 each. At the bottom of academic freedom in 2019 are North Korea (0.011) and Eritrea (0.015). Unfortunately, total of 35 countries with university education were NOT included in this first AFi listing due to "insufficient coder numbers". Thus,  countries like Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Madagaskar, Moldova and Tajikistan did not get AFi value. Surprisingly, also countries like Australia, Switzerland and USA were left without AFi. Therefore, thinking of further annual editions of this AFi, authors request that "scholars with country-specific knowledge on academic freedom should contribute their expertise to the collaborative AFi coding effort." 
Authors suggest many applications of AFi. This index could be used internationally e.g. when student or scholar make selections where to study or work. Index can be used to evaluate how well different countries comply international agreements like Article 15 of the UNESCO agreement on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This states that the “States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity.” Out of 193 UN member states, 170 have ratified the ICESCR. Authors also suggest, that international university rankings could be scaled with AFi.  
Suggested by, --Paju~enwiki (talk) 13:12, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Academic Freedom Index (AFi) 

message: Was that on purpose or do you think that there is freedom in North Korea and that it is not an authoritarian country?
Furthermore, you place Croatia as a non freedom country because of its flawed democracy? 
What does that have todo with authoritarianism, dictatorship, etc. and what about Venezuela? And I could go on and on! 96.242.121.9 (talk) 02:40, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a list of self-labeled NGOs. As with all NGOs, accuracy is not implied. Looking closer, some of the scores actually border on satire, which would place North Korea quite high in the list. ExtremeSquared (talk) 23:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  As far as countries that have no freedom you neglected to mention North Korea! 

message: Change the chart 47.229.100.152 (talk) 04:40, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  America is Not flawed it’s a full democracy 

message: Azerbaijian's economic freedom colour is glitched  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9000:CA02:CACC:A5DD:B2F1:8357:4A80 (talk) 23:37, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colour 

message: Does any of the institutions that made the analysis does it in Macao and Hong Kong context? It should be stated since they differ from China mainland. 89.214.127.107 (talk) 09:40, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Macao & Hong Kong 

message: HudecEmil (talk) 13:20, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copy/split to List of democracy indices 

message: The scores for each index should be on the right, not the left. That way, it's much less confusing for readers and makes navigation easier. —theMainLogan (talk) 00:18, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding scores