Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Generally accepted accounting principles

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Consensus is that this is a matter of content organization and naming that can be resolved with mergers and/or redirects if needed, but does not require deletion.  Sandstein  06:36, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Generally accepted accounting principles (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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This article tries to impose an Anglophone concept on all global economies, describing as an universal concept, which in fact is much more diverse.
Some jurisdictions don't have codified GAAP at all, multiple standard accounting practices for different types of business, use one or multiple foreign and/or international standards. Apart from US GAAP, UK GAAP, Canadian GAAP and possibly nl:Belgian GAAP, these mostly aren't called "GAAP" at all.
The frameworks are also very different in scope. The Plan Comptable Générale basically is a balance sheet, while a "German GAAP" is completely unknown – there's the HGB-Standard though.
At the same time, the article is almost identical to Standard accounting practice which is much better positioned as a main article to give an overview about US GAAP, UK GAAP, German HGB, the IFRS and many others standards. The "Global standardization" section may be merged to Standard accounting practice, otherwise Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (capitalized) should merely be a disambiguation page for the few standard accounting practices that are actually named "GAAP".
PanchoS (talk) 09:11, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment The fact that some jurisdictions don't have something called GAAP isn't a reason for deletion, see WP:OTHERSTUFF, it works both ways.--Savonneux (talk) 11:12, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• True, that's why we already have Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (United States), Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (Canada) and Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK). If you think we should have an overview article for GAAPs in these three and possibly a few more jurisdictions – such an article might be legitimate if GAAPs in these jurisdictions have something in common that sets them apart from standard accounting practices in other countries. That may be the case, but in the article there's currently not even an indication about that. Cleaning the article from overgeneralizations, WP:SYNTH and unsourced statements, only the #Global standardization section would remain, and might be merged to Standard accounting practice anyway. UMO, GAAP is the just the WP:SHAREDNAME of a few of these standards, and otherwise used a synonym of standard accounting practice as primarily used in the US. --PanchoS (talk) 17:12, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:05, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• It would be a set index article, not a disambiguation page. Peter James (talk) 21:45, 30 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Indeed. This isn't a good candidate for deletion. It needs editing or cleanup, not deletion.--Savonneux (talk) 06:00, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep/merge There's a clear need for an umbrella page. The page in question seems to currently duplicate standard accounting practice and they should perhaps be merged but that's not done by deletion. For a good source on the general topic see A Global History of Accounting, Financial Reporting and Public Policy. Andrew D. (talk) 12:25, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect.Since this is the US term, it should redirect to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (United States). DGG ( talk ) 17:37, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@DGG: This term is also used in Canada.

• Keep/merge I'd say merged anything useful into Standard accounting practice and change this into a disambiguation page for the UK, US and Canadian standards which are all called GAAP ThinkingTwice ^{contribs | talk} 11:50, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep If the article has issues then fix them. Don't take the easy way by simply deleting the information. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:45, 9 August 2016 (UTC)please ping me[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.