If anyone thinks I'm judging people based on their editing background again, please call me out. I agree with what Liz said here and will explain below: not every editor who is interested in this subject was aware or participated in that RFC.
The closer also brought up the lists of airlines and destinations in airport articles (example). In my opinion, a list of an airline's destinations and a list of its destinations from an individual airport are in the same category. Historically, however, we have treated them separately on this site, and I don't want to muddy the waters by talking about both right now.
First I'll address the discussions that occurred prior to this AfD. For a list of them, please see the top of my initial statement in the AfD. I believe most of the people who are actually interested in these lists and edit them often had never heard of or visited the Village Pump (where the RfC took place) or Articles for Deletion. I was the same way for many years. It's true that
WT:AIRLINES
was notified about the RfC and most of the AfDs, but it appears that most interested editors do not check that page regularly. Also, the AfDs up to this point generally addressed the lists of minor airlines like Syrian Air and Air Polonia, which few people probably were monitoring and contributing to. This AfD, however, covered several major airlines like British Airways and Emirates. 43 people !voted in it – compared to 24 in the RfC and 23 in the most-attended AfD since 2023 – and some people said they had contributed to the lists. Therefore, it seems like it was the first of the 28 AfDs since 2023 to attract a healthy amount of participation from interested parties, which is what we desire.
That being said, I don't think we should ignore all of those past discussions. The RfC creator and AfD nominators who notified WT:AIRLINES did what they were supposed to, and I don't know what else they could've done to attract more attention to the respective discussions. (As to whether an RfC can be cited to delete articles, that was addressed by the subsequent AN discussion.) So if contributors to the AfD thought the past discussions were relevant, I believe we should respect that opinion, and if they thought they were irrelevant (see the next paragraph), I think we should respect that as well.
Now I'll analyze the arguments in this AfD. In my opinion, most people who !voted Delete provided sound policy-based rationales. Specifically, parts of
consensus can change
. These are valid points; however, the arguments that these editors made for keeping the lists were still weak.
These were the main counterarguments made by Keep/Merge !voters that I identified:
The lists are actually discriminate because there are clear inclusion criteria. – I tried rebutting this point (Naturally I think my rebuttals were sound, but I will leave that to your interpretation.)
If context in the form of prose is provided, NOTCATALOG will no longer apply. – No one gave a concrete explanation of what sort of context would justify keeping any of the lists.
The lists convey key information about the airlines, such as ups and downs in economic ties and international relations. – I tried rebutting this point
This is a
trainwreck
. – If editors were referring to the fact that some lists had more references than others, VNOT would apply.
The cited sections of NOT do not explicitly address this class of lists, and NOTTRAVEL doesn't apply because no travel guide would include this information. – Draken Bowser and I tried rebutting these points
Ultimately, I believe that on the basis of the arguments in this AfD, there was a consensus to Delete all. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:52, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse (uninvolved). As I said on Liz's talk page, there was no other way that this could have been closed, and was well explained in the closing statement. There were policy-based and non-policy based arguments on each side but none of them were convincing enough that they persuaded significant numbers to change their mind. Thryduulf (talk) 19:26, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse (involved, voted delete). Very well written closing statement and there was clearly no consensus. With the high attendance already, there was indication consensus would not form if relested. While I believe this article is at odds with global consensus in the 2018 RFC, several users disagree and provided policy-based reasoning. FrankAnchor 19:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Rerun the 2018 RfC, and put the AfD aside until we've reached a consensus on the guideline. I agree with the closing admin that the broadly-participated AfD effectively vacates the six year old RfC, and the appellant seems in agreement as well. But if that's the case, we should be running a fresh RfC about this, with notice given to all the original participants, all the AfD participants, Village Pump, and WT:AIRLINES. If the new RfC reaches the same conclusion as the old one, it can be treated as a DRV, with all 153 articles deleted. If the new RfC concludes that such articles belong here (provided they are properly sourced), the AfD will be treated as a "Keep", and there will be peace in the land for at least six months. This subject involves too many pages, and is close to the heart of too many editors, to keep going back and forth between AfD and DRV. Owen×☎ 19:39, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support re-running the RFC as well. Consensus can change over six years. FrankAnchor 22:40, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question of how to handle those 34 standalone lists should be brought up in this RfC. If the consensus is to remove those lists, it's a simple formality to do so per the new guideline, with one extra AfD if that's what is decided. Or we can just tag those 34 pages with a link to the RfC, and skip the superfluous AfD. Owen×☎ 18:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This all seem far too much of people trying to act like lawyers and insist on complex rules around what should not be included which only people with the most time will spend reading up on. I (and probably many others) joined Wikipedia as an editor to ensure everyone had free access to knowledge. If I knew about something that was objective, non-offensive, appeared in books in a national reference library and likely to be of interest to a wide audience, then I should try to make that knowledge available to others. Now it seems we need endless arguments around what counts as important, adding info to Wikipedia is becoming increasingly painful and it's just not fun to do this any more. If you reject somebody once, they forgive you, reject them twice and maybe they try again.... but keep rejecting people and deleting what volunteers do out of goodwill, and the atmosphere of Wikipedia becomes a very different place.
A society that has endless and complex debates involving technicalities about burning books to achieve purity is telling future authors to go elsewhere. Pmbma (talk) 20:41, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We all support making knowledge freely accessible to everyone. But not all knowledge is encyclopedic. I, for example, find business directories and train timetables very useful. They're objective, non-offensive, appear in books in a national reference library or in railway operators publications, but they do not belong in an encyclopedia. Do airline destinations belong in an encyclopedia? I don't know, but I won't feel rejected if the community decides they don't. I appreciate the need to keep volunteer contributors happy to retain them, but Wikipedia will not sacrifice its
primary pillar just to appease a group of editors. Owen×☎ 21:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
I generally concur as over the course of my period of participating on here, different editors would steer me in different ways whether by reverting entire edits of mine based on the 5% that they disagreed with, address my edits with varying definitions on what is/is not encyclopedic, or showing me to the WikiProject's Guidelines, which in themselves have changed in that time. I can compose and edit content on different pages in an identical fashion, and it'd be a toss-up on whether a given user will assure me that it's encyclopedic, or confront me that it isn't.
Between the AfD or in general, as often as these different editors will cite guidelines or policies, it comes off as less about the policies and rather which policies have been cherry-picked to suit the editor's opinion, whether it is for or against you. One demographic of editors tells you to do one thing but another demographic decides that's wrong and proceeds to delete/revert what you do. I don't believe this environment of confusing and discouraging users from contributing is what is intended to be fostered here, but perhaps I'm wrong?
Despite saying that, I'll offer my input that I believe it's impossible to take an action on airline destination tables while also not taking the same action or stance on airport destination tables, in that they should not be treated separately or inconsistently which was one of my main issues. They generally serve the same purpose, although only airline destinations will have retained historical information, such as previously-served destinations. Either keep them all or delete them all, but of course given how wide and encompassing the notion was to delete 152 Lists after the 400+ that were already largely deleted, calling it daunting after adding the numerous upon numerous number of airport articles with destination tables is a huge understatement. ChainChomp2 (talk) 02:20, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse close, mark the 2018 RfC as historical and not (no longer?) reflecting community consensus, and put all the recently-deleted similar articles back until and unless a well-advertised RfC returns a consensus to delete such articles, Per OwenX. More often than not, deleting well-maintained and longstanding articles because "Wikipedia has evolved" comes across as both pretentious and NIGYYSOBish at the same time. I have no dog in this fight, but it certainly seems like a lot of people have commensurately strong feelings. Jclemens (talk) 05:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Separate deletions of over 260+ list articles are recorded in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Airlines/AfD_record, with many of them stated to be poorly referenced and/or heavily relying on one source. Including two well attended multi-deletions 1 and 2. One of the multi deletions were endorsed on the DRV. There would need to be separate DRVs on the 260+ deleted lists, as many had varying qualities. Coastie43 (talk) 06:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but I'm entirely unimpressed by the sequence of events: 1) Argue for a policy change, 2) Delete the worst offenders that maybe should have been deleted anyways for other reasons, 3) Go for bigger fish with a poorly attended "gotcha!" nom that succeeds because no one realizes what's going on, and 4) When the next bigger nom fails because rank-and-file editors have woken up and object, complain that consensus is already well established. Not saying that this is intentional or deceptive on anyone's part, but if I were going to try and cynically destroy a class of articles, this is precisely the playbook I would use. Jclemens (talk) 07:08, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So these articles will just get deleted anyway now that's very unfortunate. Despite what the voting results were. CHCBOY (talk) 14:56, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your comment reminds me of a conversation between FOARP, Rosbif73, and Tserton in the List of Eurocypria Airlines destinations AfD in May 2023. FOARP laid out their reasoning there for their approach. (I don't mean to canvass by pinging FOARP; I just thought that since they started so many of the AfDs, they might be interested in this discussion.)
In February I tested the waters with the larger airlines by starting an AfD on the United Airlines, American Airlines, and Lufthansa lists. The outcome was to delete* – though just five people took part. (*A deletion review is ongoing.) Sunnya343 (talk) 16:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@
WP:AGF in your comment here. FOARP (talk) 19:38, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
I didn't say "hiding," although I didn't comment at all about how well the AfDs were advertised, but I did specifically include the caveat Not saying that this is intentional or deceptive on anyone's part to specifically address ABF concerns. Even if you advertised stuff on all the relevant project pages, that doesn't include everyone who cares nor does it ensure that they understand what happens when they don't participate, and that is why I specifically had the United/American/Lufthansa AfD in mind in my Step 3. That's a significant enough AfD that the rank-and-file editors who use those pages are going to show up howling about new AfDs on the basis that their ox has just been gored. This is what I perceive this AfD and associated kerfuffle to be: step 4. To clarify, I have no strong opinion on whether these should be in the encyclopedia or not and have never used Wikipedia for anything travel related at all, despite this being my 19th year here. What I do have strong feelings on is that
WP:NOT is not supposed to be a political football, by which one can make an argument that something falls under it and hence must be deleted as a matter of policy. That's not really an appropriate take in an IAR world. Jclemens (talk) 21:58, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
Sorry, but your clear implication here is this was something that was hidden from people, that the previous AFDs were somehow sneaked through just to get a pre-determined result ("a poorly attended "gotcha!" nom that succeeds because no one realizes what's going on"). I literally posted one of them to CENT!And got told off for doing so! What exactly more was I supposed to do to advertise these AFDs?
What instead happened is when the people who are relatively uninvolved in this subject area voted in AFDs, the AFDs were passed as delete. When fandom got involved we had a wave of essentially "I like this" !votes which the closer was not willing to go against.
To me all this shows is the general worthlessness of an RFC on any topic, or indeed even our core policies, in the face of mass-voting at AFDs by fandom, however groundless. Which is fine because the split between "people whose hobby is Wikipedia" and "people whose hobby is XXXX which is why they care about XXXX being on Wikipedia" is a very old one. FOARP (talk) 10:07, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also wanted to stress that my goal with the United/Lufthansa/American AfD was precisely for lots of people to participate. That's what I was expecting by nature of the airlines involved. I left this comment at the top of the AfD: "I am taking a conservative approach here because these are the lists of three major Western airlines, which may attract more attention on the English Wikipedia than other airlines. I want to give people the opportunity to concentrate on and discuss a small number of such lists before more are nominated for deletion." Sunnya343 (talk) 17:01, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This may sound harsh, and I respect the people who created this content. But I wanted to add that it's not like 260+ articles of the nature of History of British Airways were deleted. We're talking about airline route maps in list form. Moreover, the articles were not deleted on spurious grounds. Many nominators wrote detailed rationales that went beyond the 2018 RfC, and in some AfDs 20+ people participated. Sunnya343 (talk) 19:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I disagree on your last statement in the introduction which you said: "there was a consensus to Delete all." I counted 18 votes for Delete and 29 to Keep on the AFD. So 11 more voted for Keeping these articles CHCBOY (talk) 05:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment To everyone, a deletion discussion is
not a vote. To quote from linked page "When polls are used, they should ordinarily be considered a means to help in determining consensus, but do not let them become your only determining factor. While polling forms an integral part of several processes." Coastie43 (talk) 06:33, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
Endorse, accurate closure of no consensus, and I agree with others above who say that this highly-attended AFD now overrides/vacates the 2018 RFC. Stifle (talk) 08:22, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse - There are at least three questions here:
Should Wikipedia have tables of airline destinations?
Should the closure of the subject AFD as No Consensus be endorsed or overturned? If the latter, how should it be overturned? (That is one question.)
Should there be a new RFC on whether Wikipedia should have tables of airline destinations?
We are only trying to answer the second question, whether the closure should be endorsed or overturned. By my count, there were 22 Keep votes and 18 Delete votes. That looks like No Consensus. When there is no apparent consensus, some editors will argue that a consensus should be found because the strength of the arguments in one way or the other was greater. The question for DRV is not whether a different closure might have been valid. We should only overturn if User:Liz's close of No Consensus was invalid. I see no way that anyone should argue that the close of No Consensus was wrong. So it should be endorsed.
Should Wikipedia have tables of airline destinations? My view is that it should not, based partly on
Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information
, and primarily because airline destinations change, and providing an up-to-date summary of something that is constantly changing is not encyclopedic. But that is not the issue in this DRV.
Should there be a new RFC on whether Wikipedia should have tables of airline destinations. My view is yes.
Consensus can change
, and some editors obviously think that airline destinations are encyclopedic. The lack of consensus for this AFD suggests that a new RFC might be useful, and would not make the situation any more confusing. There should be a new RFC. But that is not the issue in this DRV.
We should have a new RFC, and in the meantime we should endorse the closure of No Consensus. Robert McClenon (talk) 15:25, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Robert McClenon, when you say tables of airline destinations, are you including the lists of airline destinations in airport articles? Sunnya343 (talk) 18:19, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I personally find the Keep arguments there to be weak, e.g. that the information is not available elsewhere or that the list is encyclopedic just because of Aeroflot's Cold War history. Nevertheless, I won't bring it to DRV; I think the discussion we're having now is what was needed. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:35, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely--this is just more input into the larger issue, not an indication there's anything problematic with this close--it's just another piece of the larger puzzle. Jclemens (talk) 21:50, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The DRV for List of United Airlines destinations was just recently closed as a endorsed delete, with one user suggesting if there was a new RFC that overturned the 2018 decision, that may increase the chances of a number of already deleted lists being overturned. Coastie43 (talk) 02:04, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Given that I believe the lists violate WP:NOT, for me the only distinguishing factor among the stand-alone lists is the presence of prose in the article, because that prose would have to be copied to the parent article in accordance with
WP:IINFO, and it appears that most of the contributors to that AfD would agree. But as people have said, the consensus on this matter is no longer clear. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:22, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
CommentOverturn to delete and also a no-consensus AFD cannot overturn an RFC - Nobody has even tried to justify the lamentable sourcing of these articles, which all ultimately originate with the airlines themselves, typically by performing a
WP:OR
analysis of different versions of the company websites at different times to say when certain services were and were not offered. If the topic is ever discussed at all, the supposed encyclopaedic nature of this content is used as a justification for just never providing sourcing that doesn't come from the airline themselves.
Per
WP:NCORP
tells us can't establish notability.
This is the equivalent of having an article listing all the Burger King franchises that were operating on 9 June 1992. These are clear
WP:NOT
fails.
I strongly suspect that holding another RFC on this is just going to endorse the 2018 one, but when it comes back to AFD the airline fandom will again try to stymie deletion because any reason is used to ignore RFC results. I also totally don't understand how a no-consensus close at AFD is being interpreted as requiring the re-running of an RFC. The thing about no-consensus closes is, they don't decide anything, especially they don't negate the entire basis that the AFD was brought on. If AFD !voters choose to ignore NOT that doesn't mean that NOT itself is cancelled, does it?
In terms of the close, it should be overturned to delete because it failed to give sufficient weight to a reasoned RFC attended largely by uninvolved editors as compared to fan-base voters at AFD, gave too much weight to keep !votes that were ultimately "I like this" or "It's encyclopaedic", failed to engage with any discussion of the article quality at all, and failed to close consistently with the 26 preceding RFCs which have already deleted more than half of the articles in this category, leaving us with a mess. FOARP (talk) 19:30, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not all of them have only one source from the airline themselves. The British Airways destinations list is not a page with only the one source. Having an actual look at it there is 267 references at the moment from countless different sources. It's a very well kept article for Wikipedia too. CHCBOY (talk) 12:58, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@CHCBOY: - The BA website is the source for the overwhelming majority of cites, it's just been cited many times. The rest are to industry press or run-of-the-mill coverage of BA announcements about future plans. See also the review of VietJet sources below. FOARP (talk) 17:25, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is also secondary sources about former destinations that were once served by BA. These are good records for certain interest. CHCBOY (talk) 01:30, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any. The nearest this gets to anything historical is 404 links to the "Explore our past" section of the BA website. Otherwise we're looking at industry press (e.g., trade directories) or run-of-the-mill press coverage simply relaying information that came straight from the airline, which is of course ultimately the only source any of this information could ever come from anyway. FOARP (talk) 07:42, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Have a look again they are there. There is even reference from a book with one. Anyway we never going to agree so time to move on good bye. CHCBOY (talk) 09:30, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The book about Christchurch international airport? That was published by Christchurch International Airport? Yeah, again I'm not seeing how this is an independent, reliable source, even before we examine whether it gave any significant coverage of the subject (which seems unlikely, because it's about Christchurch international airport). We literally have a random photo from ebay cited as a source for two of the destinations on this list. FOARP (talk) 10:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a courtesy ping to Just Step Sideways (formerly known as Beeblebrox), who as the initiator of the 2018 RfC may be interested in this discussion. Sunnya343 (talk) 01:19, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. As one who supports the creation and maintenance of these lists, and one who has created several of them, I concur with those who argue that the most recent discussion was legitimately closed as "No consensus". SiniyaEdita (talk) 13:54, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn and rerun RfC. Few of the keep !votes even put forth any P&G-based keep rationale at all. Vague assertions that "it's encyclopedic" (in what encyclopedia?!) are no better than ILIKEIT. The keep !votes also did not adequately rebut the delete arguments that these lists fail NOT, including NOTCATALOG, and PRIMARY. The policy requirement that articles be based on secondary sources, and that product availability details must be both sourced to independent sources and be encyclopedic(*) was entirely ignored by keep !voters, who instead focused on the fact that these entries were reliably sourced. Since this is policy that was brought up multiple times in the AfD, retention of the article should have been predicated on keep !voters addressing how these lists were generally citable to secondary independent sources.(*)Of the handful that even attempted to engage with NOTCATALOG, there is no defense of why such a list--even when it is for a defunct line, which clearly is irrelevant since content doesn't become magically encyclopedic the second a business folds--isn't analogous to should not list upcoming events, current promotions, current schedules, format clocks, etc., although mention of major events, promotions or historically significant program lists and schedules may be acceptable and isn't subject to An article should not include product pricing or availability information (which can vary widely with time and location) unless there is an independent source and encyclopedic significance for the mention, which may be indicated by mainstream media sources or books (not just product reviews) providing commentary on these details instead of just passing mention.JoelleJay (talk) 18:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Completely agree that the sourcing and notability issues with these articles was completely ignored in favour of a vague and pointless discussion without any reference to P&Gs of whether this is the kind of thing should included if there were independent reliable sources showing notability. This has happened repeatedly in the history of these articles - contrary to what it has been written above they have been controversial throughout their entire history with discussions happening regularly as to whether they were suitable content back to 2006.
Let's just look at one of these articles chosen at random: List of VietJet Air destinations - what are the sources? Aeroroutes.com (a blog/industry press), routesonline.com(a blog/industry press), vietnamplus.vn (based on a VietJet Air press announcement), travelandtourworld.com (based on a press-release), the JetArena Twitter feed (based on a press-release), networkthoughts.com (again, based on a press-release), VietJetAir.com (i.e., the company's own website - this is the source for the majority of content), and Anna.aero (a blog/industry press). At the very best these are industry press or based on press-releases, at worst they are blogs or 404 links, but in every case they are just relaying an announcement from VietJet Air about something that will happen, not something that has happened. This is run-of-the-mill coverage of product/service-offerings of exactly the kind that we ignore when it comes from MacDonalds, Microsoft, or Moulinex.
Not a single one of them is a independent reliable source giving significant coverage to listing the destinations of VietJet Air. No such source exists, because the only source for this information that will ever exist is the company itself. FOARP (talk) 14:26, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I hope I'm not bludgeoning, but I wanted to make clear what the subject of this debate is. I don't think anyone can deny that the content in question is nothing more than a direct reproduction of airline-destination maps in list form. That's it.
Even for former destinations, it's a matter of finding old destination maps and picking out the cities that don't appear on the current map.
I concur with ChainChomp2 that any future discussion ought to address the lists in airport articles as well. Those lists are also direct reproductions of airline-route maps in list form. Sunnya343 (talk) 20:19, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Overturn don't overturn, I don't think it matters. Certainly this AfD appears as contentious as the RFC from 2018. I suggest running a new RFC to determine current community consensus. If there is consensus to keep such articles then the ones that have been deleted should probably be restored, and if consensus is against these articles they should be removed enmass. Either way it will put the issue to rest. (addendum - Reading through the comments I see I'm just making a poor copy of Robert McClenon arguments, I endorse all their points). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t° 15:25, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the assumption is that if we simply decide that catalogues of company services are not a violation of NOT that all the other grounds for deletion would fall away at the same time, or that the NOT issues were the only problem with them. Why would that be the case? These articles are not sourced to any source independent of the company that provides the services listed in them - is the proposal also to create an exception to
WP:CORP so that the services offered by airlines alone of all company services are exempt? With the only real reason for doing so being because they have a fan-base that is active on Wikipedia? FOARP (talk) 17:58, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
The WP:CORP issue is legitimate, but the solution to it is easy: merge the lists into the parent articles. That leaves us with the WP:NOT problems. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:10, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In nearly every case the articles already have a list of destinations of the airline to the appropriate level of detail for an Encyclopaedia article so the destination articles can be safely deleted, though obviously listing every destination is undue and unnecessary.
WP:V is also an issue, particularly if we are talking about restoring the dozens of articles that were deleted which had no sourcing at all! FOARP (talk) 18:17, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
Not disagreeing, there referencing of the articles I've checked were beyond terrible and am of the opinion Wikipedia shouldn't include such articles. My point was that a new RFC could settle the matter, as no-one could say their weren't aware of this one. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t° 19:11, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I want to more explicitly point out that keep !voters failed to demonstrate that sufficient coverage in secondary sources exists for any of these lists to meet our policy requiring articles be based on secondary sources. None of the keep !votes even acknowledged this point. As this policy was brought up, and as the deletion guideline(*) requires closers to personally assess whether the article complies with policy, for this to be closed as anything besides "delete" it should have been necessary for a keep !vote to address why it is not very unlikely that an article on the topic can exist without breaching policy. But we didn't have a single editor put forth the sources for a single list that showed it could be based on secondary sources (let alone the requisite secondary independent sources of significant coverage on the topic as prescribed by GNG and interpreted by NCORP).(*)Wikipedia policy requires that articles and information comply with core content policies (verifiability, no original research or synthesis, neutral point of view, copyright, and biographies of living persons) as applicable. These policies are not negotiable, and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines or by editors' consensus. A closing admin must determine whether an article violates these content policies. Where it is very unlikely that an article on the topic can exist without breaching policy, policy must be respected above individual opinions.JoelleJay (talk) 22:29, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"A closing admin must determine whether an article violates these content policies." (emphasis added) - the close clearly violates the
WP:V
fail). As such this RFC should be reopened or re-run to enable further discussion of this issue, or overturned to delete.
Ping @Thryduulf, Frank Anchor, OwenX, Jclemens, CHCBOY, Coastie43, Stifle, Robert McClenon, SiniyaEdita, Sunnya343, and ActivelyDisinterested: - the discussion was treated by keep !voters, and I think in the above endorse !votes, as if the discussion were simply a referendum on personal opinions about whether this kind of article were (absent any discussion of notability/sourcing) something Wikipedia should host, but this was not the only issue at play in this AFD. Do you have any further comments on this? FOARP (talk) 09:08, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you explain how this could possibly be bludgeoning? It is entirely reasonable to ping the previous participants of the discussion to see if they change their minds based on a new point not yet considered. FOARP (talk) 17:22, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
User:FOARP, User:JoelleJay - Are you saying that the closer, as a single administrator, should have determined that the articles violated content policies, and therefore should have closed the discussion as Delete? If that is what you are saying, then what is the purpose of community involvement in the AFD? Why not have the closer decide on their own? If you are saying that the closer should disregard the lack of a consensus and close as Delete, then should we instead have a speedy deletion criterion for Violates Core Content Policies? Maybe there is something that I don't understand, but your arguments seem to be saying that the participation of the community is unnecessary, because the closer should decide. Maybe there is something that I don't understand, or maybe you haven't taken your argument to its logical conclusion. Robert McClenon (talk) 05:08, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think continued discussion here is helpful. Let this close and then move on to the next step. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t° 12:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you not think it's relevant that the pages objectively fail policy and that this should have been considered by the closer? Why can't the next step be to overturn or relist? JoelleJay (talk) 15:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that even if this AfD is overturned and these articles deleted that it will solve the whole situation. The next AfD or the next article created will see the same editors making the same arguments. Having a new RFC that no-one can claim they didn't know about will both deal with these articles and any future issues. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t° 15:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An AFD can only be about the articles nominated - entirely new articles are always going to be outside the scope of the discussion anyway. FOARP (talk) 17:23, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The determination of whether an article "fails policy" is not determined by someone declaring it to be "objectively" so. It is determined by consensus. The consensus is that this article does not fail. Stifle (talk) 20:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep editors didn't even address the issue with primary sourcing, which is objectively an issue with all of the articles. I don't see how there could be a consensus that an article based almost entirely on announcements on the airline's own website complies with our policy on primary sources. JoelleJay (talk) 22:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:V means verifiable, not verifed. It's perfectly acceptable for an administrator--or any editor with common sense, really--to note that even without citations, anyone can look up, say, whether Airline A flies between cities B and C, and that any such supposed connection proven false can be excised from any such list article without the entirety needing to be deleted. If you're going to present arguments allegedly based on policies... then please begin with an understanding of what the policies do and do not say. Jclemens (talk) 15:36, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
Verification does not guarantee inclusion, instead included content must be verifiable. Most of the arguments about these articles are not related to V, but to
Most of the arguments about these articles are not related to V, but to WP:NOT. Exactly. As someone who used to edit this content regularly and has reviewed past discussions going back to 2007, I think Delete arguments based on the following policies are unlikely to be effective:
WP:V – The information is easily verifiable in flight-schedule databases.
WP:PRIMARY – This argument makes sense for stand-alone lists, as WP:GNG comes into play. But what if the list is merged into the parent article on the airline? Now it's just one section of another article, and primary sources are acceptable for basic facts.
WP:CORP – WP:N has no impact on lists embedded within the parent articles.
The WP:CORP point misses the fact that these are stand-alone articles that need to have stand-alone notability per WP:AVOIDSPLIT, not lists in larger articles. True. It would be beneficial to point out that the only reason some of these lists became stand-alone articles is that they were too long, with no consideration of AVOIDSPLIT. Sunnya343 (talk) 19:00, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@FOARP: The only way I can read a consensus for delete from the discussion is to treat all the delete !votes as policy-based and/or all the keep !votes as non-policy-based. There were arguments of both types on both sides, and neither side's arguments were sufficiently stronger or more convincing than the others. No consensus was the correct outcome. Thryduulf (talk) 21:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we should rerun the RfC in the manner OwenX described. That is, notifying all interested parties and tagging all stand-alone lists with a link to the RfC. I agree with ActivelyDisinterested as well: "My point was that a new RFC could settle the matter, as no-one could say their weren't aware of this one". I explained in another comment why I think the current strategy of having one AfD after another doesn't make sense. Sunnya343 (talk) 19:18, 7 April 2024 (UTC) modified 16:54, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the bolding from the first three words of this comment, the nominator does not get to make multiple bolded recommendations. Thryduulf (talk) 21:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the outcome of a future RfC-cum-AfD were that this type of content is acceptable for Wikipedia, I would not support a retrospective overturning of all the prior AfDs. Yes, some were based exclusively on the 2018 RfC (e.g. Wow Air), but others went beyond it as I mentioned elsewhere. The standard protocol for appealing controversial deletions, DRV, should be followed. Sunnya343 (talk) 20:33, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse (reluctantly, having !voted to delete). While many of the keep !votes were little more than lamentations about the
WP:EFFORT that went into creating the pages, there were enough remaining policy-based keep arguments to justify the closer's assessment of no consensus. There are two ways forward from here: either we continue the existing path of putting these pages up for deletion in smaller bundles over the coming months, or we hold a new RfC. In an ideal world I'd say that a new RfC would be far more satisfactory, but in practice I have my doubts that it would reach consensus clear enough to be implemented en masse. There's little point in agreeing on a broad principle if the decision then needs to be relitigated in multiple AFDs. Rosbif73 (talk) 11:59, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
"we continue the existing path of putting these pages up for deletion in smaller bundles over the coming months, or we hold a new RfC" - I'm of a similar viewpoint about what happens if an RFC is held. I think the most likely result of a new RFC will be endorsing the old one, but voters at AFD will not see themselves as bound at all by the outcome of it, nor will closers give it much weight. Smaller bundles honestly sounds like a better plan as it would mean more attention is paid to the universally lamentable state of the notability and sourcing of these articles. FOARP (talk) 12:53, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Smaller bundles honestly sounds like a better plan Now I'm considering this approach again. Jetstreamer noted in the AfD how frustrating it is to discuss the matter over and over again. But the issue is that any proposal to delete content en masse, especially lists like these that so many editors value, is going to run into difficulties. Sunnya343 (talk) 16:57, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My earlier comment was meant to express that any new RFC should act as a de facto AfD for all these articles (policy should be updated to reflect the outcome). Having another RFC and then having more endless AfDs is just a timesink. Notify everyone and every effected article, get a clear picture of what the community opinion is and implement it all in one go. There's already precedence for using this method to stop these endless back and forths. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t° 15:10, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know I keep flip-flopping on this: but yes, the endless AfDs are a timesink! ActivelyDisinterested, I don't understand what you mean by "policy should be updated to reflect the outcome" though. Sunnya343 (talk) 16:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Make it an example in NOT of what should / shouldn't (dependent on outcome of the RFC) have an article. So that it can't be argued about in the future. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested«@» °∆t° 16:18, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Frankly had Beeblebrox done that in 2018 after the RFC none of the rest of this would have happened. Not criticising Beebs, just saying. Getting any amendment of
WP:CORP grounds one by one or in small groups. What I don't understand is why a no-consensus vote is being treated as cancelling an RFC. FOARP (talk) 17:18, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
A benefit of an RfC-cum-AfD, though, would be that unlike an AfD it can also cover the lists embedded within airline articles, e.g. airBaltic § Destinations. Also, I'm sorry to keep bringing up the related lists in airport articles, but those for example can never be addressed by this "convenient" one-by-one AfD process. If all the lists of airline destinations were in a compact form like in Heathrow Airport § Airlines and destinations (which could certainly be done for the current destinations at least, as they could all be cited to the airline's flight schedule) and were contained within the parent articles, an RfC seems like it would be the only way to address them...
If we believe that there's no fundamental difference between any of the lists, we should really just proceed to such an RfC instead of having another 20 AfDs. And in this new RfC, there would be no discussion of the 2018 one; we would just focus on the arguments. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:49, 9 April 2024 (UTC) modified 20:55, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse (voted procedural keep) Liz made an excellent close in a contentious discussion. SportingFlyerT·C 04:26, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. I agree with the arguments by Thryduulf and Stifle. The forum to discuss deletion of articles is AFD, and a six-year old RFC cannot override that. The comments provided by Liz in the closure are an exemplary example of how contentious discussions should be handled. Sjakkalle(Check!) 07:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
David Windsor – Procedural close: requestor was evading a block. (For the record, the deleted version seems to have been about someone different.) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
The following is an archived debate of the deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
Endorse but allow draftification. All the sources provided by the appellant are from the last eight years, which suggests that 18 years ago, when the AfD was closed, the subject was indeed not notable. Either way, their inclusion in IMDb is irrelevant. Owen×☎ 12:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a page about Mortal Online which released on June 9, 2010. A sequel called Mortal Online 2 was released on 25 January 2022. However, the page was deleted by Stifle at 09:29, 3 April 2024. He gave the reason "No credible indication of importance", but the Mortal Online MMOs are significant. Mortal Online 2 is available on Steam and Epic Games Store. It's actively played by thousands of people. It is continuously being developed. Major roadmap milestones were achieved and are planned. Stifle deleted the page without a discussion. The developer StarVault was awarded a $1 million Epic MegaGrant which is only given to MMOs that are important enough. Mortal Online 2 is also one of the first MMOs to use Unreal Engine 5. -Artanisen (talk) 12:39, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn. Notable or not, CSD:A7 specifically excludes products and software. Owen×☎ 13:09, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse own deletion, non-notable web content. Stifle (talk) 13:38, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn being the sequel to a notable product is a claim of significance, and merging the information to the article about the original is an obvious alternative to deletion that is preferred over deletion. Thryduulf (talk) 13:54, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn - being "online" doesn't specifically make it "web-content". As it is sold/distributed via multiple distribution platforms, it fits better in the product/software category, and as such, A7 isn't applicable, - UtherSRG(talk) 14:07, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn. It isn't "web content" as in a website, web app or similar but something that runs on computer hardware, a multiplayer game (running on Unreal Engine 5 per the company, and this is how it is installed). It's a piece of software that connects to the internet. —Alalch E. 14:13, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn Had to sleuth for this one. I'm overturning based on: Any content accessed via the internet and engaged with primarily through a web browser is considered web content for the purposes of this guideline. I then looked at the topic, which appears to be played as a stand-alone game not through a web browser, and is therefore ineligible for A7. Not the most straightforward case, though. SportingFlyerT·C 15:20, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn mis-application of A7, which specifically excludes products and software. FrankAnchor 16:47, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Overturn, allowing it to be sent to AFD. There are two issues, whether the subject of the article was a valid
A7, and whether there was a credible claim of significance. A credible claim of significance has been asserted, but we don't need to decide it. The subject was a software product, and they are not subject to A7. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:48, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply
]
In light of the views expressed I will reverse my decision and undelete. Stifle (talk) 08:41, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The above is an archive of the deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
