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. Although the "delete" !votes have some strong arguments, there obviously is at this moment no consensus to delete this article. Perhaps that some judicious editing can take care of the signaled content duplications. Randykitty (talk) 18:03, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

List of United States tornadoes in May 2008[edit]

List of United States tornadoes in May 2008 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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This list duplicates three other pages, Tornado outbreak of May 1–2, 2008, List of tornadoes in the tornado outbreak sequence of May 7–15, 2008, and List of tornadoes in the tornado outbreak sequence of May 22–31, 2008. It has no actual content, just copies long lists of mainly minor tornadoes from these three pages. Efforts to rationalize this somewhat[1] were reverted. I don't see the point of this duplicative effort. Note that the three events are also at length described in Tornadoes of 2008#May, making this essentially a fifth page about the same events, but with the least information and the most WP:NOTDATABASE content issues. Fram (talk) 17:32, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This guy possibly got angry because he got an edit reverted. XD
Seriously though, there are probably at least some people out there who want/need a combined list. Also, there are tornadoes that happened in between those time periods, and if someone wanted to find out about them, this article would need to exist. Poodle23 (talk) 18:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So my personal opinion is Keep. Poodle23 (talk) 18:46, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment struck as I think it was canvassed, since the AN/I determined the editor who alerted me via my talk page canvassed the vote. Just ignore my comment and my participation here. Elijahandskip (talk) 20:46, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment How is this notification not a violation of WP:CANVASS?-- Ponyobons mots 19:02, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Ponyo: I normally get pinged in weather-related discussions (many discussions to back that up), and my interactions with the nominator occurred generally before I started editing in weather-related articles. The person alerting me probably did not know my history with the nominator, especially since I do not wish to interact with them and don’t interact with them. The closing admin is free to exclude my !vote if they wish to, but I do have thousands of edits in weather-related articles over the past year & I am a member of WP:Weather. Either way, this will be my final message in this discussion. Elijahandskip (talk) 19:07, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
He was giving me valuable information and besides, the nominator is not even part of this project and is trying to impose his will on it. I'm tired of s*** like this. Leave him alone. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 19:09, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The entire conversation at Elijahandskip's talk page has a "poison the well" quality to it, including Elijahandskip pinging one of the participants here to their talk page to disparage the nominator. Pinging like-minded editors to an AfD with the expectation of them supporting you is canvassing. Going to a talk page of an editor and titling the section "Link to this stupid article deletion attempt" is canvassing. -- Ponyobons mots 19:13, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So now I can't have an opinion on the matter? That's bogus. If that's the case, every editor on Wikipedia is guilty of this. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 19:18, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • weak Keep - It seems like the other articles could be merged into this one better than this one being deleted.
DarmaniLink (talk) 11:22, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oh look, every single editor who voted keep has been canvassed here, what a coincidence. Perhaps time to get a wider RfC to stop the practices if this insular Wikiproject and its foulmouthed members. Fram (talk) 19:07, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You have to understand some of our frustration, and I wouldn't call this Wikiproject "insular". The fact that ChessEric pinged these editors (including myself) and we all responded with an agreeance to keep these articles should give you further reason to NOT call for a canvassing steamroll. There are many more editors that make part of this Wikiproject who would be in agreeance to the stipulations that have been in place for years. It is not an opinion only the ones that were pinged agree on. Its great that you are a veteran editor with many times more edits that all of us combined, but you can't just come here and decide that the way we are doing is wrong or unnecessary after it has been accepted for many years now, and will hopefully continue. Mjeims (talk) 19:14, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OH. MY. GOD. You're just pissed off that the ENTIRE project is against you because you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. We have been making tornado lists for OVER A DECADE with no trouble and now you come along and have a problem with it? How did you even come across this? Hitting the random articles link? I called you out on your B.S. claim and now you're throwing a hissy fit. Move on and go mess with some other project; we are improving the articles we have made and don't have time to be dealing with s*** like this. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 19:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Principle 6 in this recent Arbitration case with connection to this Wikiprojact appears relevant to your replies here. It states ''WikiProjects have no special status in developing consensus on matters of content, policy or procedures. Any Wikipedia editor may participate in developing a consensus on any matter that interests them."-- Ponyobons mots 19:53, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, the current consensus known to pretty much all participants to the Wikiproject is that of maintaining monthly tornado articles with all reported tornadoes for the month. That consensus in kwown to most or all of us that edit these articles daily. As such, we, the editors, have created such consensus and followed it, without the need to be a rule set in stone within the project itself. So, no WP:CANVASS here, just people sticking to what we all have agreed upon already. Mjeims (talk) 20:02, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Mjeims - did you read the link that Ponyo just provided? Here is the relevant text: WikiProjects have no special status in developing consensus on matters of content, policy or procedures. Any Wikipedia editor may participate in developing a consensus on any matter that interests them. Take a moment to take that on board - the Wikiproject has no special authority to determine notability standards, or to decide which articles are retained or get deleted.
    This is one of the most blatant cases of improper canvassing I have seen recently. Notifications to Wikiprojects should be made by adding a relevant template to the discussion itself; I will add a template so that this discussion appears at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Weather#Article alerts; no further notification, including pinging hand-picked editors, or posting on their talk pages, is appropriate. Girth Summit (blether) 20:16, 8 February 2023 (UTC) Hmm - doesn't look like there is a delsort category for 'Weather'. It's currently listed at 'Events', 'History' and 'United States of America'; it's not like this discussion wasn't advertised. Girth Summit (blether) 20:21, 8 February 2023 (UTC) [reply]
    Got it. But then again, we are not using the Wikiproject "status" to create arbitrary consensus on a subject, and many other editors do come sometimes to question it in our discussions within articles, so we are permitting free will of intervention. We are not exerting authority of any kind, we are simply all on board with how articles are created and structure. Or if we are and we had not noticed, that is different. Mjeims (talk) 20:23, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    You are permitted to engage in discussions wherever you like; you are not permitted to ping one another to those discussions, so that a band of like-minded editors all show up to enforce a consensus that has been established within the Wikiproject. That kind of selective notification is the very essence of canvassing, and it has to stop. Girth Summit (blether) 20:35, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)While that is true, it would seem that editors that are outside of their usual topic area would themselves refrain from imposing unpopular ideas on the majority of users who maintain a said area. That seems to be common decency. But then again, we don't always have that here, do we? United States Man (talk) 20:03, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying that it's common decency for people disagreeing with members of a wikiproject to keep it to themselves and not 'tainting' your consensus? GabberFlasted (talk) 20:37, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Fram: What is your vendetta against this topic? You obviously aren't acting in good faith or to improve Wikipedia. Seems like you have ulterior motives. United States Man (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Number 57: while there are indeed additional tornadoes listed, the question is why do we need to list all 500+ tornadoes for this single month, considering that, for the period you state, we have no tornadoes for two days, and 6 tornadoes of the weakest category for the other two days, all of them causing no damage at all. I fail to see what is gained by this attempt to list each and every one of them, as tornadoes are commonplace in the US (more than a 1000 each year). Your suggestion to merge the articles the other way around is interesting though, that would also reduce the redundancy. Fram (talk) 08:22, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I didn't give enough weight to my second point in the comment above – I simply think it's preferable to have one article instead of three or four. Why delete this one, when we can delete the other three? Number 57 11:49, 9 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
To sum things up, the list presented here is a classic case of WP:HALFLIFE of a niche subject. The materials are readily available to improve/expand upon but the amount of effort required has been a deterrent. Limited traffic and WP:Recentism bias contribute to this. The potential is there, it's just a matter of it happening. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 05:37, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Hundreds and hundreds of tornadoes every year technically meet WP:GNG" isn't true: the vast, vast majority fails WP:NOTNEWS, getting (local) coverage when they happened (well, most EF0 dpn't even get that) and nothing afterwards. To meet the GNG, one needs sustained coverage, not some news reports and a database. No reason seems to have been given why there is a need to list every single tornade, including the EF0 and EF1 ones. Without these, a yearly list would be easily achievable (with the monthly numbers of EF0 and EF1 added for good measure of course), and something like List of tornadoes in the tornado outbreak of May 4–6, 2007 would become manageable to write and read, not something that takes 11 days to complete. For regular storms, we wouldn't think about including the damage every gust of wind did to every house, forest, field, power line, ... but when it is caused by an outbreak of tornadoes, the storms project feels the need to include every single one. Why? What purpose does it serve to not just e.g. state "there were 70 EF0s and 41 EF1s", and only describe the 21 larger ones? You end up with just, what, less than 20% of the previous lists, helping readers to find the important ones, keeping things manageable. There is a reason that "exhaustive" and "exhausting" are so close to each other. Fram (talk) 09:05, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The example you give is a good one, in which an individual article is made to accomodate the list of tornadoes from a specific outbreak, and has been done for many others.However lets keep in mind that despite most tornadoes not being featured prominently in news, hence not applying for the not news policy However, there are people that will like to have a database available for them with all the content there is, despite being trivial in most cases. Those people will not find it "exhausting" to go through it all, as individual links to more prominent outbreak lists are easy to find within their articles, and the monthly/multi-month lists. The people who want specific or significant outbreak information can find it easily, and those who want extensive information, will have it available. Once again, I remain on keeping these complete lists. Mjeims (talk) 13:16, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"most tornadoes not being featured prominently in news, hence not applying for the not news policy"? Above, it was said that most tornadoes are notable, which I rejected based on NOTNEWS. Your dismissal of NOTNEWS because they didn't prominently feature in the news makes no sense, all you do is make them less notable and this giving less reason to include them, not more. The links to the databases can of course remain in e.g. a tornadoes-by-year list, so people that do need or want the full database can still access it (nothing is lost by not having it on enwiki). But we are neither a news repeater nor a database duplicator. Fram (talk) 13:26, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I messed up writing that one. My bad. However, the way "non-significant or trivial" tornadoes are formatted in the databse pages can be a little confusing at first. I know because it took me a second to understand them when I opened one for the first time a few years ago. The way they are set in wikipedia in a linear, coherent way showcasing what each value represents and the little blurb of 'summary' is pretty handy to get all the information at once, so that would make it so that we are not "duplicating what is on the database". Mjeims (talk) 13:45, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Presenting the same info in a slightly different format is duplicating the database. It doesn't explain why we would need to have all of these, which hardly made a blip when they happened in the first place but still need to be documented in this encyclopedia anyway. We are not the place where a group of hobbyists, be it train spotters, stamp collectors, storm aficionados, sport fans, ... can come together to post all minutiae of their interest. This is generally accepted for most topics. I could understand it if people wanted to include the occasional non-notable entry to complete the 80% or 90% notable ones, but here it is the reverse, with the non notable ones overwhelming the more severe and generally more impactful ones. What does adding these details about EF0s add to the lists? What essential info is added to the lists by adding these individually, instead of just a generic "there were 100 tornadoes, including 70 EF0s and 15 EF1s. Below is a list of the 15 EF2-5s"? Fram (talk) 14:22, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
My compromise,solution isn´t perfect, so let´s stick with the much worse situation we have now? Feel free to add all tornadoes which caused at least ond death to my above proposal, will be a minimal change. Fram (talk) 07:01, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Would this mean that a tornado like the Dayton, Ohio EF4 of 2019 would not be included because it did not kill anyone, even though it caused millions in damage and 166 injuries? Or that outside EF2+ tornadoes, those weak tornadoes that caused loss of life, like the 1978 Whippoorwill tornado, shall be included as well? It may sound like a dumb question, but a I feel it should be made just to be sure. Mjeims (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2023 (UTC)[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.