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 delete. The consensus here is that this does not belong on Wikipedia as a stand-alone page. If someone wants to merge or transwiki any of it I would be happy to userfy it to them. J04n(talk page) 22:30, 3 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of bus routes in Worcestershire[edit]

List of bus routes in Worcestershire (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Unsourced cruft & bus-spotter magnet. Wikipedia is not a directory and not a travel guide - this sort of stuff belongs on the new Wikivoyage start, not here. Bob Re-born (talk) 20:34, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great suggestion - I'd love to see the back of all of these articles and if others also think moving them to Wikivoyage is the right thing then I guess the next step is finding out exactly where is the best place to hold the discussion. What about Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Buses as a starter? (I'm guessing the spotters will be happy to move the content as they'll have somewhere new to stand their flasks and hang their anoraks.) --Bob Re-born (talk) 21:32, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing they won't be happy and I would prefer a broader and more neutral venue such as the village pump or AN requests for comment.--Charles (talk) 10:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:59, 24 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:00, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:00, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Did you even read WP:NOTTRAVEL before posting? Let's look at the content together shall we?
Travel guides. An article on Paris should mention landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but not the telephone number or street address of your favorite hotel, nor the current price of a café au lait on the Champs-Élysées. Wikipedia is not the place to recreate content more suited to entries in hotel or culinary guides, travelogues, and the like. Notable locations may meet the inclusion criteria, but the resulting articles need not include every tourist attraction, restaurant, hotel or venue, etc. Also, while travel guides for a city will often mention distant attractions, a Wikipedia article for a city should only list those that are actually in the city. Such details may be welcome at Wikivoyage instead.
Since you quoted the page, would you care to point out which bit suggests this article should be deleted? Jeni (talk) 09:09, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is nothing in the above quote to indicate that such lists should be included and much to indicate that they should not. Lists of non-notable bus routes are essentially the same as lists of hotels or lists of pharmacies. They are all just lists of commercial services which can be found in probably more up to date form on the internet. Such lists would be just as useful but wholly unencyclopedic. Claiming that something should be included because it is not specifically excluded is Wikilawyering.--Charles (talk) 10:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think Wikipedia should keep the :List of bus routes in Worcestershire (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) as I am a bus Information/route information enthusiast, as I like collecting up to date information on buses and then up dating the information on to the appropriate Wikipedia page in this case the :List of bus routes in Worcestershire (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). -Omnibus53 (talk) 16:35, 25 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why would you include an almost impossible to maintain list when a prose summary is possible and, many would argue, preferable? It's certainly more able to be sourced and to comply with the GNG. This might give examples of important notable routes but mentioning every route would seem to me to be counterproductive in many ways. Blue Square Thing (talk) 19:36, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A list of bus routes would be relevant to a prose article just as a discography, also written as a list, is to a musician's article. My question was partly in response to Michig - for context, see discussion at Talk:CKY discography, where it has been suggested that a discography doesn't have to separately meet the notability guideline - but also as a general question for participants in this discussion. Peter James (talk) 19:50, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Current bus routes are no more relevant to an encyclopedia than bus routes from the 1960s, and neither is really relevant to an encyclopedia. A summary of the areas covered would be relevant to an article on a bus company, the routes themselves change and get renumbered regularly, and the minutiae of bus route X changing to bus route Y when it changed to take in housing estate Z would be far too excessive in detail. A list containing only current bus routes is only really relevant if you're looking to travel by bus, which is what a travel guide is for, not an encyclopedia. --Michig (talk) 20:08, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Former routes don't belong in a travel guide, and maybe current routes don't: one list has already been deleted here and moved to Wikivoyage and is now likely to be deleted there; even if editors of these articles joined Wikivoyage the lists could still be as controversial as they are here. Peter James (talk) 00:22, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An interesting comparison. I think there are a probably a number of significant differences:
  • discographies are usually fairly short - having just checked on the Bruce Springsteen, Grateful Dead and Cliff Richard pages (three of the more voluminous back catalogues I think)
  • discographies don't usually have repeated entries
  • discographies are fixed. Once created the record doesn't disappear, change it's route, get cancelled, change stops and so on. A record's a record once it's made. It's the dynamic nature of bus routes that I have one of my biggest problems with (after the lack of meeting GNG imo)
  • the items within discographies tend to be notable in themselves - per WP:NALBUMS for example. Given the lack of third party reliable sources with substantial (i.e. non-routine) coverage, I'd very strongly argue that most individual bus routes lack obvious notability whilst, for example, Darkness on the Edge of Town has very clear notability (as would the subject of Springsteen's discography in itself I'd say). Perhaps most importantly there are very clear consensus guidelines that articles about albums and so on have to meet the GNG in terms of their notability; that consensus is clearly lacking in terms of bus articles - which has the rather bizarre effect of meaning that a commercially available album might not have an article but a bus route in a small town in the UK might get it's very own article.
Interesting comparison and clearly raises some issues that need to be looked at in general terms to try to establish what is and isn't notable. Blue Square Thing (talk) 20:19, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If the bus routes lists are kept, former routes could be included, either in prose or list, as they are in List of bus routes in London#Former routes (although that currently has "Please do not include services that are withdrawn before 1994, this list will be too long." at the top of the list). I'm not sure what you mean by "repeated entries"; there may be some, such as in List of bus routes in Cambridgeshire where the Peterborough article was merged, but it's likely that cleanup, and standards would be needed - I can't find a relevant guideline or manual of style. Bus routes can be notable, although most are probably not, but it's the same in discographies, with singles that don't chart, and non-notable compilation albums - this discussion has also reminded me that there's a category, Category:Record label discographies, where many of the articles are long, and often incomplete and unreferenced . Whether the route lists are maintainable depends on whether there are people who maintain them, and there seems to be more success there than with some BLPs, where the problems are often more serious than lack of updates. Peter James (talk) 23:37, 1 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
By repeated I meant that there can be several with the same number within an area - depending on how the area is defined amongst other things.
I agree that bus routes can be notable per the GNG. For an uncharting single I'd expect coverage in reliable third party media. So, for example, I have a book dealing with the early career of Runrig. It talks in detail about the 1984 releases of Dance called America and Skye - and there were reviews in the West Highland Free Press too. Third party sources exist - it is verifiable that they were released and where they charted. I'm not convinced I see that for the 22a in Norwich. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:08, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If several routes have the same number, they are not repeated entries, just as articles about different people, places or albums with the same name are not duplicates - bus routes can be distinguished by destination and operator just as Peter Gabriel (1977 album) and Peter Gabriel (1978 album) can be distinguished by cover and track listing. Maybe some routes have not been mentioned in books or newspapers, but its the same with some records in discographies. Peter James (talk) 09:36, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, they could, although in general they aren't though. Perhaps more importantly the standard defence given as to why these lists should remain on wikipedia is that "they're useful" - very rarely, they're notable because they meet the GNG and here are the sources to meet it. Repeated bus numbers make such lists less useful, not more. Blue Square Thing (talk) 09:41, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Repeated numbers, where they are separate routes, make the list more useful, particularly as the same routes can appear in multiple timetables (for example routes 42 and 43 in Worcestershire[1][2]). They are not in the list, but only because the edits were reverted as unsourced. Peter James (talk) 10:12, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
What does "useful" mean in this context? If it means useful to someone planning a bus journey then it is well outside of our remit per WP:NOTTRAVEL and WP:NOTDIR. People should not be coming to Wikipedia for travel information. If it means useful to someone researching the history of a particular number bus route they will want to use more reliable primary sources as there are rarely inline citations to verify a particular route. Such citations could in theory be added but in practise they rarely are and I do not think they are likely to be.--Charles (talk) 11:11, 2 March 2013 (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.
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