3 April 2024

List of British Airways destinations

List of British Airways destinations (talk|edit|history|logs|links|watch) (XfD|restore)

Before I begin, I wanted to make two points:

• 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 WP:NOT were cited: NOTINDISCRIMINATE, NOTCATALOG, NOTNEWS, and NOTTRAVEL. Most also cited the RfC/prior AfDs, which as I said I don't think we should ignore. On the other hand, most editors who !voted Keep/Merge made relatively weak arguments: USEFUL, EFFORT, HARMLESS, and that the lists are well-referenced (rebutted by WP:VNOT). Several people added that the RfC was six years ago and had limited participation, and that 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. Frank Anchor 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]

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]

I would support re-running the RFC as well. Consensus can change over six years. Frank Anchor 22:40, 3 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, 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]

I disagree on your last statement : "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]

David Windsor (closed)

Mortal Online 2 (closed)