Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airlines

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New RFC for Airline destinations tables

We need to do a new RFC for Airline destinations tables as the old one was from 2018. So we can find what the current Wikipedia community views are on them being included. CHCBOY (talk) 18:51, 6 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking that we should wait a few months before doing the new RFC, just because we've had a lot of discussions on the topic recently. We can plan the RFC here and make sure it's worded properly. Sunnya343 (talk) 13:43, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Please, no. We just did this about six months ago and it was messy like it always is. I'm not sure why we need to keep having this RfC every year to always get the same result.... ✈ mike_gigs ^talk_contribs 13:57, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Actually that was for Airport specific tables not for the individual airline destinations tables. CHCBOY (talk) 18:35, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AH, I see. I mixed up what you meant - my apologies. Ironically, I do support an RfC on this subject. I think it would be smart to plan a well worded RfC, but we may not want to wait too long as a lot of "List of XX Airline Destinations" articles have been showing up at AfD and may need to be recreated depending on the RfC results. ✈ mike_gigs ^talk_contribs 19:08, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed very true. Are you any good at starting one? CHCBOY (talk) 05:23, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like people including me realized at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2024 April 3 that having more AFDs is a time sink, so I don't think there will be more. I started the last two AFDs and won't be doing any more for that reason.

This is arbitrary but how about doing the RFC in July (3 months after the last AFD)? Though we could start planning it whenever. Sunnya343 (talk) 13:56, 10 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seems ok to start in July. It's only 6 weeks away from now. CHCBOY (talk) 00:02, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How would a new RFC be useful to improve the Airline destinations lists? Axisstroke (talk) 11:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It will help finding a consensus by users on Wikipedia of what can be included in the list. CHCBOY (talk) 19:31, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the RFC initiator seems very biased on the way to set this up for his delete mission. So I don't see this as an unpartial attempt. Axisstroke (talk) 11:18, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What do you all think of the proposal below for the RfC question and background? Pinging frequent contributors to the past discussions: CHCBOY, ChainChomp2, Rosbif73, Reywas92, FOARP, Lifetimelucid, SportingFlyer, Coastie43, Jetstreamer, and Pmbma.

Question: Do lists of every current and former destination of airlines violate WP:NOT?

Background: Wikipedia currently has 187 stand-alone lists of airline destinations. Other lists can be found within airline articles, e.g. T'way Air § Destinations. An RfC on this topic was held in 2018; the closing summary stated that Wikipedia should not have these lists, with the main argument being NOTDIR. A subsequent AN discussion advised editors to follow the AfD process and closers to take the RfC into account. From May 2023 to February 2024, 26 AfDs resulted in the deletion or redirection of over 260 lists.

In March 2024, however, an AfD to delete 153 lists was closed as No Consensus. At DRV, some people raised concerns about the age and limited participation of the 2018 RfC and described the recurrent AfDs as a timesink. It was suggested to run a new RfC as a de facto AfD or DRV, with every article tagged with a link to the discussion. Though I have tagged all the stand-alone lists, I favor uncoupling this RfC from the AfD process because some of the articles contain prose. The prose would first have to be copied to the parent article, and then the list would have to be redirected rather than deleted. So if there's a consensus that the lists violate NOT, I believe a few more bundled AfDs should be held to make sure the articles with prose are handled appropriately.

I phrased the RfC question this way based on my review of the past discussions, where it appears that the crux of the debate is the applicability of NOT. I also think this is the best way to address both manifestations of the lists: 1) embedded within airline articles, and 2) in stand-alone format. NOT influences both (1) and (2). In some of the AfDs, people also made arguments based on notability, but these only apply to (2) and don't preclude merging the lists into the parent articles. Indeed, the main policy basis of the decision to delete, not merge, those 260+ lists was NOT.

Note: Other people notified are WT:AIRLINES, WT:NOT, and the participants in the 2018 RfC and subsequent AfDs.

Sunnya343 (talk) 23:23, 28 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In general, I think people on wikipedia can be too keen to use WP:NOT as a reason to forbid something. I see WP:NOT as a guide to avoid excess in a particular direction, and not as a prohibition from something even starting or existing in moderation. We can however provide *summary* information, particularly if this is difficult to find elsewhere on the Internet.

As an example, wikipedia is not a travel guide - that's a nice way of saying we should not start giving out detailed timings of when an airline flies between two cities.

Commercial companies have an interest in over-inflating their importance. Airlines as an example like to talk how they and their partners can take you to hundreds of places if you're prepared to change airplanes multiple times even if an airline actually has just 10 airplanes of its own. This is the kind of thing where airline destination tables on wikipedia can do a good job of providing transparency where commercial interests prefer to disguise reality, and where wikipedia can be useful. Airline websites however do a good job of saying clearly what time flights go on a specific day between 2 cities and are generally transparent on detailed timings.

The line between "what can wikipedia do well and what other websites do better" can be a good guide of the boundary as to when WP:NOT should or should not apply to stop us getting into minor detail. Wikipedia has a constant battle between those who seek to add trivial info and those who want to delete important info. I think keeping the current who-flies-where-but-not-when tables has been a good balance in providing summary info that can be difficult to find transparently without us going down the rabbit hole of becoming a travel guide or doing what airline websites can do better. Pmbma (talk) 02:43, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are many other good reasons for deleting these articles other than just WP:NOT and this question is almost custom-written to deliver a “no” result. Focus on the articles and what’s wrong with them, not trying to get a result (EVERY article in a class violates NOT) that Wikipedia is constitutionally incapable of delivering. FOARP (talk) 06:23, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This crap again. There's nothing wrong with an article on historical airline destinations if it's properly sourced. The problem was most of them were not properly sourced, not that we should exclude an entire category of articles from the site. SportingFlyer T·C 07:24, 29 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My idea is to specifically address the practice of listing all of an airline's destinations, not about whether there should be articles on airline destinations. For the latter, notability comes into play and is going to be article-dependent (ie. is WP:GNG met, etc.). This RfC would be focused on the lists themselves, whether they're in the parent article or in an article called "List of ... destinations". I will work on modifying the background to reflect this.

If my proposed question is felt to be too narrow/constrictive, an alternative could be: "Are lists of all the current and former destinations of airlines acceptable content for Wikipedia?" Sunnya343 (talk) 01:39, 30 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the latter question is best. Are lists of current and terminated destinations of airlines accepted for Wikipedia. CHCBOY (talk) 19:57, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Still runs into the same problem I've mentioned - the answer is clearly "yes, if it can be sourced properly." SportingFlyer T·C 20:45, 1 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:VNOT says though that even if information can be sourced, that doesn't guarantee its inclusion on Wikipedia. Through this RfC we can see what the consensus is on whether the lists are appropriate to include on this site, knowing that most are easily sourceable. Sunnya343 (talk) 01:33, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:VNOT is not about the notability of individual articles. SportingFlyer T·C 17:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not directly, no – but it is highly relevant to destination lists as sections within airline articles, and indirectly to destination articles in that if all the information in a potential article comes under VNOT (i.e. a class of information that is verifiable but deemed not to warrant inclusion) then there is no article left! Rosbif73 (talk) 20:43, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Like DigitalExpat, I've waited a little before responding – and I also echo his thanks. I think a question along the lines of "are destination lists acceptable content" will be much better than framing it in terms of compliance with WP:NOT, which would tend to exclude the possibility that there are other policy-based rationales for including or excluding these lists. The explanation of the context and scope of the question is also important – and your "background" above seems pretty good, though I'd remove the bit about the main argument being NOTDIR.

It is also tempting to also ask whether exhaustive airport destination lists are acceptable content, as the arguments ought to be pretty much the same, but there's the risk that a two-part RfC would result in a WP:TRAINWRECK. Rosbif73 (talk) 06:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that such a question would be better. I will revise the explanation of the context. Regarding the airport lists, I do feel that they are fundamentally the same as the airline ones, though I know that some editors have different opinions. I thought about providing options in the question, e.g. Are lists of airline destinations, by airline and from individual airports, acceptable content for Wikipedia? Option 1: By airline only; Option 2: From individual airports only; Option 3: Both; Option 4: Neither. That way people can still distinguish between the two types of lists if they wish. Though I fear that such an all-encompassing RfC would become messy and make it harder for people to express nuance. Sunnya343 (talk) 18:59, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wanted to wait to respond to the thread until I could make sure I was adding the most amount of value that I could. Firstly, thank you @Sunnya343 for starting this conversation to allow valuable conversation before launching into an RfC - it's exponentially valuable (as evidenced above)! Secondly thanks to all who are contributing here, making it again that much more valuable and breaking us out of the quixotic RFCs/tilting at windmills on the topic. To echo and suggest an even further focusing on @FOARP and @SportingFlyer 's spot on points: Omit any questions about the data layout (don't mention "lists" - format doesn't seem to be the question here), and ask directly what is the problem/thing that you feel needs to be commented on (What is it specifically about having information about destinations that you believe we need a group comment on? Phrased in a neutral way that is possible to reach consensus on as per the information article WP:RFC ). If it is down to poorly sourced articles as pointed out by @SportingFlyer (which a lot of the lists you've highlighted most certainly are!) - then we deal with those immediately without an RfC in the usual way we handle all insufficiently sourced articles. Finally a closing thought to thank you again for starting this conversation (discussions are an essential prerequisite to a successful RfC in the Wikipedia process, so thank you! An alternative thought, if the question is about the nature of the RfC (and very ultimately with a question that is objective (type of information) rather than subjective (eg: Should we talk about Boats on Airlines pages), I would suggest a more valuable conversation would be consider following the WP:RFC information page advice "If you are not sure [...] about how best to frame it, ask on the talk page of this project.") - Cheers and thanks DigitalExpat (talk) 06:32, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. I realized after the airport lists RfC that I started last year that not wording the question properly gives rise to lots of problems and confusion.

My proposed question does mention "lists" but it doesn't concern the format of the information; as I noted above it's about the practice of writing out every destination of an airline and having that information on Wikipedia. It's just that in its most basic form, the information is a list. Sunnya343 (talk) 14:08, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it will be difficult to address any sort of outcome on airline destination lists that is different from how airport destination lists are treated, despite the latter not having the same "historical" application. ChainChomp2 (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Revised explanation of the context:

Many articles on Wikipedia include lists of every current and former destination of airlines. Examples include T'way Air § Destinations, List of Braathens destinations § Destinations, and List of KLM destinations § List. An RfC on the stand-alone (SA) lists was held in 2018, and the closing summary stated that Wikipedia should not have them. A subsequent AN discussion advised editors to follow the AfD process and closers to take the RfC into account. From May 2023 to February 2024, 26 AfDs resulted in the deletion or redirection of over 260 SA lists. In March 2024, however, an AfD to delete 153 SA lists was closed as No Consensus. At DRV, some people raised concerns about the age and limited participation of the 2018 RfC and described the recurrent AfDs as a timesink. It was suggested to run a new RfC as a de facto AfD or DRV, with every article tagged with a link to the discussion.

I have tagged the talk pages of all the SA lists, but I favor uncoupling this RfC from the AfD process. This discussion is not about whether it's acceptable to write articles about airline destinations. That is a notability issue and is article-dependent. Rather, this RfC concerns the actual lists of every past and present destination.

Sunnya343 (talk) 23:36, 12 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sunnya343 - Returning to this, I urge you not to bother with this RFC which I do not believe will have a good outcome, but instead likely to simply waste people's time with an inconclusive result and/or have people trying to change the question immediately because it's too complex. We've see again and again, when the question of these airline destination lists is approached from a theoretical point of view, people are way more likely to be equivocal about them that when they are approached from a concrete, grounded approach based simply on article quality, because the articles are hot garbage.

This is particularly because the airline-destination fans, organising in large part off-wiki, can put in a show-of-force at an RFC to throw the result, but when the question is put to uninvolved editors at AFD they almost always go for deletion. This is the case regardless of whether the 2018 RFC is mentioned or not because the WP:NOT argument is very straight-forward enough that no RFC need be mentioned and the bad sourcing that doesn't meet WP:NCORP gives people confidence to !vote for deletion.

Asking people to sign up to the idea that all articles in a category should be banned forever is always going to be way more of a hard-sell that simply banging them up one-by-one or in small groups by pointing out the extreme low quality sourcing that doesn't meet WP:NCORP and the WP:CATALOG no.6, WP:PROMO, WP:IINFO issues inherent in them. People are also way more likely to have an emotional attachment to the list of destinations of a "well loved" airline like British Airways than they are to, say, the list of destinations of VietJetAir (this article isn't even one of the worst - there's some which literally have every destination as terminated, yet this is the kind of article we are repeatedly being told is "useful"). We've already deleted ~250 out of the ~420 that their used to be this way, and I'm sure the remaining 187 can be dealt with eventually this way as well.

I agree that repeated AFDs are a time sink, but that's where this fandom campaign, based on asserting "It's Useful" en masse in larger discussions, has left us. FOARP (talk) 07:54, 17 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This RfC would not be about articles but about the lists themselves. I don't think anyone would disagree that they are all lists of destinations, no matter the airline, so it makes sense to address all of them in one discussion. The RfC may have an indirect effect on those standalone lists that only contain lists (like the British Airways one). If in the first 24 hours there is confusion about the question, the RfC can be paused/reconsidered, and I think it's worth a try after the DRV and discussion above.

I don't think it's fair to characterize supporters of the lists that way. Let's focus on the strength of people's arguments. I feel like the best approach is to ensure those who are interested in these lists take part, to avoid what happened after the 2018 RfC. Sunnya343 (talk) 02:46, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My honest opinion is that the 2018 RFC shows the opposite: any excuse will be made to ignore a consensus on WP:NOT, so trying to get a general one, rather than looking at the qualities of these articles, will probably not result in success for either side of this discussion: the articles are still subject to deletion since they fail on a wide range of grounds (including notability), but a conclusive decision about WP:NOT just gets ignored if that is the only argument made. Better to have uninvolved editors look at the issue rather than the same sets of people.

However if you're going to go ahead, I would propose a very simple yes/no question directed to an exemplary article: "Does List of Royal Jordanian destinations fail WP:NOT?". Complex questions always result in alternative answers being proposed, confusion, and challenges both to the question and to the outcome. FOARP (talk) 11:00, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that doing the RfC at the Village Pump will help attract uninvolved editors as well.

I share your concern about the wording of the RfC question. I appreciate your proposal but I'm leaning towards Are lists of all the current and former destinations of airlines acceptable content for Wikipedia? because it's focused on the lists themselves rather than the idea of writing an article about an airline's destinations, and it allows people to consider any other policies/guidelines besides WP:NOT that they feel are relevant, as Rosbif73 mentioned. Sunnya343 (talk) 03:25, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's not true. If it's just a simple listing with poor sources, those are unlikely to be kept. If it's a detailed article with historical route information, those are likely to be kept. There is absolutely no need for a blanket rule here, and the WP:NOT argument is much less straight-forward than you think it is. SportingFlyer T·C 09:32, 18 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since more than half of the airline-destination articles ever written have been deleted, it can very clearly be seen that the most likely outcome for an airline-destination article at AFD is deletion. FOARP (talk) 09:54, 19 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you would like to participate in the RfC please see this link: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Lists of airline destinations. Sunnya343 (talk) 16:04, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will hold off on notifying everyone who took part in the 2018 RfC, prior AfDs, and talk pages of the standalone lists until it's determined whether this new RfC should continue. Sunnya343 (talk) 17:38, 20 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The RfC has been withdrawn. Sunnya343 (talk) 01:39, 21 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously it's very easy to criticise, but this seems to be exactly what was warned about. I think the best way to make progress on this issue at present for the meantime is at AFD. These articles fail WP:NOT, but they also fail WP:NCORP and WP:NLIST, so trying to get a general decision on WP:NOT is both not entirely necessary and perhaps a distraction. FOARP (talk) 11:01, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think it would be appropriate to hold off on more AfDs pending a future RfC? In the AfDs I noticed there has been limited participation and the same arguments about whether WP:NOT is or isn't applicable get repeated.

I know some people won't be happy to see another discussion about destination lists, but I think the deletion review earlier this year demonstrated a need for one. In addition I agree with ChainChomp2 that the new RfC should also address the airport lists given the similarities between them and the airline lists and to avoid having yet another discussion. People should be able to distinguish in the RfC between the two types of lists if they wish.

I did try to start an RfC recently but it caused some confusion and understandable frustration. Therefore it may be prudent to wait some more time before beginning a new RfC. Also, a different RfC question and explanation of the context would need to be devised.

Pinging frequent contributors to the recent AfDs: FOARP, Rosbif73, SportingFlyer, and Reywas92. Sunnya343 (talk) 20:16, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you keep trying to force this issue? It's unlikely to get over the line, and it's going to be very contentious. SportingFlyer T·C 21:00, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is time to stop with this.--Jetstreamer ^Talk 14:39, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's no point in holding an RFC at this stage given the tired response these evoke. Articles should only be AFD'd where they stand a reasonable chance of being deleted/redirected/merged, and there is no particular reason to delay doing so where that is the case. I note that the number of airline destination articles now stands at 166, down from 444 in 2018, and also down from 187 in April of this year.

Basically we're going through a process of discovery about how many of these articles the community actually wants, and the answer is "not many". FOARP (talk) 13:54, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]