Misplaced Pages

Latest revision as of 02:50, 22 January 2025

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the What Misplaced Pages is not page.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed Shortcut WT:NOT

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59Auto-archiving period: 30 days

The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Misplaced Pages. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Please review policy editing recommendations before making any substantive change to this page. Always remember to keep cool when editing, and don't panic.

Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute.

This page has been mentioned by a media organization: Dewey, Caitlin (November 5, 2015). "The most fascinating Misplaced Pages articles you haven't read". Washington Post.

Can we remove the "And finally" section?

it has no place in[REDACTED] and it shouldn't even exist in the first place 37.210.71.142 (talk) 12:35, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

makes no sense to remove. It's a catchall that NOT cannot enumerate everything WP is not. Masem (t) 13:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

its just unfunny jokes if you checked it out, humorous essays shouldn't be part of main policies 37.210.71.142 (talk) 16:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Not sure about removing the whole "And finally" section, since it has been on this page for at least a decade now (though I don't think anything of value will be lost if the section does get removed). But I agree that policy pages shouldn't link to "humorous" essays or essays that haven't been thoroughly vetted by the community, so I've removed the links from that section. Some1 (talk) 00:22, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Notice of a requested redirect from Misplaced Pages:Misuse of Misplaced Pages to here

The redirect request can be found on Misplaced Pages:Articles for creation/Redirects#Redirect request: Misplaced Pages:Misuse of Misplaced Pages. 67.209.128.136 (talk) 03:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Request for comments: in cases of a large numbers of religious celebrations in a religious calendar (e.g., feast day of saints), can they all be listed in a non-list WP article?

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following lists: Religion and philosophy Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the lists. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

This RfC concerns the WP:NOTDIRECTORY and WP:NOTGUIDE policies.

Presently, there are numerous WP articles of religious calendars that list the full list of celebrations, feast day of saints, etc., without those articles being WP:Stand-alone lists.

The pages concerned, from what I have found, are: Tridentine calendar, General Roman Calendar, General Roman Calendar of 1954, General Roman Calendar of 1960, Institutional and societal calendars of the Roman Rite, National calendars of the Roman Rite, Personal jurisdiction calendars of the Roman Rite, Calendar of saints (Lutheran), Calendar of saints (Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil), Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Australia), Calendar of saints (Anglican Church of Canada), Calendar of saints (Church in Wales), Calendar of saints (Scottish Episcopal Church), Calendar of saints (Armenian Apostolic Church), Calendar of saints (Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui) (and previously Mysterii Paschalis).

My question for which I request comments is: is putting these long lists of religious feasts in those articles a violation of WP:NOTDIRECTORY or WP:NOTGUIDE, and if it so happens that they are a violation then what should be done with these lists? Veverve (talk) 18:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

• Comment. In my opinion, this isn't a significant problem. It looks to me (I haven't checked every page listed) like the pages are about encyclopedic topics that are reliably sourced. They are not unreasonable when viewed as embedded lists, as opposed to standalone list pages. As long as there is also paragraph-based text that is sufficiently sourced to establish notability, and to provide a context for the information that is listed, that takes those pages out of the realm of stuff that is simply an indiscriminate list of information of unclear encyclopedic relevance. I see that some of them have only a very brief lead section, and are tagged for needing improvements; these are the most problematic, but they can likely be fixed by further editing. (Those should either be revised into actual list pages, or be revised with more context in the form of paragraph text.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
• Can't really see a problem. They are certainly list-like, and could be converted to lists, but what's the gain? I don't see either policy being breached. Johnbod (talk) 04:35, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
• They are functionally lists based on their current content. They don't have to have "List" in the title. Adumbrativus (talk) 07:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Problem in search of a solution per others. Not sure what needs/supposedly needs to be “fixed” here if anything. Dronebogus (talk) 10:19, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Addition to WP:NOTDICTIONARY

I propose to add the following bullet (4) to the WP:NOTDICTIONARY entry:

• Misplaced Pages is not a multilingual dictionary. Articles should not include lists of translations of the topic into multiple languages, whether the topic is an object (apple = French pomme), a concept (wisdom = French sagesse), a culinary dish, or a proverb (You can't have your cake and eat it = French Vouloir le beurre et l'argent du beurre). If there is something encyclopedic to say about the different versions, such as etymology, then of course the name in other languages is relevant. Variants of the meaning should not be grouped by language, but by meaning. If a culinary preparation has no common name in English (e.g. kashk), then it is reasonable to include the variant names in the lead.

Discussion? --Macrakis (talk) 19:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

To some extent this seems to stand in contradiction to Misplaced Pages:Gazetteer, which would suggest that we should list the names for places in languages significant to that place as a gazetteer would be expected to do. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

I've never met a gazetteer, and I guess I should be glad I don't, right? There's also Misplaced Pages:Misplaced Pages is not a gazetteer, but both are essays anyway. Drmies (talk) 02:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I think maybe you're thinking of a gazebo? —David Eppstein (talk) 03:06, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't see a contradiction with WP:Gazetteer, which is about what places to mention. But MOS:ALTNAME is relevant for placenames. It says that we should include "significant alternative names", although that isn't elaborated on there (I think it is somewhere else, though). The significant names certainly include the name of a place in its own language (Deutschland), the name of the place under significant previous rulers (the Ottoman Turkish names for most places in Greece and the Balkans), and the name of the place in the languages of large populations which have lived there in the past (e.g. the South Slavic and Judeo-Spanish names of Thessaloniki). On the other hand, we don't include the German names for Poland (Polen) or Greece (Griechenland) despite Germany's occupation (and partial annexation in the case of Poland) of those countries during WWII.

In any case, those policies are about placenames. For other topics, other approaches make more sense. For example, the Beef_Stroganoff#Around_the_world section mentions local names along with the local variants in Brazil etc. In the Straw that broke the camel's back, article, we say (I admit that I wrote this): "The image of the last drop is also found in many other languages", leaving the exact words to the sources in the several footnotes. This contrasts with You can't have your cake and eat it, where User:Drmies removed -- correctly in my view -- a long list of translations or equivalents of the expression (many without sources). --Macrakis (talk) 21:02, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Are there any examples showing how this change would have a practical effect? I presume the aim is to limit text appearing in an article? Or is to limit what articles should exist? There can't be a policy that lists every bad idea. Johnuniq (talk) 01:22, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I'd agree the removal on You can't have your cake..., but I disagree with the Beef Stroganoff example. Discussion the various national varities of a dish - as long as its sourced - seems completely appropriate, and in line of talking about those, the local name that the dish goes back makes sense. It would be a problem if we just has a list of translated names without any discussion of the unique aspects of the national variety, as was the case with the You can't have your cake... article. Masem (t) 01:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the content in Beef Stroganoff makes more sense, even if poorly sourced. An obvious difference is of course that Beef Stroganoff deals with an actual physical topic and Cake deals with words--precisely the thing a dictionary should treat, which is why I directed the latest disruptor (who I suspect of being a sock of an earlier SPA in that article) to Wiktionary. I think I agree with the proposal, mostly--though I think that if we didn't have Oliebol already, a section in the Doughnut article makes sense. But then, as Masem indicated for Beef Stroganoff, there's much more there than just a translation of a word. Drmies (talk) 02:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Should WP:NOTDIRECTORY be more specific about phone numbers, etc.?

I came across an {{Infobox school}} recently that was misusing free text parameters to list the school's phone number. "As we all know", contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses is not encyclopedic, so I removed it "per WP:NOTDIRECTORY". This prompted me to look if there were more cases of such misuse, and indeed there were dozens. I was going to remove them with the same explanation, but unfortunately I took time to read through WP:NOTDIRECTORY before doing that... and I don't think I can use it as my basis, because I don't see anything in the text explicitly forbidding this. There used to be an unambiguous statement (the green one), but it was removed almost exactly three years ago (, ). Right now, anyone could argue "None of this applies to me. I'm not replicating any listings, it's just one phone number. Nor am I conducting business, we're talking about a school here." and I haven't been able to find anything in current policy wordings to definitively counter this (the BLP ban obviously doesn't apply to institutions). Am I missing something obvious (entirely possible :) ), or should the wording be changed (back) to remedy this? I'm tempted to be bold and just add it back, but it's probably better to double-check the consensus on this first. Gamapamani (talk) 13:40, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

It still states contact information is to be avoided under #6. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:42, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but the way that's framed, it seems to be limited to the context of "conducting business", which arguably wouldn't apply to something like a school. And even if we say it does apply, It would still be helpful to spell this out more explicitly, as "phone or fax number and e-mail" would be clearer for non-native speakers than "contact information", and a more obvious search term. Gamapamani (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

That makes sense, and the search term angle is compelling. JoelleJay (talk) 23:34, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

NOTDIRECTORY #6 is already too long. Making it longer will not aid compliance. Template:Infobox school already says school_number Official number (not for phone number). and information (do not enter phone numbers or email addresses). Are those notes unsatisfactory? WP:NOT is, I think, mainly used to advance deletion opinions at WP:AFD intended to have the strength of policy over mere WP:N notability guidance. What, in your view, should happen to 911 (emergency telephone number)? Take care that changes to policy do not have unintended consequences. Thincat (talk) 16:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Adding (such as phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses) is hardly a substantial increase, and if it makes it easier to search for our policy on phone numbers then that's a plus. JoelleJay (talk) 19:25, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

#6 is already too long will not aid compliance This doesn't have to be in #6, the statement I quoted in the opener was in a different place. In any case, a slight increase in length is less of a consideration compared to better clarity and findability, which could in fact improve compliance.

Are those notes unsatisfactory? Perhaps, since people are using yet other parameters to still include phone numbers. But my question here, although prompted by it, is not limited to the context of {{Infobox school}}. Since the phone number thing applies globally, it makes sense to specify is centrally. And I think WP:NOT is an overall content policy, it's not just about article deletion criteria.

911 changes to policy How would "contact information" expanded with examples make a difference for 911 compared to the current version, which is supposed to implicitly include the very same cases? This is not a policy change, and the clarification has been present in the past without affecting things like 911. Gamapamani (talk) 05:58, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

RfC on WP:NOT and British Airways destinations

Please consider joining the feedback request service. An editor has requested comments from other editors for this discussion. This page has been added to the following list: Economy, trade, and companies When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list. If this page is on additional lists, they will be noted below.

Do the following violate WP:NOT? A) List of everywhere British Airways has flown over its history, and B) list of everywhere it flies from Heathrow Airport as of today.

• Option 1: Only A violates WP:NOT
• Option 2: Only B
• Option 3: Both A and B
• Option 4: Neither A nor B

Sunnya343 (talk) 00:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Context

• A-type lists: In this deletion review some people proposed a new RfC.
  • I chose to do an RfC here at WT:NOT to focus on whether this policy applies. This is not meant to serve as a deletion venue.
• B-type lists: This RfC closure review closed as no consensus, and some argued to relist the RfC with a different question.
• No prior discussion has jointly addressed the two types of lists.
• RfC planning done here. I acknowledge that I've begun many discussions on this topic, but I hope this one clarifies the main dispute about NOT which has arisen in debates going back to 2007.

Sunnya343 (talk) 00:28, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

This description of the context in itself is not quite undisputed; see the Discussion subsection infra. I think that the list of five older partly contradictory RfA's given by Liz in her (later endorsed) closure here of the original AfD also is a highly relevant part of the context; as is that AfD itself. JoergenB (talk) 00:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Survey

• Option 3. The lists of current destinations and routes from Heathrow have lots of references, which is fine, though you could just as well cite BA's website for each city. It's a reliable source for this info, and indeed has already been cited for most of the current destinations in list A. Sites like Flightradar24 and FlightsFrom.com organize the data more conveniently and could be used as well. So there is no problem with verifiability here, but just because info is verifiable, doesn't mean it should be on Misplaced Pages. We aren't supposed to host a directory of airline routes, or a repository for data reorganized from flight databases.

  In regard to past destinations, I agree with discussing the development of BA's route network over time. For example, in History of British Airways, people have written about the impact of a 1970s government policy, and the Heathrow-New York route on Concorde. On the other hand, recording every place that BA no longer flies to, from its maiden flight 50 years ago up to today, strikes me as airline trivia. Sunnya343 (talk) 00:28, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3. Basically, listcruft is listcruft is listcruft. We want notable information, not indiscriminate information. - UtherSRG (talk) 01:13, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
  • The destinations currently flown is a narrowly-defined, discriminate list. Most destinations are covered in reliable sources so it's notable, though notability applies to articles, not specific facts. Reywas92 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Option 4 None of them violates WP:NOT, these are not indescriminate information, they are related to the topic of the article and shouldn't be removed, in my opinion I would support merging them into the airline article rather than be kept as a whole separate article Metrosfan (talk) 06:41, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• 3. We just had a lengthy but conclusive RfC about this, with a WP:NOT#DB conclusion. There is no reason to make an exception for a particular airline or airport.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Neither Neither of these violate WP:NOT. This is an absolutely ridiculous evergreen proposal. SportingFlyer T·C 01:55, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  I'm actually livid right now. Putting this at WP:NOT is just another tactic to try to ensure that completely valid encyclopedic information cannot be included anywhere on the site. SportingFlyer T·C 01:57, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  In order to violate WP:NOT, the information must not be encyclopedic. This is the flaw in the argument of those who are trying to rid our encyclopedia of this encyclopedic information.

  In terms of the airline destination lists, there is no need to specifically exclude them under WP:NOT. Analysis under WP:NLIST should be just fine, as it is for all other lists. Some airlines do have long histories with well documented historically flown routes or destinations. Looking at the British Airways list shows a well sourced article, and some air routes have been the subject of discussion as early as 1933.

  The airports table especially is one of the things I use most on the site. There are many wiki gnomes who keep them up to date. Almost all routes are be announced in the press, are easily verified, and do not need to rise to the level of notability to be included. They also do not violate WP:NOT per all of my arguments at other RfCs. The thing I specifically use them for the most is to determine how an airport or region is linked to the rest of the world, similar to how you can see which passenger routes operate from a given train station. I've seen the argument that yes, but rail infrastructure is fixed - it does not matter, the air routes can also be properly sourced. The information is also encyclopedic - for instance, one of the most important things in the history of a commercial airport is which routes were served first. Other airports have routes which are subject to academic analysis such as .

  This entire attempt to rid the website of this information is based on a complete misunderstanding. NOTDB? It's not a database, it's a list! NOTDIR? It's not a directory, these aren't simple listings without encyclopedic merit - otherwise we wouldn't have list articles at all! NOTTRAVEL? It's not a travel guide! If this passes, it will make Misplaced Pages worse, and there likely won't be any going back. And I'm exhausted from trying to defend this over and over again, year after year... SportingFlyer T·C 02:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Same here, these list of destinations do not violate ] Metrosfan (talk) 06:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3 Same for others, we want to have information from both past destinations and the present destinations, but if only provides a reliable reference if that route is existed in the past, or else removed it automatically. Drcarrot.phd (talk) 02:02, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
  • This comment does not address the two different things asked about here and further indicates that reliable sources would justify inclusion, not that the content is inherently a violation. Reywas92 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Option 3 Same for others, we want to have information from both past destinations and the present destinations, but if only provides a reliable reference if that route is existed in the past, or else removed it automatically

  
  

  Changing to Option 4 plus Neither vote, my comment is ridiculous but, I must say, both of them are not violates WP:NOT, both of the pages do have reliable reference given to it (some of them have not). For some users always keep the page up-to-date with reliable reference that it given, for example: AeroRoutes, as it's the most (idk if that is reliable) used reference for starting/ending dates.

  
  

  As for the airport pages, it can say but for some airline (with separate destinations lists), we can merge to the main airline page. Drcarrot.phd (talk) 12:20, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither. These tables have been around for a long time and should remain as they are. However, I believe we can discuss the criteria for including or excluding a destination in the table, specifically airport articles, as this is the part that often causes confusion among editors. Cal1407 (talk) 02:25, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4. These lists provide a way for readers to understand the connectivity of an airline or airport in a way that a vague summary does not. They could certainly be improved to add more context, e.g. by adding maps, more sourcing, or more discussion, but they can be very informative and are not inherently listcruft. CapitalSasha ~ talk 02:29, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3. NOTDIR failures do not belong on the site, regardless of what the airline is. Locations merely being verified in primary sources do not constitute BALASP coverage. JoelleJay (talk) 02:34, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
  • BALASP refers to balancing viewpoints in order to maintain a neutral point of view. In no way are destinations reached from an airport minor aspects of an airport nor do they represent an imbalance in views or content weight. Reywas92 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Neither of these are inherently policy violations. This is not a case of a directory of everything in the universe that exists or has existed. It's not a case of Simple listings without contextual information or loosely associated topics or anything else. It's not a case of an indiscriminate collection of information or Excessive listings of unexplained statistics. There is no policy violation here, and I suspect that if people had to quote the exact sentence that supported their claims, instead of waving at a potentially misleading WP:UPPERCASE shortcut, they would be hard pressed to justify claims of a policy violation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 I will simply repost what I said in the 2023 RfC with edits to be more generally applicable:

WP:NOTDATABASE, WP:NOTTRAVEL ... Wikivoyage exists ... there is no reason cannot be created and maintained there with a cross-wiki link in the enWiki article (i.e. ]). I presume the purpose of Wikivoyage is to serve as the very travel guide enWiki is not supposed to be.

— Jkudlick ⚓ (talk) 02:46, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• • This is not a feasible argument because no lists like this exist on Wikivoyage and there is no indication the community there seeks to maintain them, certainly not as well as the community here does. Reywas92 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

    The English Wikivoyage talked about this a few years ago, and said that they did not feel that they had enough editors to maintain such lists, and were glad that the English Misplaced Pages did. (Also, they would only track current routes, not historical ones.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 4 (Neither). I can somewhat understand how airport destinations may be problematic under WP:NOTTRAVEL but I've never understood why airline destinations fall under the same criteria. Firstly, as Whatamidoing pointed out, none of the WP:NOT criterias are able to cover the airline destinations. Secondly, if I want to go somewhere, I will already have that somewhere in mind. I don't need to figure out that somewhere on Misplaced Pages before buying the ticket (even though that is entirely possible through the airport article, which is why I can put a weak support for option 2, but that’s very unlikely). Thirdly, even travel guides like Lonely Planet don’t list the airlines that fly to and from a city (usually they do have the airport, but even that’s covered under the #Transport/Transportation sections of almost every major city in the world). So this isn’t even a travel guide because travel guides don’t do that. Fourthly, when I look at the airline destinations article, I know where they fly to, but from where? China Eastern, for example, has flights from Wuhan (focus city) to Singapore, but not from Ningbo (also a focus city) to Singapore. The airline destination pages do not tell me that. There’s no way this can be used as a travel guide without knowing the exact flights from where to where, so why are we worried about this becoming a travel guide? S5A-0043🚎 03:06, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 (Neither). This area has been discussed ad nauseam and I share the same frustration as SportingFlyer. It is the second large scale discussion initiated by Sunnya343 on the same page in 9 months and a thinly disguised forum shopping. "AfD discussion didn't go the way I wanted? Let's try Deletion Review. Oh no the community endorsed the closure? Off we go RFC!" By my count, we have discussed this area 8 times (in various venues) since 2016, most of which were initiated by the same individual. We really need to put these discussions onto Perennial proposals page and stop wasting community members' time. After this RfC finishes, I intend to start a TBAN discussion on Sunnya343's forumshopping behaviour. OhanaUnited 03:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 and suggest withdrawal per below discussion. Discussing two types of lists simultaneously without a strong rationale for doing so is not conducive to a productive discussion. In my view, the destinations tables for airports are exceedingly notable due to their coverage as both a group and individually when routes are announced/launched/dropped/delayed. The major newspaper of a given metropolitan area will have dozens of articles about these route changes. To fulfill Misplaced Pages's goal of being comprehensive, one cannot remove a critical element from an airport article, lest readers believe that planes simply stop at an airport and fly off into the void. SounderBruce 05:12, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 Neither. I see people have raised a few points about NOTDB, NOTDIR, or NOTTRAVEL. But I think those policies are pretty clear. NOTTRAVEL pertains specifically to travel guides with some explanation of what that means, and these very much are not such a beast. Also, these lists are not indiscriminate collections of information, and in fact are very specific in what they cover; these lists also have context to explain what the information means. Train stations and lines are vital to rail travel. Highways to automotive. Similarly routes and destinations are vital to air travel. There is no commercial air travel without routes and destinations, so it would be a mistake for us to exclude it simply because it's presented as a list. —siroχo 05:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 (both). Both lists appear (to me) to fall under the category of an indiscriminate collection of information. I think maybe the telltale sign here is that the information (data) is taken from primary sources, instead of from secondary sources that should discriminate for us and summarize the essence and what's important in the data (e.g. hypothetically "British airways has 850 destinations, the most out of any airline, spanning all 7 continents" and then a reference to that source). There is infinite data on most of anything, and it is the secondary source's job to determine what in the data is of essence, and it is our job as a tertiary source to summarize what extracted essence is so emphasized by secondary sources that it becomes notable enough to write about here. Adding these lists here bypasses this filtering structure and just feels arbitrary (hence indiscriminate). spintheer (talk) 05:32, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
  • Every airport has these lists, which are clearly a finite and managable amount of data, without any arbitrary determinations made. Countless users have already determined it is of essense and included it in an organized manner. Moreover, besides the fact that independent sources do regularly cover airline routes, there is no reason to exlude primary or non-independent sources (which were regularly incorrectly conflated in the last discussion); while primary sources must be used with care to ensure NPOV and that there is not original research, interpretation, or synthesis of the source, that is not a concern for straightforward noncontroversial facts such as an airline flying a particular route. I would support continued work to add sources to these lists, but not removal on flimsy grounds. Saying so little that a major airline flies to 5 continents is an insult to readers who use this (though, again, A and B are very different). Reywas92 05:48, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

    Replying to these in order: 1. every airport has these lists Just because something similar was done before doesn't make it an argument to continue doing it. The purpose of this RFC is to explicitly assess in a centralized fashion if the above lists violate NOT or not, and that's what we should address. 2. Countless users have already determined it is of essence My argument is exactly that it is not for them to decide, but for reliable secondary sources to do so. Regardless, a centralized community consensus here would override a distributed, more local consensus in separate articles. 3. not a concern for straightforward noncontroversial facts I can find you terabytes of database information containing various straightforward noncontroversial facts on British airlines. Why is this bit of data more important than the other bit of data? My point is that secondary sources should answer this, and not us. 4. Saying so little that a major airline flies to 5 continents is an insult to readers well (a) I just gave that as an example. We should just say what reliable secondary sources decide is notable/important about this data. (b) Maybe it would be insulting for the reader to get giant tables of indiscriminate data when they deserve encyclopedic content that summarizes knowledge. Either way, they shouldn't feel insulted, we're just volunteers. spintheer (talk) 06:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

    1. Every airport having these lists does show that that information is not "infinite data" or "arbitrary" but rather something well-curated and overseen to ensure that it is not indiscriminate. It's not one person creating a mass of pages for their own narrow interest without oversight. 2. I don't believe this talk page is truly a centralized community consensus that should override the edits made on thousands of pages by thousands of users who find this valuable and encyclopedic. 3. There are plenty of independent sources that do in fact answer the question that airline/airport destinations are important and of interest. I just added from today's paper to the relevant article. 4. Sure, we can provide summaries, but that's no reason to delete this consistent information. More sources should be added but they do in fact find airline routes notable and important. Reywas92 16:49, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

    Being useful is not a reason to keep information. Having been edited by many editors is not a reason to keep information

    WP is meant to be a summary work of what reliable sources give, and an exhaustive list of destinations for an airline (which can be changed frequently) seems exactly the type of info that is not a summary. It does make sense to say which major cites BA serves, or which major destination cities Heathrow Li KS to, which I am sure can be documented in secondary coverage of both topics, but not a complete and exhaustive listing. Masem (t) 17:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

    Well... according to this policy, which says the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice, "Having been edited by many editors" is probably a reason to assume that the result is "accepted practice". When accepted practice and the written rules diverge, it's the written rules that we're supposed to change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

    Even if we assume that this is "accepted practice", in the context of this RFC this practice is a series of editorial decisions in a very specific topic area, and isn't evidence at all that a global English Misplaced Pages policy like NOT should be changed. If policy written based on global consensus (NOT) and accepted practice in a narrow topic area diverge, the latter is supposed to change. spintheer (talk) 00:41, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

    Why do you say this? This policy literally says that the written rules, including NOT, do not set the accepted practice, and the accepted practice is supposed to win.

    Have you actually read the policy? Here's a relevant part:

    "Although some rules may be enforced, the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected.

    While Misplaced Pages's written policies and guidelines should be taken seriously, they can be misused. Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policies without considering their principles. If the rules truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them. Disagreements are resolved through consensus-based discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures. Furthermore, policies and guidelines themselves may be changed to reflect evolving consensus."

    Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines says "Technically, the policy and guideline pages are not the policy and guidelines in and of themselves. The actual policies and guidelines are behaviors practiced by most editors."

    In other words, if a policy page (e.g., NOT) and accepted practice diverge, the policy page is the one that needs to change. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

    I have indeed read the policy. I'm of the opinion that the tables above are not part of a practice that is accepted at a wide enough level to warrant ignoring the policy when this practice and NOT diverge. Obviously I understand that it is not exactly clear how to determine that, and it's basically for the community to decide where the line is drawn here (whether IGNORE applies). Based on the votes in this RFC, it looks like some in the community may agree with this idea (e.g. "ignore because it's a common practice and useful to the project"). I'll leave it to the closer to figure out what to do in this situation (genuinely curious to see how the arguments will be weighted here). spintheer (talk) 03:50, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

    I'm not sure that narrowly defined lists are at all an unusual practice. Consider discographies, of which we appear to have more than 10,000. I see no inherent difference between "List of the places this group flies to" and "List of the albums this group made". The difference between "airports the airline flies to" and "train stations the train company drives to" seems particularly artificial, and yet we have List of streetcar lines on Long Island, List of streetcar lines on Long Island, List of California street railroads, and many others. Someone says that airlines can change their list of destinations, which is true, but List of high-speed trains#High-speed trains no longer in service indicates that this is also true for rail, as does List of California railroads#Defunct railroads, List of former transit companies in Dallas, and many others.

    In terms of Heathrow Airport#Airlines and destinations, I might prefer a plain "list of airlines" and a plain "list of destinations", rather than a table that tells me which destinations each airline goes to, but IMO neither of them violates WP:NOT. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:48, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

    Yeah, looking at it again, I'm inclined to agree with your overall assessment about the ubiquity of such lists. Both can be true at the same time: I personally think that many of these lists (including the ones linked in this RFC) do fall under "indiscriminate collections of information", which violate NOT as it's currently written (for the same reasons mentioned before). At the same time, I do now agree that this pattern is wide enough to warrant seriously considering IGNORE in this case, and maybe even adjusting the policy towards some middle ground with a formal RFC that explicitly examines the matter. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that such an RFC would result in policy change. spintheer (talk) 01:49, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

    Just because there exists articles that may be from long standing practice doesn't mean that they are still within policy. There are lots of walled gardens of content on WP that we sometimes need to tear down the walls to bring the content more in line with what an encyclopedia covers (particularly as there is a sister project, Wikivoyage, far better suited for this information). We had to do that recently with sports athletes, for example, and its still taking a way to work through the walled garden of barely-notable athletes. Masem (t) 01:05, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither – Option 4 It's poor faith to suggest that "This is not meant to serve as a deletion venue" when – after having initiated numerous counterproductive RFCs – the nominator clearly seeks to subsequently delete content from thousands of articles. I share the concerns of SportingFlyer and OhanaUnited that this attempt to conflate and delete two different types of articles/sections is unnecessary. It's clear that the innumerable users and readers who contribute and read this content find it to be encyclopedic. Even if third-party websites also present the information in convenient ways, it's an important part of these articles for navigation and understanding. No part of this information is indiscrimate – they are narrowly defined lists that provide context to how an airport and its tenants operate. The airport destinations show to what extent an airport is a hub that serves its city's residents and those who travel through, and they show how it is connected to the region or world, with links to such connections that define the very purpose of the airport. Major newspapers and other reliable sources regularly include content about flights and what the airlines do at airports. This content isn't a directory like "the white or yellow pages", "loosely associated topics", or "A resource for conducting business". This content isn't "Summary-only descriptions of works", "Lyrics databases", "unexplained statistics", or "Exhaustive logs of software updates". This content isn't an instruction manual or travel guide that instructs people how to book a flight or includes overly specific descriptions of how or when each flight is flown. It does not violate NOT and is welcome to continue to be included in the encyclopedia without detriment to writers and readers. Reywas92 05:48, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  This is a very strict reading of NOT's examples, but it skips the opening line under "Encyclopedic content": Information should not be included solely because it is true or useful. An article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. This is why we don't blast the reader with all information about everything, and instead just summarize secondary sources on the matter. The argument that people find it useful and major newspapers regularly include this content are not at all relevant the question of whether the information should be included here, in an encyclopedia. This is exactly what NOT attempts to convey. Frankly (as a reader), I'd argue that a lot of the information in these tables is useless, but maybe I'm missing something important hidden in the data. If the goal is to give the reader important impressions about the data found in these tables, then cite reliable secondary sources that make these impressions instead of pasting the entire table here and leaving it to the reader to figure it out for themselves. spintheer (talk) 13:23, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Sure, and this summarizes sources by only naming the destinations, rather than including the flights' frequency or schedules, aircraft used, service history, or other details. These tables are by no means "everything" or only included because it's true, but because it's a key aspect of the subject covered by a variety of sources. While this information has not always been the best-referenced (such as including a source for a start or end date but removing it when the route actually begins), it's something that is being improved upon with both specific and general sources. Reywas92 16:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither - Option 4 per User:S5A-0043 and User:Reywas92. –Aaronw1109 06:54, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 (Both) (NOTE: I was alerted to this RfC by an announcement on my talk page.) I don't see the usefulness of these two articles; providing this detailed of information is getting into the weeds. IMHO, it would be far more useful if the information in these two articles were presented in a gif file, which would present the ebb & flow of BA routes in a manner far more useful to the casual reader. If a user consulting this article wanted more detailed information, then they can consult the sources cited to create these two gif files. -- llywrch (talk) 07:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  So this is useful, valid, encyclopedic content, you'd just rather see it as a map or image that still provides the details rather than a list. Of course, there have been several discussions about whether to include maps, which often take up more space, are harder to keep up to date (a gif would be much harder), and don't include navigational links or an easy way to provide sources. Reywas92 14:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• List of British Airways destinations violates WP:NOTDB and WP:NOT, because it is an indiscriminate collection of information, primarily collected from research on the website of British Airways and other primary sources. Indeed, it is practically impossible to source this kind of information from anyone but the airline, either directly or indirectly. It should also be said that this type of list typically does not survive AFD. FOARP (talk) 07:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  @FOARP, for clarity, can you elaborate on why you think List of British Airways destinations is "haphazard, random", made "without care or making distinctions, thoughtless"? That's the dictionary definition, but I wonder if that's really what you mean. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  If you'd prefer a more concrete question, then maybe explain why a list of places where a train goes can qualify for Misplaced Pages:Featured lists but a list of places where an airplane goes can't even qualify to exist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Easy answer is that rail stations and tracks are effective permanent fixture (though specific train routes may not be), while airlines can readily change flight offerings on a dime. As such, the infrastructure of raillines tends to get more detailed coverage in secondary sources that airlines routes. Masem (t) 18:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Basically this. A listing of airline services necessarily means an exhaustive listing of ephemera that changes week-to-week. They are not comparable to listings of fixed infrastructure. FOARP (talk) 16:57, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

  Do you honestly think that airlines add and remove destinations week to week? That's not consistent with my experience. The individual flight schedules may change, but the part about "Does this airline fly to New York at all?" is pretty stable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

  As shown by the sourcing on the BA list article, new routes are introduced or removed near daily, not for any one airline but as a whole. It's very mutable.

  But you second point is actually something that we should document, what airlines serve a specific airport; for major airports, that is pretty immutable (in that, it is rare when an airline completely removes themselves or adds themselves to an airport because of the infrastructure costs to set up offices and support services) and that is usually documented in non routine news. But that's far different as a list of all connecting cities since those can change on a whim. Masem (t) 20:17, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

  We document plenty of ephemera on this website, from sports squads to breaking news. Just because something gets updated frequently does not mean we need to exclude it. SportingFlyer T·C 20:59, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

  @SportingFlyer: Essentially, I agree. However, it may be a reason to focus more on lists of all connections that ever have existed, rather than on lists of just the current connections. (Actually, the fact that a certain connection existed for a given time but then was discontinued sometimes may be more interesting than the fact that another connection extsted and still exists; especially when we can add (sourced) reasons for the discontinuation.) JoergenB (talk) 20:08, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither - Option 4 per User:S5A-0043 and User:Reywas92. No need to reiterate again.Axisstroke (talk) 07:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3. For both airlines and airports, an extensive list, generally compiled from primary sources only, provides no encyclopedic value. Whether the lists are presented in standalone articles (as is the case for some airlines) or as a section within an overall article (as is the case for other airlines and most airports) is irrelevant to the question at hand. Rosbif73 (talk) 07:50, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  One thing I'll note is that it's historically been common for announced routes to be added with a start date and source (e.g. ) then after that date for both the date and source to be removed to limit footnote clutter (e.g. ) as the airline's cited timetable continues to verify the content – timetables were endorsed as an acceptable source for verification in an WP:AIRPORTS RFC. I believe this practice should be changed and the individual sources, often independent, be kept, but that's why they appear to be compiled that way. Reywas92 16:58, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither (option 4). Airports and airlines are important nodes and connections of a major part of transportation infrastructure. What destinations an airport connects to is just as relevant as to what destinations a railway station connects to, event though the lack of roads or rails makes the list more dynamic and in greater need of constant update. Likewise, where an airline flies is a major part of understanding an airline's scope, outreach and market impact. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:52, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4. The current list of British Airways destinations does have most cities listed with references. The deleted ones can inform the reader of where BA use to fly to. On the Air NZ list it has even more details of what year when a former destination started by the airline.

The current list of BA cities served at Heathrow has an immediate impact for the reader to visualize what is happening at that airport and is kept up to date. CHCBOY (talk) 08:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 1. The first page is a page solely for the destinations served by British Airways, which is not a notable topic by itself and does not strike me as a particularly encyclopedic list. But the second page is, in fact, Heathrow Airport; the British Airways stuff is one fact in one row of a table on that article -- which is, again, the article for Heathrow Airport, and not a list. Like... am I missing something here? Or is everyone else? Because Option 1 is clearly not going to be consensus, my second choice is Option 4, mainly because the presentation of the two pages is misleading -- they are both styled to appear like lists, despite only one article actually being one -- and because "this is not meant to serve as a deletion venue" is the least believable thing I have read all year. Gnomingstuff (talk) 08:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 neither, as these kind of lists are also published elsewhere, and so are not original research. However I will say that a current destination list is more useful. But for a major airline, the Misplaced Pages lists are not so useful as they could be very big and changing all the time. For small airlines, their destinations will be more constant, and be more stable, and could be included in the airline article. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:58, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4, or maybe 1. Per OhanaUnited. This feels like another attempt to relitigate the same thing. Stifle (talk) 09:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 (Both violate ND) per SMcCandlish. No need to flog each horse when the whole herd is dead. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:18, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Neither (option 4) Neither, as Misplaced Pages is cited accross several (non)-aviation plattforms exactly because it inherits a consistently reliable list of airlines and destinations for actually almost every airport. In my opinion these are very comparable to railway station articles that also cite the exact railway connections of a station, and here in most cases even without any source. Der HON (talk) 10:42, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 (neither). Multiple people have said why above better than I can, but in short these are notable topics presented in encyclopaedic context. Thryduulf (talk) 11:36, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 (both violate) The bulk of sourcing on both articles are questionable; the first uses mostly BA's own pages about itself, making it primary coverage, while the second uses an independent blog that doesn't give any indication of wider notability to the route changes. If these lists were dominated by proper third party reliable sources like newspaper coverage, that would be different, but as they stand, these violate the nature of the the prior RFC on airline routes. --Masem (t) 13:00, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  So this is a sourcing question, not a general NOT question, applied specifically to this airline/article, not the concept as whole. There are certainly more newspaper sources that can be added. Reywas92 14:38, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Using a bunch of routine business news to announce roylutes would still be a problem, as you now start getting into synthesis in the complication of these lists. If this is not stuff covered in secondary sources discussing the bulk of these routes, it's still a sign it fails WP:NOT. This basically feels like a form of trainspotting, which we don't document on WP. Masem (t) 17:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Of course there is also planespotting, which tracks specific aircraft. We are not doing that, just stating the general routes operated without complication or hobbyist details. How is there possibly synthesis here? I can't conceive of how original research can be involved in identification of a route. Reywas92 19:17, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  It's not a single route, it's effectively the entire network for one airline or in the case of the airport, all the spokes that airport connects to. Have reliable sources discussed that aspect as a whole, not just piece parts? If not, then we are getting into synthesis territory. Masem (t) 19:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  WP:SYNTH implies Do not combine material from multiple sources to state or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources. I have absolutely no clue how listing destinations would possibly violate WP:SYNTH, as we are presenting facts, not conclusions. SportingFlyer T·C 20:20, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 4 Concerns about primary sourcing are misapplied. Primary sourcing is fine for supporting basic statements of objective fact so long as it's not interpretive. They don't speak to notability, but then again, notability in this case is about the suitability of the articles existing, not inclusion criteria. As for the idea that the existence of such charts on dozens of article for a great many years now is somehow not a true consensus, I just laugh. Clearly there's consensus for their existence, else they wouldn't exist for so long in so many places, edited by dozens if not hundreds of editors. The idea that a handful of commenter who have never even contributed to these articles on an obscure project talk page (and spare trying to say it's not obscure) can dictate they shouldn't exist in obvious contravention to the clear long-standing consensus is just back door WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Claiming this isn't intended as a deletion discussion is disingenuous. oknazevad (talk) 13:28, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  Primary sources are fine to use as the mortar to fill in the information gaps left by secondary and third-party sources, but when the bulk of the information is coming from primary sources, that's a problem per WP:NOT, WP:V and WP:N. And the remaining arguments are variations of WP:ATA (been around a long time, edited by lots). Masem (t) 13:39, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

  If that's the case that we can't have things coming from primary sources, we'd have to get rid of a lot of geography infoboxes, sports statistics, most academics... SportingFlyer T·C 17:02, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

• Delete I know that's not an explicit option but it is implicit, and I support the deletion (or prevention of addition) under consistency and rationalizing coverage across articles. I might support a more nuanced or rational class carve-out from the general prohibition, but not one airline, or one airport (treating either of those 2 things in issue here as sui generis leads to only confusion, not encyclopedic coverage). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:50, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 (neither) As all the reasons other people have stated above. Removing this information collected over years would be detrimental to the aims of an encyclopedia.FlyingScotsman72 (talk) 16:13, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Neither. Perhaps the most important information in understanding an airline or airport is where they fly, which these lists provide. -- Tavix 18:22, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4, neither per SportingFlyer. The places to which airlines fly from an airport are paramount to the importance of said airport and therefore paramount to our coverage of that airport. J947 ‡ 04:16, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 Neither as they represent long established practice per WP:NOTLAW. But this poll seems vexatious and contrary to other sections of WP:NOT ... Andrew🐉(talk) 17:28, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 — My straightforward reading of this portion of WP:NOT seems decisive: "there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are relevant because they are associated with or significantly contribute to the list topic." Knowing where an airline has flown is a straightforward element of understanding it. Knowing where an airport is connected to is a significantly contributes to understanding its current utility. These are standard elements of rail station pages on Misplaced Pages and rightly so.--Carwil (talk) 17:31, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

  There's nothing wrong to identify the major hubs that a airline uses (to not mention Heathrow with respect to British Airways, or Atlanta with Delta, would clearly be missing key info), but what becomes a problem is when are the small regional airports that a airline might serve one year and drop the next, which pretty much is only going to be documented in primary sources. Similarly, it makes sense to say what destinations the majority of flights out of Heathrow reach (eg that it serves as a major international hub for Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asian nations) but listing all the smaller airports, which can change rapidly based on how the airlines change their routes, is a problem. We should be looking to see how RSes summarize an air line's reach or the connectivity of an airport, not trying to be exhaustive about it. Masem (t) 18:38, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

  The opposite may actually be true - if a smaller airport loses flights, that is typically of note in that community. SportingFlyer T·C 20:21, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 4 - I disagree that these inherently violate WP:NOT (of course, individual cases can be argued), and I supported keeping them back in the 2023 RfC. But I think it's also important to consider that while the 2023 RfC leaned towards "remove these unless clearly WP:DUE", these sections have mostly stayed in articles without significant pruning or alteration, suggesting de facto consensus is a bit broader than the RfC suggested. In that situation, it seems strange to have another RfC to try and tighten restrictions further? Andrew Gray (talk) 18:40, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 (neither); but mainly as a 'vote' in the "hidden underlying" discussion. This RfC was actually more or less motivated by a fairly broad encouragement to reopen this old RfC from January, 2018; so my 'vote' is for formally revoking that decision (taken by a fairly limited consensus). (Actually, it is already at least partially contradicted by several later RfC's; although it also could be considered as being more or less upheld in some older AfD's. See the discussion section.) JoergenB (talk) 00:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 There is a place in WP articles to include some places an airline flies, but to include an exhaustive list gives undue weight to locations that are merely represented on the airline's reference website, as opposed to locations that were actually met with notability by the media when announced. We have to remember that just because something can be verified does not mean it is notable. Let's review the policy on notability: "Misplaced Pages's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics. Article and list topics must be notable, or 'worthy of notice'."

All of that being said, we're not having this conversation on the airline's talk page, we're having it on the policy page. So where else does this issue come into play? Surely there are hundreds of lists currently on WP that could be considered exhaustive and not notable if debated individually. Where do we cross the line? I'm curious, editors who have voted Option 3, generally, how would you respond to this question? When is a list merited and when is it extraneous? Penguino35 (talk) 13:30, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

WP:N and this quotation refers to standalone articles as a whole, not individual facts within an article. There's no understating how many facts across articles are only based on a single source, often one that's not independent of something. Reywas92 16:48, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither, and any consensus here is unsuitable for a deletion discussion of airline destination lists (which needs to be properly notified on the articles itself) per WP:LEOPARD. Airport connectivity is an important and encyclopaedic part of what an airport is (the 1911 Britannica's articles about some seaports similarly list the main destination ports). In some cases there may be better presentations than a complete list, but just the fact that some list is accurate and complete should not be a reason to remove it. —Kusma (talk) 17:37, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  Key is the "main destination ports", not every possible port. There's little question that we shouldn't include major destinations that Heathrow serves, but we do not need the exhaustive list of every possible destination airport, particularly the regional ones, that it supports, since that particularly depends on a great deal of use of primary sourcing. Masem (t) 17:51, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  Again, we are allowed to use primary sources when writing articles, and this would introduce bias - for instance, Aer Lingus flies to Knock from Heathrow, which you might consider a "regional" airport, but that is a very important flight for understanding how Knock Airport is connected to the world commercially. Your proposal here doesn't make sense. SportingFlyer T·C 18:30, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  Knowing how Knock Airport is connected absolutely makes sense on that airport page, but it a drop in the water of information for an article about Hearthow. The problem with airport and airline information is that the value of that information absolutely depends on context, in part due to there being many many more airports than there are airlines. Knowing, on an airport page, what airlines have historically and currently serve it seems absolutely valuable, more-than-useful information and the type of info I see in secondary coverage of airports, but the reverse, knowing every airport an airline serves, seems to be indiscriminate information, since this list can be extremely large for airlines with large international presence, and rarely fully documented without turning to primary sources. Masem (t) 18:39, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  I completely and wholeheartedly disagree with you on this. You have also fallen into the trap of what is indiscriminate information and what isn't. A complete listing of all destinations is definitionally not indiscriminate since it is complete. SportingFlyer T·C 18:45, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  A complete, finite list can still be indiscriminate. For example, when we list casts of films, we do not include even every single name that appears as cast in the credits list (which is typically limited to around 50 or so names), but only stick to the principle ones as this follows how RSes cover that information. In the case of airlines, barring small regional carriers that only serve a few airports, a full list of airports they serve is not regularly documented in reliable sourcing on airlines, so that should also be considered indiscriminate. There's a lot of calls for "it's useful" , which is not an aspect that WP considers for retaining information. Masem (t) 19:18, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  There is a massive difference between "we don't need X" and the proposal of "we should make a rule that prohibits X". In the case at hand, I am strongly opposed to prohibiting the inclusion of complete lists but expect that a higher level summary might sometimes be better (possibly with the complete list moved to a subarticle). Option 4 gives us the most flexibility. —Kusma (talk) 18:30, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

• Neither per Kusma. Senior Captain Thrawn (talk) 18:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
• Just as "is this person notable" isn't appropriate for an RfC at WT:N, this is a question for AfD. — Rhododendrites \\ 20:05, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 - Destinations are a key aspect of the operations of airlines and airports. A list of destinations served by one of the world's largest airlines is appropriate, as it serves to show the scope and history of that airline's operations over the years. Including it on the main page would cause excessive clutter, and it is appropriate for it to have its own list. Same for an airport...the places that are directly served by that airport is a key piece of information on the airport's operations and provides, at a glance, how it "plugs in" with the rest of the world. Three notes:

1) I agree that this would be better served as separate RfCs;

2) I do NOT think it's an AfD discussion, as the Heathrow/BA are being use as examples of a type of article versus a discussion on deleting the individual articles;

3) and, though it's not specifically called out here in the RfC it has been a topic of discussion lately, so I'd like to note that I think using timetables, press releases, route maps, and other primary sources to populate these pages is an appropriate use of primary sources per WP:PRIMARY and shouldn't be discouraged. Those arguing that only secondary sources can be used need to review the policy. nf utvol (talk) 13:21, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

However PRIMARY also states Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. JoelleJay (talk) 18:53, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

• Option 4, neither - There has not been, and should not be, any policy banning such lists. Thincat (talk) 10:38, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4 as an editor who often edits airport articles. LibStar (talk) 01:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 This is the closest thing to my actual position which is that the articles should not exist and that that decision is influenced by degree of lack of compliance with wp:not. A list of a company's past and present products is what this is. North8000 (talk) 03:02, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
• Option 4: Neither - WP:NOT is not the key factor for these articles. WP:NLIST by way of WP:GNG is. Is the list discussed as a list in reliable sources? Yes? Well then it meets our criteria for being a worthwhile topic of consideration. If this RFC were to be closed for any of the other 3 options, it would not be a valid cause to delete articles anyway, per WP:LEOPARD, so this RFC is practically moot. Fieari (talk) 23:54, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

  Wow, so there is quite a lot of guidelines content for lists when they are part of a stand-alone articles (e.g. WP:SALAT literally says: "Some Wikipedians feel that some topics are unsuitable by dint of the nature of the topic. Following the policy spelled out in WP:NOT, they feel that some topics are trivial, non-encyclopedic, or not related to human knowledge. If you create a list like the "list of shades of colors of apple sauce", be prepared to explain why you feel this list contributes to the state of human knowledge.").

  However, this RFC is about how NOT applies to lists as content within the articles (including articles that are not stand-alone lists), which is an important distinction. That said, there does seem to be a pretty big overlap here. I hope that the closer writes an essay explaining their decision. spintheer (talk) 02:50, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

Jointly discussing these two types of lists is ridiculous, by the way. They are two separate pieces of information. The first focuses on airlines - many airlines will not be eligible for stand-alone articles, but especially historical airline routes have been the subject of study and discussion: or books such as Mapping the Airways. If the list or article passes WP:GNG, there is absolutely no reason we cannot have that on Misplaced Pages as it's encyclopedic information. The second focuses on current routes served at airports, which almost always will have some sort of article when new service is announced or dropped. These are two completely separate topics, both are encyclopedic, and both require their own RfCs. SportingFlyer T·C 02:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

The Wikivoyage argument is also completely wrong, considering travel guides do not normally include lists of destinations. SportingFlyer T·C 02:50, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Sportingflyer that it is silly to discuss these two lists together. They are different types of list. FOARP (talk) 07:02, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

They're not even "two types of lists"! One is a list, and one is an individual row on a table of the Heathrow Airport article. People are actually out here trying to apply GNG to individual facts within an article when the first sentence of GNG explicitly states it is about "stand-alone articles or lists." If it weren't for the apparently deep lore of this discussion, I would honestly believe that the reasoning for including #2 in this RfC was simply "row big." Gnomingstuff (talk) 16:36, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Object to Malformed RFC. In one case we have standalone articles, in the other case we have sections of articles, and the information is presented, maintained, organized, and sourced differently. We already have comments that seem to address one or the other, making it harder to respond specifically or to determine a useful consensus. Following previous discussions, there was also an understanding that yet another RFC would be discussed first. The proposer needs to make productive edits besides proposing to delete this informative content from Misplaced Pages over and over and over at various venues – it's poor faith to indicate this has "arisen in debates" when he is the one constantly trying to get rid of it. Hundreds of users contribute this content for hundreds of thousands to read, who are interested in this encyclopedic content. Reywas92 04:54, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

@Reywas92: Malformed or not; I think that this RfC is strange in several ways. (I should add that I haven't edited any airport or airline destination articles, and am new to this particular discussion; whence I may have misunderstood things. I do edit a few railway line and station articles, and consider those issues fairly parallel to these, though.) The proposal to which Sunnya343 refers above actually was to reconsider a RfC from January 2018 (item 2. below), in order either to revoke or to confirm it, before proceeding to further AfD's or alternatively restorations of deleted lists. It seems a bit hard to get a consensus on these matters; and I think that is one reason for an advice to Sunnya343 to list a specific case for RfC instead of inviting to a general discussion. I'm not criticising Sunnya343 for first asking about formulations for an RfC, and then more or less following the outcome of the resulting discussion; but, IHMO, the outcome of this attempt shows that that advice was not quite optimal.

In fact, the article A was up to an AfD yielding no consensus, according to a summary by Liz. Sunnya343 didn't like the outcome, and 'appealed' in favour of deletion (mainly arguing by decision 2., I'd say). However, apart from the weak majority for keep, Liz noted that there were a number of relevant RfC's, and that in fact taken together they did not support deletion.

The following are the five RfA's listed by Liz, but reordered in chronological order. (Liz presented them as a selection of the RfA's over, more or less, this subject.)

1. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Airports/Archive 15#Request for comments on the Airlines and destinations tables (December, 2016);

2. Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 140#Should Misplaced Pages have and maintain complete lists of airline destinations? (January, 2018);

3. Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive296#Mass deletion of pages - question of protocol (end of January, 2018);

4. Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 141#RFC: Should Misplaced Pages have lists of transportation service destinations? (March, 2018); and

5. Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 187#RfC on the "Airlines and destinations" tables in airport articles (November, 2023).

To this I think we should add the very AfD Liz closed; as Liz seems to have guessed, it was getting a markedly broader participation than any of the aforementioned RfC's:

6. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of British Airways destinations (April, 2024).

My preliminary conclusions are

that the decision 2. in practice already has been overturned or at least superceeded;

that the present RfC in practice also involves trying to overturn the (clear and endorsed) non consensus summary of 6. one more time; and

that both counted by argument strengths or by numbers there is no good hope of achieving a consensus about these kinds of lists in the forseeable future (exept possibly by the detestable means of 'sneaking' a decisions by a rather limited number of participants all already being pro or contra; I'm happy that Sunnya343 seems to guard against such abuse.). JoergenB (talk) 00:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

There's also the Deletion review in April 2024, that is missing on your list, which endorsed the closure of the AfD in the same month. OhanaUnited 03:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: This was the outcome of the 'appeal' of RfC 6; and I therefore didn't list it separately. Perhaps you'd like to add it as No. 6a? JoergenB (talk) 21:43, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

• Why is this RFC being held here? Talk pages for policies are not noticeboards and are not really the appropriate place to hold RFCs about the content of individual articles. The previous discussions raise WP:FORUMSHOP concerns as well. --Aquillion (talk) 17:59, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Notifications

• A-type lists: Participants in the 2018 RfC, Mar 2024 AfD
• B-type: Participants in the 2023 RfC
• WT:AIRPORTS, WT:AIRLINES

Sunnya343 (talk) 01:33, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

For posterity, I counted 12 !votes for option 3, 28 for option 4, and 1 for option 1. While I believe the combined questions resulted in a muddled RFC and justified the early withdrawal, there appears to be a decent preliminary consensus that neither lists of airline destinations nor destinations from airports violate NOT. I hope this has been enough discussions on the topic and these can be improved in format or sourcing rather than charged with removal again. Reywas92 05:07, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm obviously involved, but I agree with Reywas92's analysis, and I'm concerned that the early withdrawal was because consensus was so overwhelmingly against both, and there will be another attempt to forum shop in the near future. SportingFlyer T·C 05:31, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

involvement aside, why do experienced editors continue referring back to vote count in the context of determining consensus? Isn't the first thing that new editors learn about consensus is that it's not a vote? I don't understand this. spintheer (talk) 05:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

We all know very well that when 70% of people agree on something, that is at least a "preliminary consensus". You might not like the supermajority's reasoning, but there are still valid points made and it would be inappropriate to close it another way. This page does not say "flight destinations are a forbidden directory", so it's merely an opinion that these !votes are any more "firmly based". Reywas92 22:02, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Many of the Option 4 arguments fall within WP:ATA and while there were some that alluded to policy, the Option 3 !votes were more firmly based there. Thus, I would not take the vote count as a means to judge this for the future. Masem (t) 05:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

This wasn't a deletion discussion, it was a discussion about whether the content is encyclopedic. SportingFlyer T·C 05:52, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

If it wasn't encyclopedic, it wouldn't likely be kept or remain in that same format. I would think that because that's basically a step from deletion, the same ATA issues would apply. (And in general, many of the points in ATA apply to any other content disputes absent a deletion discussion such as WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, as pointed out in the 3rd lede paragraph) There's also WP:AADP, which many of the Option 4 !votes fell in line with, particularly the "it's useful" aspect. Masem (t) 05:58, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

We must be reading completely different discussions then. SportingFlyer T·C 06:06, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

(involved party) I also challenge this "withdrawal" by Sunnya343 and let someone else close this discussion, because there is clear consensus reached for option 4.OhanaUnited 15:54, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I also agree that the RFC should not have been withdrawn. I think the community was heading for consensus and by withdrawing the RFC, this unresolved question could be forum shopped. --Enos733 (talk) 18:00, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm also involved, but my feelings match those of OhanaUnited and Enos73 - there appears to be a clear consensus for option 4 and the withdrawal could be read as an attempt to avoid that. I'm assuming that this wasn't Sunnya's intention, but it would preferable for someone uninvolved to formally close the discussion - even as no consensus - to avoid the appearance of avoiding a consensus they were not advocating for. Thryduulf (talk) 19:53, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I have been editing these for years adding references too. There has been a long history of debating to get these lists removed from Misplaced Pages going back as far as 2007. So this won't be the last one more will come. CHCBOY (talk) 02:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

As an uninvolved editor, I've 'unwithdrawn' the RfC per the discussion above so that a closer can evaluate whether it reached consensus for anything. (I don't have time to evaluate that myself right now, so I'm hoping someone else will do that part.) -sche (talk) 03:21, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Imagine if there was a proposal to ban all list of songs by artists with all of the effort in finding all of the information. There would be a huge number of people upset especially with all of the historical content of chart positions etc. Once you try to remove one set of list articles it can lead to others becoming vulnerable and potentially being removed from Misplaced Pages as well. CHCBOY (talk) 19:08, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

now I am wondering, when will we be reaching consensus, I think a lot of people have already spoken. Metrosfan (talk) 14:06, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

RFCs typically run for at least 30 days. Thryduulf (talk) 18:55, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

• Misplaced Pages pages referenced by the press
• Misplaced Pages requests for comment