Misplaced Pages

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Revision as of 17:07, 29 June 2006 editHiding (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators45,138 edits Plot summaries← Previous edit Latest revision as of 10:19, 19 January 2025 edit undoDronebogus (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users21,370 edits 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?: ReplyTag: Reply 
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{{press |org='']'' |date=November 5, 2015 |author=Dewey, Caitlin |title=The most fascinating Misplaced Pages articles you haven’t read |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/11/05/the-most-fascinating-wikipedia-articles-you-havent-read/}}<!--


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== Misplaced Pages is not a link repository ==
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I'd like to raise again the point I raised ]: '''Misplaced Pages is not a link repository.''' Right now the guidelines say "Misplaced Pages is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files" but they disclaim this with "there is nothing wrong with adding a list of content-relevant links to an article." I've seen people use this to justify putting a bunch of links to fan discussion boards into an article. The guidelines need to take a firmer stand against this, so that articles don't end up with wars over which fan sites are "good enough" or "large enough" to be linked from an article. - ] 17:13, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
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*See ]. ] 20:09, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
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::Aha, thanks - I'll add a link from the article to that. - ] 22:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
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:::Sometimes I find ] and ] somewhat contradict; For instance, "Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox", #3. advertising where it says:
{| class="messagebox plainlinks small-talk" style="width: {{{box-width|238px}}}"
::::''"External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they can serve to identify major corporations associated with a topic (see finishing school for an example)."''
|
:::This compared with ], #3. "Sites that primarily exist to sell products or services."
*Topic: ] (November 2005–January 2006)
:::The wording cited above in ] was added in by ] and refers to ], version.
*Topic: ] (May–July 2007)
:::I don't think this wording in "WP is not a soapbox" is so useful anymore. People could use it to justify all sorts of commercial links and advertising for products and services. I suggest revising or eliminating this sentence from ] and ensuring ] and ] better support eachother, as one way of having the guidelines take a firmer stance. &mdash;] <small>(] | ])</small> 23:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
*Topic: ] (2003)
:This has been slightly updated in the light of WP:en passing the million article mark. At one time an external link served the useful purpose of covering something we hadn't reached yet. Now, if an external link offers something that is still not covered within our sites (and I'm included Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc here) then if it offers something clearly beneficial to the reader to have a link to then by all means include it, but be sparing of such things and, where possible, use it as a spur to writing a free-to-all article instead!. --]:] 01:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
*Topic: ] (July–October 2007)
::This ignores the fact, that the *vast* majority of external links are to sites that do things that no Wiki Media project does, or allows. The size of Misplaced Pages is irrelevant. Very few external links are to other encyclopedias, so there's no comparison. --] 01:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
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== Can we remove the "And finally" section? ==
== Misplaced Pages is not a how-to-do guide ==


it has no place in wikipedia and it shouldn't even exist in the first place ] (]) 12:35, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
Many articles are written in style where the reader is addressed directly, as if the material in question was copied from a how-to-do-guide, instruction manual or something like that. This is quite usual style in many articles, and I understand that instructions can be encyclopedic just as any other material. It's the style I'm worried about. Do we really need large parts of articles written like the (invented) examples below?


:makes no sense to remove. It's a catchall that NOT cannot enumerate everything WP is not. ] (]) 13:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
:-If the patient doesn't breath, do this or that.
::its just unfunny jokes if you checked it out, humorous essays shouldn't be part of main policies ] (]) 16:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
:-After welding the parts together, let them cool before .. blah blah blah
:::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. ] (]) 00:22, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
:-You can find the connector by opening the ....
:-First run a disk manager; if the ..
etc. etc.


== Notice of a requested redirect from ] to here ==
I haven't find a good way to address this situation. Maybe a new template that could be used to mark articles that need a style change? There are lots of articles written in this style, and if it is deemed inappropriate, something should be done. Well, is this kind of style desired or undesired? ] 18:21, 5 January 2006 (UTC)


The redirect request can be found on ]. ] (]) 03:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)
Oops. I actually stumbled upon a line where it actually reads: '''Misplaced Pages is not an instruction manual'''. Ok, fine, policy is known. Should we set up a project to correct those pages where this kind of style is used? ] 18:32, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
:If the articles are in fact how-to guides, and cannot be rewritten to not be how-to guides, they should be nominated for ]. And I would say the sample lines you quoted above are from how-to guides. -- '''<font color="navy">]</font><sup><font color="green">(])</font></font></sup>''' 20:05, 5 January 2006 (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? ==
:Some of these could be rewritten to not be how-to guides. For example:


<!-- ] 19:01, 7 February 2025 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1738954866}}
:-Typically, if a patient is not breathing, the proper course of action a person would take would be to ...
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This RfC concerns the ] and ] policies.
Whether or not a how-to article can be rewritten should be taken into account before nominating it for deletion. --'''<font face="Georgia">] ] ]</font>''' 00:21, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
: Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought most how-to guides were ]'d to Wikibooks. Transwiki is an action which can be taken by any editor and does not generally require deletion. ] ] 01:36, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


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 ].
Every time I've seen discussion regarding an article being too "how toish," - comments to the author(s) of the article generally direct them to move that content to a Wikibook /shrug --]|<sup>]</sup> 05:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


The pages concerned, from what I have found, are: ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] (and ).
Deleting the content seems bad when there is no place to move it to. Perhaps we need to clearly establish that wikibooks can be short, and that this is where such material belongs. No reason to delete helpful stuff!] 07:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)


My question for which I request comments is: is putting these long lists of religious feasts in those articles a violation of ] or ], and if it so happens that they are a violation then what should be done with these lists? ] (]) 18:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
I'm a bit confused where to draw the line on this sometimes. I mostly work on articles in the ], ], and ] categories, and there is a bit of "how-tooishness" to a lot of articles there. Part of this might be because gardening encyclopedias (the kind printed on paper) have a lot of how-tooish content. Perhaps part of the problem is that these fields are applied, as opposed to theoretical, and so many articles there are describing methods and techniques. I get a bit worried that someone will get into deletion mode in those categories, thereby scaring off a lot of people with a lot of knowledge, who would otherwise be able to provide valuable content. Perhaps there needs to be a bit more leeway when it comes to applied sciences? ] 14:46, 29 January 2006 (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 ], 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.) --] (]) 23:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
HOWTOs are great. Linearized articles dealing with procedures in the way they would typically be executed are excellent resources to refer to. Jimbo says were doing this for That Girl in Africa. We should give her all the tools She needs, by covering applications and techniques. If howto format is unacceptable, an example of procedures and expectations may suffice. (Deletion is not the default solution) ] 15:53, 2 February 2006 (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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 10:19, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
There are a couple of places online where one can place HowTo Articles I would suggest my site which is uses ] or which is inspired by ] OpenTutorial is still in it's very early infancy but has potential to be a great resource with some help of course. --] 03:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
:The Wikimedia project ] takes how-to guides (]), and they can be transwikied to there from here. ] 10:13, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


==Addition to WP:NOTDICTIONARY==
Added category: . Self-explanatory. ] 12:39, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
I propose to add the following bullet (4) to the ] 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. ]), then it is reasonable to include the variant names in the lead.
Discussion? --] (]) 19:55, 5 January 2025 (UTC)


:To some extent this seems to stand in contradiction to ], 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. —] (]) 20:23, 5 January 2025 (UTC)
== Misplaced Pages '''is''' censored, whether we like it or not ==
::I've never met a gazetteer, and I guess I should be glad I don't, right? There's also ], but both are essays anyway. ] (]) 02:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I think maybe you're thinking of a ]? —] (]) 03:06, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
::I don't see a contradiction with ], which is about what ''places'' to mention. But ] is relevant for place''names''. 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 ]). 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 ] section mentions local names ''along with'' the local variants in Brazil etc. In the ], 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 ], where ] -- correctly in my view -- a long list of translations or equivalents of the expression (many without sources). --] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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 ] already, a section in the ] article makes sense. But then, as {{U|Masem}} indicated for Beef Stroganoff, there's much more there than just a translation of a word. ] (]) 02:49, 6 January 2025 (UTC)


== Should ] be more specific about phone numbers, etc.? ==
I believe the elimination of the words "for the benefit of minors" has created a lot of the confusion now at ].


I came across an {{tl|Infobox school}} recently that was misusing free text parameters to list the school's phone number. "As we all know", {{tq|contact information such as phone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses is not encyclopedic}}, so I removed it "per ]". 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 ] 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. ] (]) 13:40, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The fact is, Misplaced Pages '''is''' censored, and it has to be. As I pointed out on ], we have no images, thankfully, at ]. We also don't show the picture in question at ].
:It still states contact information is to be avoided under #6. ] <small>(])</small> 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. ] (]) 05:02, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:::That makes sense, and the search term angle is compelling. ] (]) 23:34, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
:NOTDIRECTORY #6 is already too long. Making it longer will not aid compliance. ] already says {{tq|school_number Official number (not for phone number).}} and {{tq|information (do not enter phone numbers or email addresses).}} Are those notes unsatisfactory? ] is, I think, mainly used to advance deletion opinions at ] intended to have the strength of policy over mere ] notability guidance. What, in your view, should happen to ]? Take care that changes to policy do not have unintended consequences. ] (]) 16:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::Adding {{tq|(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. ] (]) 19:25, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::{{tq|#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.<br />
::{{tq|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 {{tl|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.<br />
::{{tq|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. ] (]) 05:58, 12 January 2025 (UTC)


==RfC on WP:NOT and British Airways destinations==
I think we need to be more specific about what is not censored. I believe the wording should be something along the lines of: '''Indecency and blasphemy are not censored on Misplaced Pages.''' I believe indecency was what was meant in the original wording of the policy. -- ] 05:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
<!-- ] 01:01, 12 February 2025 (UTC) -->{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|1739322068}}
:I agree with Mwalcoff, Misplaced Pages '''is''' censored and should be in some cases. This is a clear case of "use common sense" - Misplaced Pages shouldn't contain pictures of, say, hardcore porn. Similarly, we should (and thankfully often do) have some taste and not include some material even if we could. Just because we have the legal '''right''' to say gratuitously offensive things or include silly pics doesn't mean we have the '''obligation''' to (as the more shrill members of the "OMG, WP:NOT censored!" crowd seem to suggest.) ] ] 10:40, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
::Just so I can follow you correctly. Why "Misplaced Pages shouldn't contain pictures of, say, hardcore porn."? If the article was discussing hardcore porn or the specifics of that scene (ie. if it were from a movie and the article was about that movie), why should it not be included? Why is it common sense to not include it? Just because some people are offended by images of sex does not mean it should not be included. That is the point, IMO, of WP:NOT. It prevents people from being able to use their own world of 'that is offensive, that is not offensive' in working on articles. I would not find the mentioned subject offensive and would not disapprove of it being included - but I may, as a vegan, find a picture of animal cruelty offensive. I should not be able to make that judgement claiming 'common sense'. -] <sup>]</sup> 10:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
{{rfc|econ|rfcid=4A58B81}}
:::Well, judging from the content of the ]/] articles the consensus there seems to be that there is no need for such pictures. It seems to me that it is "common sense" that WP is an encyclopaedia and only material likely to educate should be included. For example, I have no problem with the pics at ] or ] - they serve an educative function. However, do we need a pic at, I dunno, ]? At ]? At ]? I don't think we do; including such pics is simply gratuitous. I.e. WP '''is''' (and should be) pragmatically censored. ] ] 11:01, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Do the following violate ]? A) ], and B) ].
:::Some editors seem to feel they need to include the most offensive image they can find to illustrate an article. Misplaced Pages is not in the business of deliberately offending readers or of testing the limits of what the law will allow. As an example of what I consider taking things too far, look at ]. Images have been placed there in a way that I think was intended to shock readers. They certainly go beyond what is necessary to illustrate the subject. I think it is in particularly bad taste to use an image of a semi-erect penis to illustrate male public hair. I've raised that question on the talk page, with no response. I would replace the image, but I don't happen to have any PD photos of male genitalia lying around. -- '''<font color="navy">]</font><sup><font color="green">(])</font></font></sup>''' 12:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
*'''Option 1''': Only A violates WP:NOT
::::You are missing my point. Mentioning 'Child Pornography' and 'bestiality' show that you do not understand my point (IIRC they are both illegal in Florida so would not be allowed on the site anyway). My point is that 'Misplaced Pages is not censored' should not come down to a 'common sense' decision - as your view of common sense may be skewed depending on what you find offensive. The fact that you find an image of a semi-erect penis offensive proves this and is not the fault of the author of the page but is your fault for finding it offensive (as it is mine for finding other things offensive). Including that picture is not perfect (it is a poor example of pubic hair (not much contrast)), I agree, as it is though we have no better pictures so complaining about it being offensive is POV. It is a picture of hair and genitals... The word offensive is subjective and so is one's 'common sense'... -] <sup>]</sup> 13:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
*'''Option 2''': Only B
:::::And you are missing mine. I did not say I was offended. I said I thought some editors were choosing images because they wanted to shock and offend, and I think that approach is bad for Misplaced Pages. We need to select images that illustrate a subject while giving the least offense possible. The subject in this case is pubic hair, not erections, and including a photo of an erection to illustrate pubic hair is, in my opinion, deliberatel;y offensive and trying to see how far something can be pushed. And, again, I strongly feel that is bad for Misplaced Pages. -- '''<font color="navy">]</font><sup><font color="green">(])</font></font></sup>''' 00:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
*'''Option 3''': Both A and B
::::::You are seemingly not ] on that issue. Have you checked through the images on wikipedia to see if there is a better image to show there? As I stated, the showing of the image is more than likely due to a lack of others that are PD. Offense is still a subjective word. -] <sup>]</sup> 11:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
*'''Option 4''': Neither A nor B
:::::::Another example, ] was (and still is) in ], illustrating female pubic hair. An editor then added ] at the top of the article. As there was already a perfectly adequate illustration of female pubic hair in the body of the article (in case any readers didn't know what it looked like), the only reason I can think of for adding ] at the top of the article was for shock value. Images of potentially offensive items should be 'clinical' in nature, as befits an encyclopedia, and not intended to appeal to prurient interests or to try for maximum shock value. -- '''<font color="navy">]</font><sup><font color="green">(])</font></font></sup>''' 11:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
] (]) 00:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
::::::::What I am trying to say is that it should not by '''policy''' to censor things but instead should be taken on a case by case basis (as the current policy states that things placed for shock value may be removed). The title of this policy should reflect the content - ie. 'Misplaced Pages is not censored to prevent offense' reflects the content, whereas 'Misplaced Pages is not censored' or 'Misplaced Pages is not censored for the protection of minors' are too wide and too narrow meanings respectively. If you have issues with specific articles, it should be taken up on that page and a policy to back you up does not need to be in place. -] <sup>]</sup> 14:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
:::::I'm not sure that anyone would need photos of something they almost surely have. ]<b>]</b> 20:33, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
::::::So we shouldn't have pictures of anything that people 'almost surely have'. What about stuff that people almost all will know about? Just because people have something themselves does not mean it should not be included in Misplaced Pages... -] <sup>]</sup> 21:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
: So the experiment in changing the section title has been in place for about a month. As some predicted, it is causing new (or at least different) confusion and ambiguity. Do we have enough experience to recommend changing it back yet? It sounds to me like the answer is "yes". ] <small>]</small> 15:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
::I think it should not be changed back but clarified more - something like ''Misplaced Pages is not censored to prevent offense'' or similar. Stating ''for minors'' is just one aspect as there are many adults who may think it should be censored for their beliefs also. -] <sup>]</sup> 15:49, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


===Context===
:::I think there's a difference between the political or religious offense potentially created by the Muhammad cartoons and the innate revulsion people may feel at seeing, say, graphic depictions of gay sex (if they're heterosexual) or certain bodily functions. If we say Misplaced Pages is not censored for offensiveness, I'm afraid it will leave some people with the perception that this type of repulsive images may not be removed. -- ] 23:42, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
*A-type lists: In ] 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 ].
*B-type lists: ] 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 ]. 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 ].
] (]) 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 {{ping|Liz|prefix=|p=}} in her (later endorsed) closure of the original AfD also is a highly relevant part of the context; as is that AfD itself. ] (]) 00:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)


===Survey===
::::I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying images such as those described should be removed? I think that if the image has a purpose then even if it is 'repulsive' (which is majorly POV anyway) it should stay. As the content of the section reads now it follows either 'Misplaced Pages is not censored' or 'Misplaced Pages is not censored to prevent offense'. It states that it isn't censored for social norms (which those things you mention are social norms for those parts of society) so I cannot see what you are saying? -] <sup>]</sup> 10:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
*'''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 and 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 ], or a ] reorganized from flight databases.<p>In regard to past destinations, I agree with discussing the development of BA's route network over time. For example, in ], 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 ]. ] (]) 00:28, 8 January 2025 (UTC)</p>
*'''Option 3'''. Basically, listcruft is listcruft is listcruft. We want notable information, not indiscriminate information. - ] ] 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:'''Option 4''' None of them violates ], 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 ] (]) 06:41, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''3'''. We just had a lengthy but conclusive RfC about this, with a ] conclusion. There is no reason to make an exception for a particular airline or airport. <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — ] ] ] 😼 </span> 01:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' Neither of these violate ]. This is an absolutely ridiculous evergreen proposal. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 01:55, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:I'm actually livid right now. Putting this at ] is just another tactic to try to ensure that completely valid encyclopedic information cannot be included anywhere on the site. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 01:57, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*::In order to violate ], 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 ]. Analysis under ] 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 .
*::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 ] 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... ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 02:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:Same here, these list of destinations do not violate <nowiki>]</nowiki> ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:<s>'''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</s>
*:<br>
*:Changing to '''Option 4''' plus '''Neither''' vote, my comment is ridiculous but, I must say, both of them are not violates ], 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.
*:<br>
*:As for the airport pages, it can say but for some airline (with separate destinations lists), we can merge to the main airline page. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] ~ <small>]</small> 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. ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 05:08, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
* '''Neither''' of these are inherently policy violations. This is not a case of {{xt|a directory of everything in the universe that exists or has existed}}. It's not a case of {{xt|Simple listings without contextual information}} or {{xt|loosely associated topics}} or anything else. It's not a case of {{xt|an indiscriminate collection of information}} or {{xt|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 ] shortcut, they would be hard pressed to justify claims of a policy violation. ] (]) 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:
:{{tq|], ] ... ] exists ... there is no reason cannot be created and maintained there with a cross-wiki link in the enWiki article (i.e. <nowiki>]</nowiki>). I presume the purpose of Wikivoyage is to serve as the very travel guide enWiki is not supposed to be.}}
:—&nbsp;]&nbsp;&#x2693;&nbsp;] 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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.) ] (]) 18:10, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Option 4 (Neither)'''. I can somewhat understand how airport destinations may be problematic under ] but I've never understood why airline destinations fall under the same criteria. Firstly, as Whatamidoing pointed out, none of the ] 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? ]<sup>]</sup> 03:06, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Option 4 (Neither)'''. This area has been discussed ad nauseam and I share the same frustration as {{u|SportingFlyer}}. It is the second large scale discussion initiated by Sunnya343 on the same page in 9 months and a thinly disguised ]. "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 ] and stop wasting community members' time. After this RfC finishes, I intend to start a TBAN discussion on Sunnya343's forumshopping behaviour. ]] 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. ''']]''' 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. &mdash;]]] 05:30, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Option 3 (both).''' Both lists appear (to me) to fall under the category of {{tq|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 {{tq|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 {{tq|indiscriminate}}). ] (]) 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). ]<sup>]</sup> 05:48, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
**:Replying to these in order: 1. {{tq|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. {{tq|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. {{tq|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. {{tq| 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. ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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. ] (]) 17:01, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
**::::Well... according to this policy, which says {{xt|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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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 ], 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 ] should be taken seriously, they can be misused. Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the ] of policies without considering their ''principles''. If the rules truly prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ]. Disagreements are resolved through ] discussion, not by tightly sticking to rules and procedures. Furthermore, policies and guidelines themselves ] to reflect ]."
**::::::] 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. ] (]) 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). ] (]) 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 ], ], ], and many others. Someone says that airlines can change their list of destinations, which is true, but ] indicates that this is also true for rail, as does ], ], and many others.
**::::::::In terms of ], 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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 {{u|SportingFlyer}} and {{u|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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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": {{tq|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. ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 16:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Neither - Option 4''' per ] and ]. –] ] ] 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. -- ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 14:35, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
* ] violates ] and ], 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. ] (]) 07:16, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:@], for clarity, can you elaborate on why you think ] 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. ] (]) 18:22, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*::If you'd prefer a more concrete question, then maybe explain why ] can qualify for ] but a list of places where an airplane goes can't even qualify to exist. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 20:59, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Neither - Option 4''' per ] and ]. No need to reiterate again.] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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. ] ] 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. ] (]) 08:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::I am saying that the policy as currently written is too broad. I think that a policy that prevents editors from removing graphic pictures of excretion, abortion, bizarre sexual practices, etc. should be changed. If I click on a link to an article about a train wreck, I don't want to wind up staring at a picture of a victim with his eyeball hanging out. -- ] 00:24, 10 March 2006 (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, ''']'''; 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 08:58, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Option 4''', or maybe 1. Per OhanaUnited. This feels like another attempt to relitigate the same thing. ] (]) 09:37, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Option 3 (Both violate ND)''' per {{u|SMcCandlish}}. No need to flog each horse when the whole herd is dead. &mdash; Cheers, ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. --] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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. ] (]) 17:04, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:::Of course there is also ], 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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. ] (]) 19:26, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
*:::::WP:SYNTH implies {{tq|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 ], as we are presenting facts, not conclusions. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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 ]. Claiming this isn't intended as a deletion discussion is disingenuous. ] (]) 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). ] (]) 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... ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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). ] (]) 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.] (]) 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. --] <sup>(])</sup> 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. ''']]''' ‡ <sup>]</sup> 04:16, 9 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Option 4''' Neither as they represent long established practice per ]. But this poll seems vexatious and contrary to other sections of ] ... ]🐉(]) 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.--] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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? ] (]) 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 ] 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.) ] (]) 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 ] weight to locations that are merely represented on the airline's reference website, as opposed to locations that were actually met with ] 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: {{tq|"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? ] (]) 13:30, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
::] 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 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 ]. 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. —] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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. ] (]) 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. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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. ] (]) 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. —] (]) 18:30, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' per Kusma. ] (]) 18:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
*Just as "is this person notable" isn't appropriate for an RfC at ], this is a question for AfD. &mdash; <samp>] <sup style="font-size:80%;">]</sup></samp> \\ 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 ] and shouldn't be discouraged. Those arguing that only secondary sources can be used need to review the policy. ] (]) 13:21, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
::However PRIMARY also states {{tq|<strong>Do not</strong> base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them.}} ] (]) 18:53, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
* '''Option 4, neither''' - There has not been, and should not be, any policy banning such lists. ] (]) 10:38, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
* '''Option 4''' as an editor who often edits airport articles. ] (]) 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. <b style="color: #0000cc;">''North8000''</b> (]) 03:02, 16 January 2025 (UTC)


===Discussion===
::::::But is that not your POV? Just because '''you''' think something is offensive does not mean everyone else does. I think the idea of being able to say 'this picture will offend people so we shouldn't include it even if it does serve a purpose' is wrong to the largest level. A picture of a rail crash victim would only be appropriate if the article was discussing that - else it is already covered as it would be an innappropriate image. -] <sup>]</sup> 08:56, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
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 ], 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. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 02:14, 8 January 2025 (UTC)


:The Wikivoyage argument is also completely wrong, considering travel guides do not normally include lists of destinations. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 02:50, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::::And this is where I think you're wrong. I don't like this ultra-relativistic idea that because "offensiveness" or "repulsiveness" is in the eye of the beholder, no discretion for good taste should be allowed, not even to spare us from the gruesome or disgusting types of images I've mentioned. I don't know how the section should be worded, but it ought to draw the line somewhere between banning pictures of breasts at ] and saying that anything goes as long as it isn't illegal. -- ] 23:06, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
:I tend to agree with Sportingflyer that it is silly to discuss these two lists together. They are different types of list. ] (]) 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 ''''']''''' 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." ] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 04:54, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
If WP is not censored ''at all'' what does the phrase "obviously inappropriate content" refer to? Localzuk, do you think anything flies? I.e. that we should have simulated child porn pics @ ]? (these are not illegal, look quite real and are widely available). ] ] 14:31, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
:No, but I do not think a policy stating that stuff should be removed should be the case. I think it depends on each article and the consensus reach at that article. The innappropriate content refers to stuff such as the examples given. But this is based upon the decisions of editors at the specific article and not by referring to a policy stating 'offensive, or innappropriate material should be removed'. Simulated child porn is still illegal... -] <sup>]</sup> 14:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
::Ok, but what policy states that offensive material '''can''' be removed? Currently, policy seems to favour those who want material included rather than those who want it removed. From my experience, if several editors want content removed, it takes only one person to come round yelling "WP:NOT censored!!!!!" to put it to a stop. ] ] 14:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
:::I forgot to say: If a person is interested in learning about 'Pubic Hair', why would they be offended by an image of the topic? Surely if a person goes to read an article about that subject they expect to see images of the genital area as examples?
:::To answer the question regarding policy that says material can be removed - well, that depends on the definition of 'offensive' and the material at hand. If for example it were an insult against a person which was unreferenced then it would be removed as unreferenced. If it were referenced then it would still be offensive and could stay. If it were an image of, say, an abortion on the abortion page - it would likely cause offense to those opposing abortion (or those suffering from post abortion stress syndrome), but I would argue that it should stay. It could be removed if it was an inappropriate image - this being defined as one that does not belong there.
:::If the person 'yelling "WP:NOT censored!!!!!"' is misinterpretting the policy then that helps your argument - if they are correct and you are all arguing to remove an item based on personal beliefs, standards or morals then you are incorrect IMO. My point is and always has been that 'offensive' is completely POV and as such should not be anywhere near a policy. -] <sup>]</sup> 14:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
::::To answer the question about 'pubic hair', you assume that the reader baiscally knows what the term is, so that they are prepared to see a picture. What if it is their first time to encounter the word ], and they don't know what to expect? Perhaps we do them a diservice to present the image, at least without a warning first. What if it is a 12 year old boy that wants to find full-color video of adults having sex at ]? That still doesn't mean we can or should present those images. We shouldn't default to a position of every article having the most shocking/revealing/pornographic image possible. ]\<sup>]</sup> 22:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


:{{ping|Reywas92}} Malformed or not; I think that this RfC is strange in several ways. <small>(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.)</small> The proposal to which {{ping|Sunnya343|prefix=|p=}} 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.
Thanks to "Misplaced Pages is not censored for minor" translation, lot of censorship happens in Japanese wikipedia. No inclusion of name or photos of vicitims of crimes for example. Can you change it to "Misplaced Pages is not censored to cater to political, social, religious, or any other kind of cultural sensitivities." ]
:True. Misplaced Pages is censored up to a '''certain point'''. The above-mentioned title by FWBOarticle gives a more accurate representation of Misplaced Pages. --<font style="background:gold">]]</font><sup><font style="background:yellow">]</font></sup> 06:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


:In fact, the article A was up to an AfD yielding no consensus, according to a summary by ]. 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.
== Plagiarism ==
: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.)
Hi, I'm fairly new to Misplaced Pages and have just observed a user copying large bulks of writing from within an external source and putting it in wikipedia. Is this allowed or does it need to be reworded before it can be added? I just want to clarify before raising the point with the user himself. ''']''' ] 06:26, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
:1. ] (December, 2016);
:2. ] (January, 2018);
:3. ] (end of January, 2018);
:4. ] (March, 2018); and
:5. ] (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. ] (April, 2024).


:My preliminary conclusions are
:If the original is copyrighted and not released under a license compatible with the ] it is against Misplaced Pages policy and should be treated a copyvio. If the external source for some reason is in the public domain, it may be OK (provided the material is suitable for WP to begin with), but the source needs to be acknowledged. Please give a link to the relevant diff. ] 06:44, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
::'''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 <small>(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.)</small>. ] (]) 00:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::There's also the ], that is missing on your list, which endorsed the closure of the AfD in the same month. ]] 03:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
::::{{ping|OhanaUnited}} This was the outcome of the 'appeal' of RfC&nbsp;6; and I therefore didn't list it separately. Perhaps you'd like to add it as No.&nbsp;6a? ] (]) 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 ] concerns as well. --] (]) 17:59, 15 January 2025 (UTC)


===Notifications===
:Nobleeagle, for all that Misplaced Pages opposes plagiarism in principle, too many of its active editors applaud it in practice. On two occasions, I found and pointed out extensive, unmistakable plagiarism in featured article candidates. Was the plagiarism removed? For the most part, no. The "editors" who wrote the articles claimed what they did was OK, because they changed a handful of words in each paragraph, often doing no more than changing tenses. The editors' friends raise hell, enlisting sympathetic administrators to threaten me with blocks and bans. The articles, both quite poor, were "promoted" to feature articles and labelled as being examples of Misplaced Pages's best work. So save yourself a lot of trouble. You're a new user, the plagiarist isn't. Unpleasant as it may seem (and unpleasant as it is), disputes like the one you describe are almost always resolved in favor of the editor with the most experience and the most extensive network of friendly editors. Spare yourself the annoyance and unpleasantness, and lie low. ] 00:02, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
*A-type lists: Participants in the ], ]
*B-type: Participants in the ]
*], ]
] (]) 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. ]<sup>]</sup> 05:07, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::Do you remember which articles they were? ] 21:55, 24 March 2006 (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. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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. ] (]) 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". ]<sup>]</sup> 22:02, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
::Many of the Option 4 arguments fall within ] 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. ] (]) 05:50, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::This wasn't a deletion discussion, it was a discussion about whether the content is encyclopedic. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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 ], as pointed out in the 3rd lede paragraph) There's also ], which many of the Option 4 !votes fell in line with, particularly the "it's useful" aspect. ] (]) 05:58, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
:::::We must be reading completely different discussions then. ] ''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:top;">]</span>''·''<span style="font-size:small; vertical-align:bottom;">]</span>'' 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.]] 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. --] (]) 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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 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.) ] (]) 03:21, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
:::] and ]. ] 22:06, 24 March 2006 (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. ] (]) 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. ] (]) 14:06, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:For the record, in almost all cases plagiarism is not an acceptable course of action for an editor to take. Even if the source is "free" it is likely to be seen as a copyvio if there isn't a clear GFDL licence and the dates applicable can be proven. Most plagiarism, however, happens from commercial sites ... --]:] 02:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
::::RFCs typically run for at least 30 days. ] (]) 18:55, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

==Misplaced Pages is not a Recipe Book==

After finding one article that was completely on the making of a food product, I searched for others and found several very recipe-oriented articles. To say that a certain sauce is usually made with the following ingredients, or a vegetable can be cooked or eaten in some of these ways is acceptable, but listing the actually preparation and/or measurement of ingredients does not seem conducive to an encyclopedia.
*That's generally considered to be covered by the 'how-to' section (consensus is to move to wikibooks). --] 20:12, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
*Why not? A recipe is a factual description of how to make the food in the article. It seems to me the basic recipe for any food (and there are numerous foods in this encyclopedia) is a fundemantal part of what that food is. Variant recipes I would agree have no room - but I would strongly argue that the default basic recipe for any food is a part and parcel of what that food is. Of course, if the food is chicken then no recipe could accompany that - but if it is bread, you should have the basic recipe in the article - surely it is a failing just to list the ingredients and not to list how to put them together. {{unsigned|66.82.9.61}}
*Because people don't go to encyclopedias for recipes. That's not what an encyclopedia is for. That's what a recipe book is for. ]<b>]</b> 05:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
*I agree. If I want a recipe for chile con carne I will Google etc until I find one I like. But... If I am looking up about bread making, I would be further educated by having a sample recipe for basic bread. I can then Google to find all sorts of cheesy breads or raisin breads or wheat breads and so on - but I'll go to Google pre-armed with the basic knowledge of how bread is made. {{unsigned|Webchat}}
* We decided long ago that recipes belong in Wikibooks, specifically in ]. The problem is that there is no real "default basic recipe" for any food. There are 6 different "basic" bread recipes that jump immediately to mind, each favored by a particular culture. How would you pick between them? Rather than argue in the encyclopedia article, we've found that it generally makes more sense to create a cross-wiki link from the Misplaced Pages ] article to an ] in Wikibooks. ] <small>]</small> 06:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages is not a free speech platform ==

A grouchy rant for the day.

Perhaps this should be integrated with "Misplaced Pages is not a blog" or "Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox", but:

Several critics of Misplaced Pages (including the noisy crowd at such places as wikitruth, wikipedia review, and a few other forums) seem to think that because Misplaced Pages is a forum that anybody can edit--it is (or should be) a '''free speech platform''' which must suffer the rants, opinions, and beliefs of anyone who wishes to write here (regardless of how encyclopedic)--and that many Misplaced Pages policies, both those (like ] and ]) which apply only to articles, and those (especially ]), which apply project-wide, somehow constitute an '''infringement''' of their "rights". (And that users who are disciplined and/or banned for violating Misplaced Pages policy are being "censored" or "oppressed" or such).

We probably should emphasize loudly and clearly: Misplaced Pages is an '''encyclopedia'''. Everything we do is intended to build a better encyclopedia; there is no reason whatsoever the project should tolerate behavior or content which is counter-productive to that end. Users who wish to rant on their favorite topic (say, ]--a popular topic, it seems, among the WR crowd), should get a blog and do so. Of course, it happens that Misplaced Pages is a popular and well-read website, whereas most blogs are routinely ignored--and many with axes to grind think that their opinions will get a better airing if presented here, and especially so if presented as encyclopedic fact (or as a notable point of view) in the article space. The fact that nobody cares about someone's blog doesn't entitle users to exploit Misplaced Pages's good reputation in order to more widely disseminate (before a larger audience) editorials that the world at large would, in most cases, otherwise ignore.

Misplaced Pages is '''not''' a free-speech platform, and is under no obligation to endure the rants of every drive-by malcontent.

Rant off.
--] 00:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. Misplaced Pages is not a place for free speech; it is already established that Misplaced Pages is not a free hosting service, or a soapbox, but like you, I know that some people still feel like Misplaced Pages is a place for free speech. ] 01:14, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It would perhaps be more acceptable to all concerned to say something like "Free Speech comes second to making a good encyclopedia." - after all, we value free speech - just not when it screws up the articles. ] 03:20, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

This discussion makes me think about the recent debate on ] that I have seen on Misplaced Pages. I agree with the NPOV and no personal attacks policies, but I feel like the former should apply only to the encyclopedic namespaces, not to user pages, talk pages, or project pages. I feel like userboxes of a political nature should be allowed, as long as they are not potentially offensive, but some, including ], disagree with me. Every day, userboxes pertaining to ]]politics|political]], ], and ] beliefs are deleted, and Jimbo has discouraged their use, as he says they "attract the wrong kinds of people and give the wrong impression of what it means to be a Wikipedian." Many others feel that such userboxes are helpful to the project by allowing Wikipedians to state their inherent ]es on their user pages. Even though it's been established that user pages are not meant for lengthy biographies or to host personal websites, userboxes are still highly controversial.

Well, with that controversy aside, free speech is valued on almost all talk pages, as long as it is not , profane, libelous, it does not violate copyright, and it is not ]. Generally, topics on talk pages are expected to be related to the subject of the article. Differing points of view are encouraged in articles, as long as they are all represented fairly and are all verifiable. After all, this is a free-content encyclopedia, but the really important word there is ''encyclopedia''. Misplaced Pages is not a place for political propaganda, advertising, ], and a number of other things. Information in articles must be verifiable and neutral. I don't know that saying that Misplaced Pages is not a free speech platform really says anything that is not already stated in Misplaced Pages policy. I think saying that "Free speech comes second to making a good encyclopedia" leaves out a great deal in terms of what is acceptable on Misplaced Pages and what is not.

] 00:12, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

== Soapbox contradiction, part II ==

Recently, the following text was removed from ]:
:"Of course, you should feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself, such as marital status, sexual orientation, criminal involvement or lack thereof, current employer, place of birth, work done in foreign countries, etc. However, be prepared that if the fact has different interpretations, others ]."
with the summary "letting people correct factual errors about themselves is inconsistent with official policy" and refering to ].

That section quotes the ArbCom ruling "Editors should avoid contributing to articles about themselves or subjects in which they are personally involved, as it is difficult to maintain NPOV while doing so" from ]. Ken Arrombee claims that this implies that people may not correct errors in articles about themselves. However, I think that the discussion at ] and ] clearly shows that the Arbitration Committee did not want to put an absolute ban autobiographical editing.

I think that "you should feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself" reflects Misplaced Pages practice. It was added to ] during the above-mentioned ArbCom case for that reason and I think there was little discussion because it reflects the consensus. -- ] (]) 11:27, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

:"Editors should avoid contributing to articles about themselves or subjects in which they are personally involved" is pretty hard to misinterpret. It doesn't, after all, say 'editors should usually avoid...' or qualify the ban in any way. If Misplaced Pages practice doesn't match the policy, and Misplaced Pages practice and not the policy should be considered correct, then the policy should be changed.
:If you don't or can't change the policy, then the policy stands. ] 19:41, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

The policy only mentions the ArbCom ruling, which as I said is not meant to ban autobiographical editing in all circumstances. Furthermore, the "see ]" suggests that that point of the policy is meant to summarize ]. So, I don't think there is a policy supporting an unqualified ban.

However, apparently you think there is. How about clarifying the policy in the following way:
:'''Self-promotion.''' The arbitration committee ruled on ], ] that: "Editors should avoid contributing to articles about themselves, their direct family or subjects in which they are personally involved, as it is difficult to maintain NPOV while doing so." This does not constitute an unqualified ban on autobiographical editing, but it does warn editors to be very careful when working on articles related to themselves. See ] for further guidance.
For reference, the current wording is:
:'''Self-promotion.''' The arbitration committee ruled on ], ] that: "Editors should avoid contributing to articles about themselves, their direct family or subjects in which they are personally involved, as it is difficult to maintain NPOV while doing so." Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles, or to articles in which you have a personal stake, is similarly unacceptable. See ] and ].
-- ] (]) 10:37, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Or perhaps it's easier to change the ArbCom decision being quoted. The principles
* ]
* ]
are on the same subject, and they clearly do not ban autobiographical editing. By the way, I haven't found any discussion here about adding the ArbCom ruling. Is there none? -- ] (]) 10:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

:Quoting a second ArbCom decision that allows autobiographical editing doesn't really fix the problem, because the fact that such a decision even exists means that you have two ArbCom decisions which, when read literally, contradict each other. Is there someone with the authority to say that the words of the first ArbCom decision don't accurately express what was intended?

:(Also, upon reading those decisions myself, I don't find that they clearly allow autobiographical editing at all. They condemn autobiographical editing in terms as strong as possible without actually banning it. It's clear to us that this strong condemnation isn't a ban--but it won't be clear to people like Siegenthaler, who are newbies. If you want Siegenthaler to be able to edit his own article, you can't bury this among verbiage like "discouraged" and "guideline". You need to say it clearly and distinctly.) ] 16:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

::I'm not sure i like the original text either. I'm not sure sexual orientation (which is one of the examples given) has a place in most wikipedia articles at all (unless there is a very good reason to give it) its hard to verify and in most cases not very relavent (similar to the shoe size example on the main page). I propose something like.

:::Feel free to remove accusations without a good sources. Personal information that is not already widely availible and Unsourced changes of figures that you know are incorrect and to make corrections to such unsourced information but do not change or remove information attributed to a reputable source even if you know it to be untrue or outdated (you may of course point out the date of the source though).

:: ] 01:24, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Ken, I was proposing to ''replace'' the ArbCom ruling by another one. I think it would be helpful if you proposed some text yourself. -- ] (]) 03:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

:How does replacing the ruling do anything? Just because you stop mentioning the first ruling doesn't mean it isn't policy; there are still two contradictory rulings, one on the page and one not on the page.

:My only proposal is for someone with authority to decide that the first ArbCom ruling need not be followed in the way it is worded. I don't know who has the authority to override ArbCom rulings, but I'm pretty certain it isn't me. Once this has been done, thus negating one of the contradictory rulings, replacing the text is easy. ] 05:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

::The only ones with the authority to recant ArbCom rulings is the ArbCom itself and Jimbo Wales. However, ArbCom rulings are always in relation to a particular case. The Arbitration Committee itself does not make policies, but they reflect the policies. Policies arise primarily out of consensus of the editors (see ]). -- ] (]) 06:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

:::The ArbCom ruling certainly wasn't phrased as if it referred to a particular case. "Editors should avoid..." doesn't seem to say that only one particular editor should avoid it, but rather that this applies to all editors.
:::And the fact that we are including ArbCom rulings in this page at all means we think they apply to future actions by other editors. If ArbCom rulings are as specific as you suggest, we shouldn't mention them. ] 14:35, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Plugwash, the text "Of course, you should feel free to correct mistaken or out-of-date facts about yourself &hellip;" was at ], not here; but your make a good point that sexual orientation should be excluded.

I had a look at the history of this page and found the version before it was changed to include the ArbCom ruling:
:"Self-promotion. While you are free to write about yourself or projects you have a strong personal involvement in, remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other. A very few somewhat famous Wikipedians have significantly contributed to encyclopedia articles about themselves and their accomplishments, and this has mostly been accepted after some debate. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles is unacceptable. See Misplaced Pages:Autobiography and Misplaced Pages:Notability."
Actually, I like this version better than my previous proposal. However, I'm not so keen on the sentence "A very few &hellip; after some debate." and I propose that it is replaced by some kind of warning, for instance,
:"Self-promotion. You are free to write about yourself or projects you have a strong personal involvement in. However, do remember that the standards for encyclopedic articles apply to such pages just like any other, including the requirement to maintain a neutral point of view, which is difficult when writing about yourself. Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles is unacceptable. See Misplaced Pages:Autobiography and Misplaced Pages:Notability."
-- ] (]) 03:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

:: I like this version. ] 08:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

:::How about adding a section mentioning the ArbCom decision and stating that it doesn't apply?
::::Although the arbitration committee ruled on ], ] that "Editors should avoid contributing to articles about themselves, their direct family or subjects in which they are personally involved," the arbitration committee only rules on particular cases. Editors other than the one in that case need not avoid contributing to articles about themselves as long as the above rules are followed.
:::As it is, the decision still contradicts both this page and other ArbCom decisions. ] 13:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

::::I think that would be going into too much detail. This is primarily about the nature of ArbCom decisions, and it would only be useful for those who know Misplaced Pages well enough to have read that decision but do not know their nature. -- ] (]) 13:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

:::::"Those who know Misplaced Pages well enough to have read that decision" in this case means "those who read the previous version of the page and wonder why that changed." Though I suppose this section is enough for that. ] 13:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that the ArbCom, in order to handle one bad case, made a ruling far broader than they should have, and people are scurrying to ignore the ruling in ways vague enough to not cast aspersions on ArbCom rulings in general.
I don't think that's going to work. If you don't make it clear that this ruling applies to one editor and not "editors", it's going to come up again and again.
My proposal, such as it is, is that if that ruling isn't valid, we should outright say "please ignore it." How to do this without going into too much detail, I don't really know, but having a ruling which contradicts both policy and other rulings *is* a problem, and needs to be solved somehow. ] 13:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
:I say we just ignore mentioning arbcom cases, and use ]'s 9th May text. ] <small>]</small> 15:09, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages is not a guide to the internet ==

Is it? Should we have an article on every website on the net, using that article as source, or not? Should we document every occurrence on the web, given the web acts as a reference guide to what occurs on it? I say no, we need third party sources to build articles, but I'm interested in opinions. ] <small>]</small> 21:01, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
:We don't need to document the internet as it happens, the net itself does this. And yeah, by simple WP:V, no third party sources means no article. ] ] 21:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages does not need an article on every website out there. I think that falls under the policy that Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information. That said, articles on websites should be written according to the ] guidelines. ] 23:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

:] is a touchy subject, hence the classification as an essay, and not a guideline as you imply. ]]] 06:32, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

::So can we add this text to the page under Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information?

::9. '''Internet guides.''' Misplaced Pages articles should not exist '''only''' to describe the nature, appearance or services a website offers, but should describe the site in an ''encyclopedic manner'', offering detail on a website's achievements, impact or historical significance, which can be significantly more up-to-date than most reference sources since we can incorporate new developments and facts as they are made known. See ] for examples.
::Would that sum the position? ] <small>]</small> 18:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

:I like the wording of the above statement, it puts emphasis on the practical meaning of encyclopedic in the context of websites. ]]] 03:24, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

==Misplaced Pages is not a mirror==
How do other people read the mirror part of "Misplaced Pages is neither a mirror nor a repository of links, images, or media files"? I take that to mean that WP should not duplicate the content of another page (unless it substantially changes it, in which case it is no longer a mirror). I've read another interpretation that this applies to mirroring repositories of links and that WP may mirror encyclopedic content. I think the neither/nor excludes that reading. ] 00:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

:You have a point there, even though I was the one who brought this issue up in a bold statement of my view. Possibly too bold now that I think about it from another perspective. However, I still think that the fact that the content is actually encyclopedic (IMO) overrides the fact that it was from a mirror. ]]] 06:30, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
::I too share the same opinion about this with user Ansell. If the content is encyclopedic, it '''has''' to overide the fact that it was from a mirror. --<font style="background:gold">]]</font><sup><font style="background:yellow">]</font></sup> 17:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

== Attack Lists and other trivial stuff for Anime, video game, manga, etc. Characters ==

I understand completely how everyone feels "indiscriminate collections of information," and I fully agree that random information bits have no place here, however when it comes to anime characters with special "attacks" that they use I feel differently as they can be an important part of these characters and the story that they tell.

As for Misplaced Pages policy, I quote "Of course, there is nothing wrong with having lists if their entries are famous because they are associated with or significantly contributed to the list topic" which the character attacks do very much.

Not only do the attacks give the Misplaced Pages readers a feel for each character's unique fighting style, but they give insight into their personalities and help reinforce their attitudes. Take Monkey D. Luffy from ] for example, all his attacks are based on real objects and weapons (Pistol, Rifle, Windmill) thus reinforing the idea that even though he's a pirate on an unimaginable journey, he is in essence a normal person. In contrast take someone like Eneru, also from ] whose attack's are mostly based on various Thunder deites, thus reinforcing the fact that he sees himself as a god and nothing less. In closing I feel very strongly that they are essential to the character's Misplaced Pages profiles and as a loyal fan to Manga, Anime and the hard working people who create them and will do everything I can to keep them in their rightful place, because if they were not significant then why would writers and animators bother to make them in the first place? (] 7 May 1:46 GMT)

::Readers might also note I've been transwiking said information to wikibooks for more consise organization. See ] for an ongoing discussion, as well as the most recent posts on my talkpage. A demonstration of my actions can be seen in the and the . There is no removal of data here, its simply classified as indiscriminate and for that reason I moved it to wikibooks (per policy) and made the appropriate link from there. Everyone wins. -]<sup>]</sup> 06:02, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

* As of this update, KingKogs and I have more or less resolved this issue. However, this is a relelvant case that I think would assist for future reference, so I'd still prefer to hear discussion on this matter. -]<sup>]</sup> 08:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

== NPOV query ==

''The arbitration committee ruled on February 17, 2006 that: "Editors should avoid contributing to articles about themselves, their direct family or subjects in which they are personally involved, as it is difficult to maintain NPOV while doing so." Creating overly abundant links and references to autobiographical articles, or to articles in which you have a personal stake, is similarly unacceptable.''

Does this mean that I cannot contribute to an article about the school I am studying in? Does the 'personally involved' phrase prevent me to contribute? ] 21:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)blooz

:That ArbCom ruling concerned the case of a notable computer science professor, ] (that's his biographical article, not his userpage; he's no longer on Misplaced Pages). He created numerous interlinking articles about his main contribution to the discipline (the ])--including numerous claims that his research is of significant important to ] (he never published in any physics journal, and the link is tenuous at best). Many other computer science and physics editors implored him to stop, and he continued on; eventually an arbitration case was started. The ArbCom told him to cease and desist (or be blocked otherwise), at which point Hewitt left Misplaced Pages. Rest assured, that this case involved a '''significant''' conflict of interest, and significant inappropriate behavior. Creating a link about your school is not going to get you in trouble.
:Also, should ArbCom rulings be cited as policy? Misplaced Pages has in the past tolerated edits about yourself, as long as you respect NPOV--has there been an official change to discourage edits where a potential conflict of interest exists? --] 22:35, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
:: See the ] specifically about autobiographical edits. While the ArbCom ruling is not exactly policy, it does seem to me that the consensus is shifting on this topic and that autobiographical edits are being viewed with increasing skepticism. <br>To the original question, contributions about your school are still acceptable but it is important to maintain a degree of distance and perspective. If you find yourself in edit wars or getting emotionally attached to certain versions of the article, you should ask whether you are too close to the topic to edit neutrally. If you find yourself unable to do so, it's best to let others build the article. ] <small>]</small> 21:02, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
::: I'm not sure you are reading the tea leaves correctly as on which way the consensus is shifting. I recently came across ] which suggested that the consensus is moving in the other way. However, when I reread that page just now, I noticed that it is also in a state of flux. -- ] (]) 13:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

== Abbitis ==

So far I have not been able to find an official definition of the word "'''Abbitis'''"

Here are my search results so far:
:"... the abbitis that was round the fort."
Page 242, 1776 by David McCullogh
:Col. Sumter having no cannon to destroy the abbatis or the buildings selected some of his bravest followers to remove the abbitis and to endeavor to set fire to the buildings, while his troops, under cover of the trees and rocks, on the declivity of the mountain, maintained a heavy fire upon the Rocky Mount garrison. After three attacks, in the last of which some of the forlorn hope penetrated within the abbatis, the Americans retreated with loss and precipitation."
The Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution, Vol. 1, No. 1 September 2004, Charles B. Baxley, editor

Here are the results when you type 'English definition of abbitis' in Google:
:Did you mean: English definition of rabbits
:Our line was quickly formed, as I looked across the intervening space to the bristling forts, and viewed the rugged mountain side, with the interminable abbitis that lay between, and then cast my eye along our slender line, I thought to myself, there will be hot work here if the regiments are made of resolute men.
MEMOIRS OF THE CIVIL WAR, W. L. TRUMAN

--] 14:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)JorgeG
: If all you want is a definition, I recommend that you try ], the open-source dictionary. The word you are looking for, though, is properly spelled "abatis". It is a barrier made by cutting down trees and interlocking the branches. In Civil War times, the branches were often sharpened to make the barrier even more impenatrable. The name shares a derivation with "abattoir" which should give you a sense of how effective they are against infantry attacks. ] <small>]</small> 15:50, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages is not Wiki ==

I have seen many new users refer to Misplaced Pages as simply "Wiki", which is incorrect because a ] does not necessarily mean Misplaced Pages. ''''']''''' ] 19:24, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
:"Wiki" is shorthand for Misplaced Pages and valid in the context of local usage. Everyone knows what it means and no one needs to type the whole thing out all the time. ]<b>]</b> 04:09, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
::Of course, there are those that claim that ] is the only wiki which gets to call itself Wiki. :) Fortunately, ] is not the territorial sort. --] 05:38, 11 May 2006 (UTC) (who frequents both of the wikis that call themselves Wiki).

There is a difference between uppercap '''W'''iki and lowercap '''w'''iki.--] <sup><font color="green">]</font></sup> 23:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

== Time to rethink the philosphy of the page "What Misplaced Pages is not" ==

Discussion transferred here from a deletion page on a List (with minor revision to remove topic specific comments)... I think the comment transcends that specific area...
::Our basis for deciding what should be allowed in Misplaced Pages is bizarre. We apparently do it by telling the reader what (]). Decision processes based on ] are always weak and open to debate.
::It is time for a logical and systematic statement of what warrants being placed on a list. Here are my quick thoughts on a systematic set to rules for a list based on the ]:
:::* … “comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge” …“an encyclopedia treats each subject in more depth and convey the most relevant accumulated knowledge on that subject”… Since the use of the encyclopedia is research, the primary purpose of a list is to facilitate research.
:::**THEREFORE A LIST may cover any branch of knowledge, but must be arguably relevant (i.e., useful for some form of research):
:::* “General encyclopedias often contain … as well as embedded dictionaries and ]”… a gazetteer is a “geographical dictionary, an important reference for information about places and place-names”…
:::**THEREFORE A LIST may cover gazetteer information if it provides important reference information about places and place-names. (Note: this does raise a question whether we shouldn’t create a sister Wiki project… a Wikigazetter.)
:::* “Works of encyclopedic scope aim to convey the important accumulated knowledge for their subject domain.”
:::**THEREFORE A LIST should convey important accumulated knowledge for an identifiable subject domain.
:::*… “systematic method of organization is essential to making an encyclopedia usable as a work of reference.”
:::**THEREFORE A LIST should logically enter into the Wiki list structure as a head set or subset… the proposor of a new list has the responsibility for proposing a logical structure under which a list falls in the current scheme of lists.
:::* “As modern multimedia and the information age have evolved, they have had an ever-increasing effect on the collection, verification, summation, and presentation of information of all kinds.”…
:::**THEREFORE A LIST may be proposed if it is a logical collection or summation of information… the logic must be clear to the casual reader.
:::* “lists for the sake of lists may become an unmaintainable list of lists."
:::**THEREFORE A LIST may be proposed if it is useful to categorize or disambiguate”

We need to get beyond… well I think so… well I don’t think so… well, I still think so… well I still don’t think so…

Anyone else think it is time to move beyond the philosphy "What Misplaced Pages is not" and develop criteria against which article can be judged when they are proposed?

] 16:45, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Idea by ] inserted into list above. ] 02:22, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

==List vs. Game Manual==
<blockquote>''Instruction manuals - while Misplaced Pages has descriptions of people, places, and things, Misplaced Pages articles should not include instruction - advice ( legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes.''</blockquote>
Recently this guideline has been used in a AFD debate regarding a page entitled ]. It has been settled that the page can not be maintained here in its current form, a discion which I accept; however, this AFD has been riddled with claims that the page voilates the game manual clause of WP:NOT.

By their very nature both ] and ] games rely almost exclusively on a collection of units and structures that are operated by a player or by the player’s opponent. I feel that there must be a way for this encyclopedic information to be listed and maintained here on Misplaced Pages without violating the game manual provision. To that end, I feel that a better definition of a game manual as it pertains to RTS and TBS games is needed here. I submit that a '''list''' of units and/or structures that appear in RTS or TBS games, the general roles of those units and/or structures (ie vehical manufacturing, resource gathering, etc), and any upgrades for units/structures appearing in these games is encyclopedic and therefore should not be in violation of the game manual clause. By omitting the cost, tech level, and prerequists we aviod produce a game manual by requiring a person to either research such information or purchase the game. ] 01:43, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

:I took part in this AfD and there certainly seems to be a need for specialist input into definitions, rather than a reaction of "it looks like stuff in a game manual, so it's not valid". ] 01:54, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
:: I'd think that such a list would violate the current WIKI NOT guidelines. If these guidelines need to be changed is a matter for the consensus and community. I would like to suggest instead that it be considered if a page that merely sums up the major points of each side and the major structures/units of each side existed, would it be against WIKI NOT? --] 02:08, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

:How about this? General information should be the limit of such articles, such as what so and so does and makes available to the player. The moment it starts mentioning technical details in excess such as what is mentioned above, or even more in-depth data such as game formulae, consider it unnecessary and open to culling. ] 11:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

:I could a gree with that, but I would take it one step further and say that ''all'' RTS games and TBS games should adhere to that, not just generals. In this way other games like StarCraft and Dune can follow in C&C's footprints and expand there pages accordingly. ] 01:57, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

:There are plenty of game guides and lists of game items online. Just link to them from the wikipedia article. No need to saddle wikipedia with this kind of information - its unencyclopedic ] 23:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Consider a seperate argument then: Why do we have game articles on dedicated charcters from Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon and so forth? It seems somewhat unfair that those pages are not being nominated for deletion, but a page with RTS structures is. All I am asking is for some wiggle room with these two types of games as it pertains to Misplaced Pages. Outsorcing information to other websites when it could be covered here in a legitimate and community agreed upon way seems bias. ] 23:43, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

==List of definitions vs glossary==
I recently supported the deletion of ], as it was a list of definitions. However, I wonder if I have erred, and should have instead supported its transmogrification into a ]. What would be the key differences? Here are some rough ideas - please contribute, with a view to formalising the distinction somewhere:
A glossary should have:
*Only widely-accepted, standard terms within the field, no slang or obscure terms
*Only a brief definition as required to understand the term. No long definitions with examples, or fine nuances explained.
*Only terms actually used within Misplaced Pages (within reason).

In this case, that list came pretty close to fulfilling these requirements, and with a bit of trimming, would have gotten there. Perhaps an admin could undelete it for review? ] 09:40, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

: I think the distinction between a "list of xxx terms" and a "glossary of xxx" is one merely of semantics and that neither are appropriate for the encyclopedia. They just don't fit well. They are, however, '''very''' appropriate pages as an appendix in Wiktionary. See ] for a number of examples of such glossaries. Some of them are very good, some still in development - like all our wikipages.

: The sentence on this page that "Misplaced Pages also includes glossary pages for various specialized fields" predates the general acceptance of Wiktionary Appendices and is, I believe, obsolete. We can easily provide a handy cross-wiki link directly from Misplaced Pages to the specific Wiktionary appendix page for anyone interested in the glossary. ] <small>]</small> 17:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

== Database dumps ==

I'd like to add the following to ''Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information'':
* '''Database extracts''', especially from readily available authoritative sources.

We have deleted a number of articles including ] where the content of the article is simply an extract of an offsite database. Others we have kept, like ], despite the fact that the entire content is a (non-authoritative) copy-paste of the lists on the publisher's website which appears to include around 1,400 entries, among which as far as I can tell there is not one single bluelink despite the fact that we have recently doubled the number of For Dummies books on which we have articles. There are now two of them.

Database copy & pastes are not technically a copyvio as long as the data is presented in an obvious order (or so I'm told), but there is surely nothing encyclopaedic about copying and pasting lists of text - especially if a fully authoritative source is freely available online. It was noted in a discussion some time back that if you find yourself copying and pasting the bulk of an article from another source it's a sure sign that what you are doing is wrong. Whether that's entirely true I don't know, but I do know that, for example, maintaining a mirror of the UK's list of statutory instruments for 1996, all 3,278 of them, of which only a handful are bluelinked, is probably less useful than having a category for the articles and adding a link to the OPSI website which lists the rest. Yes, we're not paper, but neither are we the Yellow Pages.

This would not prevent a Wikiproject from making an article in Project space with a number of redlinks for filling by interested parties, but it would reduce the problem of lists which are mirrors at sme fixed point in time of an easily available authoritative source which is, if the reader wants current information, the place to go. It seems to be what was meant by ] a mirror or collectionof external links, but I find some reluctance to interpret that guideline as covering copy and paste from database extract or online databases. ] 13:45, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
:You can't have such a blanket rule. What if the entries are for encyclopedic topics? What if its just a limited portion of a larger article? Such a rule could be used to delete the track listings from albums, imdb credits from bios, neighborhood listings from municipalities, and various other things. Let's keep the section to things everybody agrees on. For instance, there's wide agree any directory listing company phone numbers is bad. BTW, I agree ] is bad, but ] might be ok, even if gathered in the same way. Oddly, your proposal would actually discriminate against well sourced lists, done with ]. Yet lists based on originality would be unnaffected. --] 15:08, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

:Example: ] would be exempt from your rule. As the unaccredited ones, aren't (AFAIK) in the source database, and hence aren't from an extract. It is made from original research by Wikipedians, combining many sources, often adding names individually, based on investigation. However if ] were copied straight from ] (or whatever is the appropriate reliable source), with no additions/removals of individual entries, it would violate your proposed rule, even though it would list encyclopedic topics, and be properly sourced. Personally, I would rather have a verifiable list of accredited institutions, than an original list of unaccredited ones. --] 15:18, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages is not a travel brochure ==

I've noticed that many location articles, especially the ones about towns and villages that are popular tourist destinations, read like a travel brochure. Words like "stunning", "splendid views", "offers four star accomodation" and other suggestions about what to do and where to visit blah blah blah. It never fails to piss me off that no matter how obvious it is that this is an ENCYCLOPEDIA people still write up articles that seem to've been copied straight out of the Going Places guide. Perhaps we need some legislation on this? --] 12:13, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

== Suggested wording change to "Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary" section of policy ==

Following a Village Pump discussion ], I would like a propose a change to the wording of section 2 of the "Misplaced Pages is not a dictionary" section of this policy:

* ]: ''"Misplaced Pages articles are not: Lists of such definitions. There are, however, disambiguation pages consisting of pointers to other pages; these are used to clarify differing meanings of a word. Misplaced Pages also includes glossary pages for various specialized fields."''

I propose changing this to clarify that disambiguation pages are not lists of dictionary definitions:

* ]: ''"Misplaced Pages articles are not: lists of such definitions. There are, however, disambiguation pages consisting of pointers to other pages; these disambiguation pages are not intended to be lists of definitions, but are used to distinguish between articles where the words used in a title can refer to several different meanings. Misplaced Pages also includes glossary pages for various specialized fields."''

Please also see the related proposals ] and ]. Thanks. ] 13:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

== "Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy" section needs redesign==
Currently, the section states:
:''In particular, Misplaced Pages is not a ]. Disagreements should be resolved through ] discussion, rather than through tightly sticking to rules and procedures. ] should be avoided. A perceived procedural error made in posting anything, such as an idea or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post. Follow the spirit, not the letter, of any rules, policies and guidelines (see ]). Our dispute resolution process exists to ] and ] disputes between users, not to enforce judicial remedies.''
I am afraid this section is needs to be rewritten and retitled. Currently it is a collections of claims, some of them true, some of them disputable, but all apparently lumped together in this one section without much thought to their connection and even less to the section title (]). Let me divide the claims into several groups:
# ''Misplaced Pages is not bureaucracy. In particular, Misplaced Pages is not a ]''. This is the part that I find dubious. Consider ]. While that very policy states that we should respect spirit of the law (] comes to mind), the very existance of those policies and guidelines, and in fact the very existence of the 'Misplaced Pages' namespace seem to indicate that Misplaced Pages has a legal system of sorts. It is not important here whether our system is based on codexes, precedents, traditions, norms, their mix or something else, the fact is that it *exists*. This becomes even more clear when we consider the existance of ] and the organisations that it has spawned (Arbitrators, Mediators, Advocates...). As for bureaucracy, looking at our definition it reads that this concept refers to ''administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules is socially organized. This office organization is characterized by standardized procedure, formal division of responsibility, hierarchy, and impersonal relationships''. With ''standarized procedure'' reading 'Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines', ''formal division of responsibility'' reading 'we have administrators, bureaucrats, developers, etc.' and ''impersonal relationships'' reading 'there are too many Wikipedians for any single of them to know all others, therefore in many cases a Wikipedian will look for example for 'an administrator' to solve his problem, not for a particular individual', I think it becomes quite clear that Misplaced Pages is in fact a bureaucracy. For those sociologically-minded, ] explains why any complex organization such as Misplaced Pages has to become a bureaucracy, no matter how idealistic its goal is (and on a sidenote, becoming a bureaucracy is nothing bad).
#''] should be avoided. A perceived procedural error made in posting anything, such as an idea or nomination, is not grounds for invalidating that post. Follow the spirit, not the letter, of any rules, policies and guidelines (see ]).'' Those statements continue debating the organization and spirit of Misplaced Pages, however unlike their two predecessors which state dubious 'facts', those three sentences are a praiseworthy guideline and should be kept. Whether they belong in 'What Misplaced Pages is not' article or some other, and under what heading, is howerver a matter for debate.
#'' Our dispute resolution process exists to ] and ] disputes between users, not to enforce judicial remedies'' Finally the third part of the discussed paragraph concerns the dispute resolution process. The same concern as in my point 2 above apply: while this is a good piece of information, does it belong here and does it belong in this paragraph?
I am awaiting your comments.--] <sup><font color="green">]</font></sup> 23:23, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

:I agree with what you are saying. Would you be able to do a draft rewrite somewhere to incorporate these suggested changes? Oh, and thanks for the link to stuff on oligarchies. Isn't the way to avoid that through change and renewal? With different people coming in as others leave or become less active? ] 10:55, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

::I'd recommend merging the 3rd part of the above para with 'Misplaced Pages is not a battleground'. The 2nd part could be retitled 'Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in rule making'.
::I am glad you liked the article; I am not sure that the rule can be ever completly disregarded, but I do think Internet makes it more easy to 'bend it'. Misplaced Pages, although it is becoming more and more oligarchic, is unlikely to ever become an oligarchy like a modern political party. For example, we are much more informal and the division between 'mass and rank' and 'leaders' is less clear cut, the ] is also much smaller (for example we can freely debate the (minor, sure) change to *this* policy, and likely implement it in a few days, even if not a single person from the Board becomes involved in the process). The ] I am afraid doesn't work here, as it actually reinforces the iron law: is not about the members that leave: it is about members who stay and in time become more aware of our internal workings, possibly joining various Misplaced Pages organizations, achieving some recongnition (positions, barnstars, becoming known as 'experts' in given field, etc.) and thus their opinions will count more in a discussion just because they are who they are, especially compared to the other end of a spectrum (unregistered editors).--] <sup><font color="green">]</font></sup> 17:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

* In reality, very few communities or societies have truly implemented a single political system. Misplaced Pages, like most communities, is a combination of ], ], ], ], ], ], and other things. I agree with the others that Misplaced Pages's original goal was to have as little hierarchy as possible, but that some hierarchy has been necessary to maintain order and efficiency on Misplaced Pages. If Misplaced Pages were to be considered an experiment in anarchy, it has definitely shown that pure anarchy would not be very practical. Of course, as Jimbo has said, Misplaced Pages is not meant as a social experiment, though it is one by necessity. In addition to having a problem with the section "Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy", I also am not happy with the current revision of "Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in democracy". I think the best thing to say would be "Misplaced Pages is not a ] democracy", as that is what the paragraph in this section is basically saying. Perhaps another section could be titled "Misplaced Pages is not a social experiment". That would cover many things that the existing sections stating that Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in anarchy or democracy, and that Misplaced Pages is not a bureaucracy. As was recently mentioned on this talk page, I am increasingly believing that this page is problematic because it lists things that some people may see Misplaced Pages as that it is not meant to be, often without clearly stating what Misplaced Pages ''is'' with regard to the issue. As someone once asked on this page, if Misplaced Pages is not an anarchy, a democracy, or an oligarchy, what is it? The real answer is that it is all three of these, and some other things as well. ] 02:11, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
*::I feel kind of sentimental about "Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in democracy" but I agree with your reasons above. The largest reason I am not happy with it is because it's not comprehensive (as you note we are not *many things*), then, of course, a complete list of things Misplaced Pages is not is a rather silly idea. Having said that, I'd support statements like: "Misplaced Pages is not an experiment in any ] or ]" (with a note that we have the qualites of many).--] <sup><font color="green">]</font></sup> 02:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

== A Joke ==

Misplaced Pages is not a democracy? Well, I think it should be! Let's have a vote. {{unsigned|154.20.217.225}}

==Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection==
Would anybody have any objection if I expanded point 1 from WP is not "Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics such as quotations, aphorisms, or persons." to "Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics such as quotations, aphorisms, or persons (real or fictional)"? ] 15:07, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
*Actually, I'll be ] and do it. if anyone has any objections, please just revert it and discuss your reason here. ] 08:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest adding that WP is not a repository of pointless trivia. Some articles have grown a section on "<X> in popular culture", which is typically a mind-numbing enumeration of appearances in films, video games, etc. ] 16:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

== ] ==

] ] and added a new section to this page without discussion here. I'm not going to revert it because I think it's a good addition but we should probably discuss the addition some. I particularly like the wording on the caution against autobiographical entries. We do not have an absolute prohibition but it's never a good idea to try to write about yourself. The link to ] is also explicitly described as a guideline, not a policy-level rule. I think the wording strikes a very good balance. ] <small>]</small> 03:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
:I reverted it. ] is itself an essay, not even a guideline, let alone policy. If a guideline were to be linked to it would be ], but even that's not good, as this is core policy, and that is a mere guideline. Also, the whole autobiography thing, is very much lacking consensus. This page is supposed to be reserved for things where there's an unimabigious consensus to not have it. --] 03:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
::I apologize for my failure to discuss this section. I believe it is appropriate, however. I have recently been working on some projects regarding public education; and it seems that a lot of articles about schools have an ''Alumni'' section filled with random and un-encyclopedic content (e.g., lists of all persons who graduated in 1984, etc). This is a particular case of a larger issue across the wikipedia. We want to make sure that the content stays relevant to the larger percentage of Wikipedians.
::As far as the my addition: I have seen references to this concept scattered in other guidelines and official policies. During a recent wave of article-edits, I made several deletions, and was looking for a central citation for reasons on a ]s. I could not find a central location. Can we find a way to reach consensus so as to re-include this section? I believe it is important. ] 11:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
* It could however mention ] which is generally accepted as a guideline (although there's a disputed tag on there now, there usually isn't, and the dispute is I think over a relatively fine point). As far as I can tell ] doesn't mention that right now. But WP:NOT is already pretty long and it's hard to imagine uninformed people reading it in its entirety before creating a new article... does it really need to define every single inclusion guideline we have? --] 14:27, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages is not a TV/Radio Guide ==

I've seen a number of articles, especially radio articles start to contain full schedules of television and radio programmes. Because schedules change often and don't usually contain information about the TV/radio station of the article, could it be classed that schedules in articles can not be seen as encyclopedic, and would be better suited to a dedicated TV/Radio guide? ] 18:22, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
:This is somewhat covered under 1.7.7, "a radio station generally shouldn't list upcoming events, current promotions, phone numbers, etc. (although mention of major events or promotions may be acceptable)". I think you might consider tweaking that a bit rather than creating a new section. --] 19:49, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
::OK, I'll make a little tweak to that point now. Thanks. ] 20:25, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

== Not an "instruction manual" ==

I was wondering what "instruction manual" actually means. Someone proposed deletion for a page I created, because of this "instruction manual" policy. However it was a list, and not a how-to in any way. I think that some clarification needs to be made as to what an "instruction manual" is. ] 19:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

: Also, given the discussion above concerning how-to's and instruction manuals, I have a mind to question the "not an instruction manual" policy. I think it really needs to be clarified when an article can be a how to, when it can't, and what an instruction manual is. ] 19:48, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
::Main space articles should not give any form of instruction. Period. ] 19:51, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

To make this operational: Misplaced Pages ''articles'' should not contain anything unquoted in the second person, the imperative, or the exhortative:

* Second person, speaking about the reader: ''"'''You''' are reading an English Misplaced Pages article, so '''you''' can read English."'' Misplaced Pages does not know the reader; and indeed does not even know if it has been translated into a different language.
* Imperative, instructing the reader to do something: ''"If '''you''' want to block spam from your Eudora mail client, '''follow these steps''' ...."'' Misplaced Pages does not give explicit instructions, requests, or commands to the reader.
* Exhortative, suggesting a course of action: ''"Anyone who wants to buy a cow '''should''' go to their local cow dealer."'' Misplaced Pages does not advise the reader or recommend actions.

(The caveat "unquoted" is because we may want to quote from sources which are in these forms.) --] 20:47, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

* Concentrating on writing style versus the substance of the information contained in an article is evading the question. An article written in a "how-to" style that contains encyclopedic information should be marked for improvement, not deletion or transwikification. Similarly, an article written in a discriptive style, but which contains information one would expect to find in a non-notable instruction manual, should be nominated for deletion or movement to a more suitable site.

: For example, an article containing the phrase "to find the most appropriate battery technology for your application, gather the following information" is probably a candidate for improvement, while an article that contains the phrase "the purpose of the timer button on the remote control is to turn the television off after the viewer has fallen asleep..." is probably a candidate for deletion.

: Since the discusions on this talk page have concentrated largely on style rather than substance, I feel little guidance has been given on what is or is not suitable for Misplaced Pages, other than to rule out paraphrases of the instruction manuals that manufacturers provide with products. ] 22:13, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

== On citing your *own* "original research" elsewhere ==

], a journalist and blogger, coined a law in his blog, and then created the article ] to legitimise it. This seems to exploit a hole in the WP:NOT rules, specifically the line "citing book, print, or reliable web resources demonstrates that the material is verifiable and is not merely the editor's opinion", which doesn't work when the editor ''is'' himself a print-medium author. Further discussion on ].... /] (]) 15:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

:Everything in wikipedia also has to be notable. If Zorn's law is only mentioned in Mr. Zorn's blog/website/article, then it's not really notable. If it catches on then we can have an article on it that cites Zorn's work, but if it hasn't caught on or been used elsehwere then it's really NN. --] 15:57, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

:Citing your own research is acceptable on Misplaced Pages; this is obviously true, because to tell a Nobel Prize-winning physicist he couldn't write on the subject of his published research would be lunacy. However, everything on Misplaced Pages must be from a ], and I very much doubt this guy's blog counts. -- ] 16:08, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
::Actually, I'd say his blog is borderline. If you think the phrase is non-notable, merge it, or put it on AfD. This isn't a whole in the rules, though, just a grey area. -- ] 16:14, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

== WP is not the pages ==


A bit of advice I've included in some speedy nominations, as part of RC patrol: Misplaced Pages is neither the ] nor the ]; we're not a directory of people, business, or other organizations. The fact that some people or businesses are given articles doesn't mean that ''anybody'' gets one. --] 23:58, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

:We already say wikipedia is not a directory - is that good enough? (It's number 7 under "inidscriminate collector of info). --] 01:24, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
::We could add the white/yellow pages as an alternate expression; to drive the point home. :) --] 04:51, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

== Was I right to do this? ==

I removed a link to a Nazi propaganda, anti-Semitic film called "The Enternal Jew". It was being linked to from a neo-Nazi website through Misplaced Pages. The film is banned everywhere in the world and only available for viewing with special permission or explicit educational licenses.

Was I right to remove it? --{{unsigned|172.141.194.50}}

: Depends; what page was it removed from? If it was an article on anti-Semitism or a similar topic, the link ''may'' have been relevant. If it was on an article on Judaism itself, I would remove it--the screeds of neo-Nazis are seldom a reliable source on the topic of Jews. The fact that it is illegal in some countries doesn't matter. It's legal in the ], where Misplaced Pages is hosted (our ] generally prohibits the outlawing of political texts, no matte how offensive); and Misplaced Pages links to much content which is illegal in many parts of the world (including other Neo-nazi sites). In some cases, this is clearly appropriate; Misplaced Pages links to works on the ], for example, which are illegal in the ]. --] 16:47, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

It was linked to from "The Eternal Jew" page.

:In that case, I actually would have left the link. ] clearly labels the film as a piece of ] propaganda, and linking to the film in question seems to be a logical step. (For the record, The page on ] links to an English version of that book). I would put it back, but we can wait for a few other people to chime in before doing anything if you want. --] 17:16, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

== Proposal: Misplaced Pages is not a shock site ==

Last week, there was a case in which a user had put a male pornographic picture on his user talk page. He was convinced to take it down, but it appears there was no Misplaced Pages policy specifically addressing the issue.

The problem was not that the picture exists on Misplaced Pages but rather that it was placed where people would not expect to see it. If someone wants to see porno, that's that person's perrogative, but no one should be "subjected" to it if he or she wasn't looking for it.

I'd like to propose an addition to this project to address this situation:

===Misplaced Pages is not a shock site===

While shocking or disturbing content, such as sexually explicit or violent images, is not prohibited on Misplaced Pages, it, like all content, should only be placed where it is appropriate. No one should be subjected to shocking or disturbing content he or she was not looking for. This is not simply an issue of people seeing something they don't like. Users can get into serious trouble at school or work for viewing what their teacher or boss considers "inappropriate."

A topless photo ''might'' be appropriate on an article about a porn star, but should not be placed in an article about the porn star's home town, even if she is the only famous person to come out of the town.

Editors be sure that any links to potentially shocking or disturbing content clearly indicate what is on the other end of the link. For example, do not simply write, "] was executed for ]." Because "buggery" is not a commonly used word in much of the English-speaking world, some users would be likely to click on that link, not realizing it leads to an article on anal sex.

] 20:31, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

:I've actually been doing some thinking about this lately in regards to a case I've been dealing with and the whole discussion about images on the ] page. I think this should actually go under the "wikipedia is not censored" section. Many peopl eassume that not censored = anything and everything goes. This is not true. The fact that it's not censored means we'll have open and adult discussions (as well as informative pictures) relating to genetalia, reproduction, and human sexuality. I think you've hit the issue right on the head though - when considering a given image, is the purpose of the image to inform, or is the purpose to tittilate or shock? If the later, then it doesn't belong. --] 20:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

:*This concern is actually already discussed under the guideline ] and the precedents described at ]. It seems to me that WP:NOT should clarify site-wide content issues, rather than specific concerns. We could just as well create any number of similar NOT additions.--<font face="Verdana,San-Serif" size="-2"><strong>]<sup>]</sup></strong></font> 20:56, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
:* Agreed. A link to the drill-down discussion might be appropriate in the "not censored" section. But we must be very cautious about adding more full paragraphs to this page. This page is too long already. ] <small>]</small> 20:44, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
:* The problem with a policy such as this would be that people who disapprove of any particular kind of content can always claim to be "shocked" by its "explicit" depiction or discussion. They can then set up an argument, grounded in this policy, demanding that material of which they disapprove be excised from the encyclopedia, or replaced with material of such vagueness as to be uninformative. Any number of topics, such as social or cultural practices, religious works, human and animal anatomy, or controversial artworks could be targeted this way. If we're going to make a "shock site" distinction at all, it needs to be on the basis of ''preventing Misplaced Pages from being used trollishly'' rather than on the basis of content. For instance, goatse is a shock site, but medical images of the human rectum aren't. --] 04:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
:::Unless, of course, the medical image of the human rectum is at ] or something. -- ] 23:57, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
* Oppose: This is adequately covered by other ares of WP:NOT.... such as: ''Misplaced Pages is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files'', ''Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information'', and ''Misplaced Pages is not a forum for unregulated free speech''. ---] (]|]) 16:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)



== Misplaced Pages is not a translation guide ==

Lately there have been some deletion debates about articles that are, essentially, lists of how to translate proper nouns into other languages. For instance, ] or ]. Sometimes, translations can make good subject matter for an article, if people have written interesting things about translation (see, for instance ]). I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't have articles where the only purpose is to provide the translation of X between languages. So far, the only counterarguments I've seen are that the translations might be useful... but to me, that's too much along the lines of "all useful information should be in Misplaced Pages" which policy rejects (]). The only kind of translation I've found interesting as a translation on its own are unusual non-literal translations; for instance, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is translated into German as "... Chamber of Fear," which is pretty different. There's GOT to be a point where we don't accept translation. I'd like to add "Misplaced Pages is not a translation guide" or "Misplaced Pages is not an intra-language dictionary" or something similar to the list. Any thoughts? ]]<sup>]</sup> 17:21, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages is not a... ==

Cookbook and depository for every minor comic book character ever conceived. Can we add those two as well? ] 23:29, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

== WP is Not a Mere collections of internal links... ==

Item 2 under "Misplaced Pages is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files" says

:Misplaced Pages articles are not: Mere collections of internal links, except for disambiguation pages when an article title is ambiguous, and for structured lists to assist with the organisation of articles.

I think this is outdated as far a lists are concerned. First of all the term structured list isn't defined anywhere and it isn't clear to me what it means. The part about "assist with the organisation of articles" makes it sound like the only lists that are allowed are the topic lists that predated the Category implementation. Yet lists '''are''' allowed. There are guidelines that instruct the best way to format and present lists and not just those that assist with the organisation of articles. My suggestion would be to remove this item as it hasn't been enforced for a long time. --] 16:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

: I tend to disagree. The lists that I know of which are clearly supported are those which meet the listed criteria. Yes, we have many other lists. I would argue are merely tolerated or just have not yet been cleaned up or deleted. ] <small>]</small> 22:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
::Jeff and I have been having a discussion about this after meeting at ]. I've been drafting an essay at ] after being involved in several AfDs and discussions about these kind of lists. <b>]</b> <small>]</small> 01:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

== Misplaced Pages Pornography ==

I was reading the Misplaced Pages policy regarding who Misplaced Pages "is not censored." It says that the content cannot violate the laws of Florida. I was thinking, since this material is accessible to anybody without any kind of obvious warning about objectionable content, is there some concern about children accessing the material and how that could be a violation of the law? I understand that Misplaced Pages is provided primarily as an educational resource, but there's no doubt that some images (such as the one for the ]) wouldn't be too hard to be considered pornographic or unnecessarily lacking in educational value. As an avid supporter of Misplaced Pages, I just want to know what the policy is on this, and, if I don't understand the law sufficiently, what prevents the Wikimedia Foundation from being required to institute some sort of click-through notice of potentially offensive content. If this was addressed previously, forgive my ignorance; Misplaced Pages can be so dense with content that I sometimes find adequate research a daunting task. Please be gentle when answering my question; I'm relatively well-schooled in law, but I have delicate personal sensibilities. Thanks. ] 10:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
:I don't think Misplaced Pages is doing anything illegal. Misplaced Pages does have disclaimers, linked to at the bottom of every page. But since most sites have a "you must be 18" screen before showing any adult content, many assume that Misplaced Pages could get in trouble for not having one... I don't think there's really a legal case for that, despite what many people assume. Such laws have been proposed, like ], which was struck down as unconstitutional. I'm not sure what the situation with the Florida law specifically is though. --] 14:47, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

== Plot summaries ==

Given ], any objections to adding the following to Misplaced Pages is not an indiscriminate collection of information?

10. '''Plot summaries''' - Misplaced Pages articles should not act as repositories for plot summaries, annotated or not, but should offer plot points where germane to sourced, critical discussions of the work, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, which can be significantly more up-to-date than most reference sources since we can incorporate new developments and facts as they are made known. See ] for examples.

I think that's common consensus? ] <small>]</small> 17:07, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

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Can we remove the "And finally" section?

it has no place in wikipedia 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?

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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

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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)
  • 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. J94704:16, 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)

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

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)
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