Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cranes of Great Britain

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎. Views are roughly split between keeping and merging. Neither of these requires deletion, so any discussion about them can happen outside of the context of this AfD. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 09:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cranes of Great Britain[edit]

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There is only one species of crane that regularly occurs in the UK, and two other vagrants. The article currently is just overly detailed statistics about the common crane's breeding in the UK. It's not like cranes are particularly special in British culture, the way they are in East Asia, so no real reason to have this article. AryKun (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Animal, Lists, and United Kingdom. AryKun (talk) 15:22, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article has more than just statistics: it has qualitative information about behavior, history, and conservation. It is also well-sourced. HenryMP02 (talk) 15:38, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That much information could be added to literally any article about a bird in <insert Western European country here>. My point is that there is no cultural or ecological significance to the population of British cranes that parallels for example the reverence for cranes in Chinese mythology. The conservation efforts section is exactly what I’m talking about when I say trivia; it’s a blow by blow account of basically every change in crane population in the UK. AryKun (talk) 15:57, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, you are right. While I would still argue that some of the content of the article is good (bad being the tables and year-by-year population remarks), I do see now that the subject itself (Cranes in Great Britain) is not so special as to warrant its own article. Whatever good content there is could be merged into the respective species articles. I will strikethrough my old comment and favor Partial merge per Elmidae. HenryMP02 (talk) 18:42, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Partial merge One resident species plus two rare vagrants? This is "Common crane in Great Britain", and as such should form a subsection of Common crane - some of it, definitely minus the tables. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:12, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The topic of "Cranes of Great Britain" very clearly meets WP:GNG by sources existing in the article (British Birds, BBC, Birding World, Yorkshire Post, and more). This is classic WP:NOTPAPER, and rests comfortably within the First pillar of Wikipedia: Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. This quotation from pillar 1 directly contradicts the nomination rationale of no real reason to have this article. Later discussion above mentions "trivia" however this does not fall afoul of WP:TRIVIA or even WP:HTRIVIA. Within the scope of this article, and especially the section it's contained under ("Recolonisation of Norfolk Broads") the detail is not overly excessive, note that much of that coverage is specifically about conservation and thus populations and changes thereof are highly relevant. If any editor feels it is too detailed for comfortable reading, please improve upon it or discuss it on the article talk page. —siro χ o 17:10, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A word to the wise: howling out of the gate with "strongest possible keep" on the base of weak arguments damages your credibility and gives you zero room for discussion. These things aren't decided on the base of who makes the loudest chest-thumping display. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:07, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. I do generally try not to do that. Seeing the progression of the discussion I wanted to make it clear I thought there was a mistake underway. I don't feel my arguments are weak. GNG + NOTPAPER + 5P1. —siro χ o 19:38, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have changed the wording of my !vote. Acknowledging here for you and also below in a new comment. Apologies again. —siro χ o 20:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve written for a specialised encyclopaedia whose only purpose is to provide extremely comprehensive coverage of bird species, and they would never publish an account that includes this much information on the status of a species in a tiny part of its worldwide range. Nearly every “charismatic” species with small populations in a Western European country will have this much country specific conservation information, doesn’t justify having an article on it. AryKun (talk) 18:18, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the work you do on the encyclopedia and don't mean to disparage that in the slightest. Honest question, though, from a policy perspective, why should we delete this? This isn't adding overly detailed information to the more general article of Common crane. It's relatively well referenced, and the topic itself meets GNG based on sources already in the article. —siro χ o 19:42, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's exactly how all conservation publications work; most organisms that are well-studied and of conservation concern in a country will have plenty of sources discussing the history of their conservation in that country. Using that standard, we should have an article for wood storks in Florida. AryKun (talk) 06:35, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect (with or without a very selective merge) to List_of_birds_of_Great_Britain#Cranes. There's just not enough to set this apart via GNG. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:57, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Apologies for the "strongest possible keep" wording which I've chosen to remove above in place of a standard keep. I realize now that came across as overly aggressive, which I did not intend. Apologies specifically to those who felt put upon, that was not fair of me. Here's a source assessment table for the topic of "Cranes in Great Britain". There are other sources available that I haven't evaluated in full, but I think this makes more than a sufficient case for the article as it stands.—siro χ o 20:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per extensive reasoning provided by siro χ o especially the source assessment table as well as WP:NOTPAPER rationale. WilsonP NYC (talk) 18:40, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source	Reliable?	Significant coverage?	Count source toward GNG?
Source assessment table: prepared by User:Siroxo
BBC[1]		290+ words dedicated to the topic of cranes in multiple places in Great Britain	✔ Yes
British Birds "The occurrence and recolonisation of common cranes in Scotland" [2]	[3]	journal article that covers history and conservation in part of Great Britain	✔ Yes
British Birds, "Rare breeding birds in the United Kingdom in 2009"		Multiple articles over multiple years each seems to have 100+ words specifically on crane conservation focused on Great Britain. There is other relevant coverage with these as well. We'll count the set as one source	✔ Yes
Yorkshire Post[4]		438+ words of the article entirely dedicated to cranes in Great Britain including both history and conservation efforts	✔ Yes
Birding World "The Cranes of Broadland"	? Seems reliable based on topic, but unsure for this out of print magazine	? Seems very likely, multi-page article, title related topic of cranes in region of Great Britain, publication dedicated to birdwatching in Great Britain	? Unknown
This table may not be a final or consensus view; it may summarize developing consensus, or reflect assessments of a single editor. Created using {{source assess table}}.

My point (and that of AryKun above) is not that the topic is not "notable" - obviously there is enough coverage to write a certain amount about it, and in consequence to meet the letter of GNG - but that there is no benefit in presenting this separately from the main article, and that localized detail often is excessive for our purposes. Look at Sandhill_crane#Mainland_North_America - that is more information than is contained in the entire article under discussion here, comfortably contained in the species article in context. There is no benefit in making the reader chase around multiple articles just for the fun of having those. It's not always about notability, but often about practicalities of presentation. As suggested above, for most well-studied bird species with wide distribution it would be trivial, and unproductive, to break out regional sub-articles. I could pop out "Mallard in Arkansas" within a day or so, because I have twenty field studies sitting right here that happen to have been done in that region, but the added localized detail would be of minimal encyclopedic benefit. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 12:59, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If you wanted to write a quality article about Mallards in Arkansas, I think that would be fine. If someone else writes it and it's not of interest to you, that's also fine. This pattern is not uncommon across Wikipedia, we have the entire WP:SS guideline and related stuff for this. I'm not at all opposed to having a section in Common crane about Common cranes in Great Britain, perhaps with a {{main article}} section hatnote, if appropriate. My main objection is the idea that we start with this article that contains information that may be of interest to some readers, but isn't of interest to some editors in this afd discussion, then we do a merge to Common crane, and then we lose much of that information. I do agree with you that a full merge isn't appropriate. It mixes topics and also has UNDUE information for the common crane article. The solution that can satisfy both desires here is to leave this article for the people who desire this level of detail, and to include a summary in Common crane for people interested in that. —siro χ o 16:56, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The subject is notable on its own. It may not require merge. Srijanx22 (talk) 06:50, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Partial merge per Elimidae and AryKun- just because you can doesn't mean you should, and there isn't anything particularly noteworthy about the cranes of Great Britain specifically that would warrant and entire separate article, which makes this a fork and trivia. --SilverTiger12 (talk) 13:17, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Partial merge per Elimidae. Many types of animals live in a variety of places, and I don't think we need articles for statistics and sightings on those individually in this way. Reywas92^Talk 17:32, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Just want to note in case this is closed as merge; List_of_birds_of_Great_Britain#Cranes would be a better target than Common crane, because the UK is a very small portion of the common crane's Afroeurasian distribution, and so having any more than one or two sentences on its status in the UK at Common crane would probably be UNDUE. AryKun (talk) 09:30, 31 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:36, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The merge doesn't work. The List_of_birds_of_Great_Britain is what it says, a list, with almost no information on any of the birds in it (and rightly so; it would become unmanageable if it did). So we can't merge information there. The article on the Common crane would be unbalanced by a great splodge of information about the crane in Great Britain (AryKun is correct). But the information here is sourced, totally relevant to the bird in the UK, and therefore perfectly encyclopaedic. It is only natural that we have a list of birds in the UK branching out into information on each bird's status in the UK (and we can happily do the same for other countries too; there's no special UK status about this). Much interesting and sourced information would be needlessly lost if we lost this article. Elemimele (talk) 16:35, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Literally no specialist encyclopedia ever covered this level of detail for cosmopolitan species. If we're just going to include every single subject that has three journal papers that focus on it as a separate article, we might as well start Ixodid tick parasitism of giant anteaters and Effect of Andean topography on speciation in Scytalopus tapaculos. Just because something could be covered at article level doesn't mean that it's a good idea. AryKun (talk) 16:39, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As an addendum, if unmanageable is a criterion, having literally several tens of thousands of articles on overly specific "Bird in place" articles is definitely very unmanageable (and we can create that many of these articles based on this logic). AryKun (talk) 16:42, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Still divided between those arguing to Keep this article and those editors advocating at least a partial Merge.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:01, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Partial merge per Elimidae. --iMahesh (talk) 02:29, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.