Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of London school bus routes (2nd nomination)

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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 delete. The "keep" !votes don't really address the reasons for deletion; many of them fall under WP:USEFUL and WP:NOHARM, and others are just vague arguments for why it should be kept without any reference to a policy or guideline. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:04, 22 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of London school bus routes[edit]

AfDs for this article:
List of London school bus routes (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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Fails WP:N, WP:PRIMARY, WP:NOTDIR, WP:NOTTRAVEL. The article is purely a directory of primary source data and lacks significant coverage in reliable secondary sources to establish notability. Wikipedia is not a travel guide and these routes are not even public transport as the public cannot generally use them. They are private contractual arrangements between education authorities and bus companies and no more notable for Wikipedia than a list of Tesco delivery routes. Charles (talk) 20:11, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Weak keep I disagree that this list isn't notable, and you're not going to get any significant secondary/tertiary coverage concerning any bus route, despite bus routes in large, world-class cities being notable. It's not a directory, it's a list. It's not a travel guide, since it's only local travel where the primary focus is on the route itself. Now, where I do think you would have a very solid argument is concerning the nature of the list. Is the list maintainable? I have my doubts. Public bus routes tend to be rather static, but I know from my experience that school bus routes may change over time, depending on where the kids live, what schools are opening/closing/expanding. Some are added, some are deleted. If it is expected that the list would be unlikely to be maintained, that is a valid argument toward deletion. Roodog2k (talk) 20:22, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • How is any of this consistent with WP:NOTTRAVEL? Not what Wikipedia should be doing.--Charles (talk) 20:55, 3 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. There's a clear contradiction of policy in Roodog2's keep rationale "I disagree that this list isn't notable, and you're not going to get any significant secondary/tertiary coverage concerning any bus route, despite bus routes in large, world-class cities being notable." Our notability policy defines a subject as notable only if it has been noted in significant secondary sources so the lack of them is a lack of notability. The list also fails the policy of WP:NOTTRAVEL which advises we shouldn't have lists of all the shops, hotels, services in a geographical area but should only list a few notable examples in the most appropriate prose article. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 13:38, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Where are the list of shops, hotels, and services? And, my vote is a WEAK KEEP, mind you. I know that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is a fallacious argument for keeping an article, but since the nom didn't nominate List of bus routes in London, I would like to know what the difference is. My issue with the article, again, is that I quesiton whether the list is a managable list, and that the list can be easily managed, as I said above. Roodog2k (talk) 16:45, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • My point exactly, we have no lists of shops or hotels in London, yet here we have a list of all school bus services within London rather than a limited number of notable items in a parent such as Transport in London or London Buses . I can't speak for the nom, but as I've said on other debates there are two problems with List of bus routes in London firstly there are a limited number of secondary sources about the route system in London - This identifies that the system itself may be notable, though not that it should be presented as a list - ideally it should be rewritten as a prose article like Buses in Bristol or merged into London Buses but that's a much longer and complicated discussion than an AfD. Secondly the list is the index to a number of articles for individual routes, deleting it without deleting these individual routes first is likely to leave a large number of orphaned articles - some of the routes are particularly notable and will need to be retained most can probably be deleted without difficulty but again its going to be a longer process than a simple AfD for List of bus routes in London. Once either or both of those discussions have been sorted I would see no problem with deleting that list as well. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:15, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • The way I interpret NOTTRAVEL is this: a travel guide is a synthesis of those items mentioned, but a list of ONE of those items is OK, for the sake of documentation. So, if this were a list of bus routes, that included tourist stops, restaurants, etc., that's a travel guide. This, however, is a list of bus routes for the sake of documenting where the bus routes are. There seems to be a concensus that a "List of bus routes in X place" articles are OK. BUT, and this is a big BUT, I am not sure this list is managable. A list has to be managable. If these routes change yearly, that's a big problem. Roodog2k (talk) 18:20, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Maintenance is a big problem, but has never been a convincing argument in AfDs since its argued that things like football stats are updated more regularly - despite this bus route lists seldom are updated even after an AfD where its promised they will be. However to me, not Travel is clear "articles need not list every x,y,or z" unless all said x(s) are independently notable. To date over 80 bus route lists (nearly all of the UK) have been deleted on the basis of this interpretation of NOTTRAVEL and on the fact that they are all primary source based and fail to be noted in secondaries. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 18:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or Merge Deleting will just end up redlinking pages, of which there are many which use this page. Would it be feasible if it was to divert or be edited where less info is needed and to comply with policies? Also agree with statement that it has no connection to WP:NOTTRAVEL, however partly agree to WP:NOTDIR. Also been looking at previous AfD review, I see nothing wrong with the article that warrants deletion. Tom the Tomato (talk) 14:21, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • How many pages would be redlinked? Judging by "What links here" you might think it was thousands but over 2,000 links are via one template Template:London bus routes (transcluded up to 214 times, with up to 70 redirects to the article from every transclusion), A further 1,000 or so are links from discussions in the wikipedia, user, talk mainspaces also because of the repetition of redirects to this article the remaining 7-800 can be compressed down to less than 90 unique articles. So in total 90 articles and 1 template would need to be edited plus 108 redirects to the article deleted it's not a substantial number of links to clean up and could be done semi-automated in a matter of minutes to hours. I see you are an AWB user so it's something either of us could carry out. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep i don`t think this article needs to be deleted. It seems nonotable, but it may be a great source of information. I would agree for deletion if someone will make a pages for each route. But as a list it`s good. --DJ EV (talk) 16:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. Buses in London are a notable encyclopaedic topic, and school bus routes are a notable component of that. The history sections should be expanded, but the fact that the article is incomplete currently is not a reason to delete it. As for the maintainability of the article, there are very few changes to the bus routes on an ongoing basis and what changes there are tend to be announced at the same time and implemented at approximately the same time which makes updating the article much easier than commercial routes in the rest of the country where operators chop and change them at the drop of a hat. Thryduulf (talk) 23:02, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If school bus routes are a notable component of Buses in London they should be discussed there. Per WP:PRODUCT we should not list every non-notable contract for school buses. An encyclopedic article might be written from secondary sources on provision of school buses in London but it would not be appropriate to include a full route list.--Charles (talk) 16:45, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE - this is a huge list of obscure bus routes, with nothing which attests to the notability of the topic. As such, this is not suitable content for an encyclopedia. There are various websites which publish this sort of information, and there's no need for Wikipedia to also publish it. Nick-D (talk) 23:03, 6 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • How on earth is this indiscriminate? It's a list with a defined criteria for inclusion that corresponds directly with a specific set of routes that are classified and organised as a distinct set by the contracting organisation (TfL). Specifically it covers those buses run solely at school times to get students to and/or from school. It's hardly indiscriminate or arbitrary. Thryduulf (talk) 01:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per precedent. (1) These lists require maintenance, because they are liable to be changed, but this cannot be guaranteed. (2) WP is not a directory or travel guide. So far London services have been an exception to the general deletion, but I am not sure that there is a logical basis for that. Peterkingiron (talk) 10:15, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per WP:LIST. Also, "these routes are not even public transport as the public cannot generally use them" - the public can use these routes. This is exactly the same as the first nomination, which resulted in a keep. ♦ Tentinator ♦ 16:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Why is a styling guideline for lists, grounds for keeping? Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 16:33, 8 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think they meant WP:LISTN. It should be noted that the actual previous AFD was a procedural close because the real AFD was discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/London School Buses. As you can see it was much more contentious. Mkdwtalk 21:33, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WP:LISTN is even more problematic because to use as a reason for keeping someone should be establishing that the subject has "been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources" which is another of the nom's grounds for deletion and hasn't been disproved. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:51, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. This is not, as far as I can tell, available for any member of the public to ride. A general article (not a list) might be acceptable. Bearian (talk) 18:47, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete As far as I can tell, the keep camp have two fundamental positions, inherent notability because London buses are notable, and that WP:LISTN says that each entry need not be notable, only that the list subject as a whole is notable. What the keep camp fails to address is that it's becoming a consensus that route listings are not notable. Wikipedia regularly deletes them, and WikiVoyage agrees that it is not content worth keeping. For starters, there are very few independent sources to show notability. The list only has primary sources at the moment. Secondly, Wikipedia is not a directory or guide. All the information save for the 603 route has only route and schedule information and no actual content. It should also be noted that the WikiProject Buses is currently discussing a guideline that would affect bus routes as out of the 115 bus route articles, many have been deleted. Mkdwtalk 21:21, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I'm in favour of keeping all the non-duplicate bus route lists, as a useful way of arranging information that would usually be suitable for inclusion in other articles; I dispute the suggestions that "WP:NOTTRAVEL" is a valid reason, as that is more intended to prevent information or advice that varies from person to person, is excessively trivial or specifically targeted at tourists, or lacks a clearly defined scope; it was probably not intended to be used to single out travel-related articles for special deletionist treatment. I'd say keep, but I think there may be consensus on a wider scale (at AFD and other discussions) to delete these lists, and I can't see why this would be an exception. Peter James (talk) 00:00, 10 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete As with most bus articles recently deleted (a lot!) they are just not notable in list format. They would be more so in prose however how useful are these articles to the general public. In the case of this article they would contact the school if they want to use the service. These pages should be on wikia or another site for people interested in buses. Wilbysuffolk (Talk to me!) 17:13, 11 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - As with last June with the same nom, this is a valid list article per WP:LIST. WP:NOTDIR clearly states is meant for indiscriminate "Lists or repositories of loosely associated topics". This is a very discriminate list and not at all a "repository of a loosely associated topics." I fail to see how a school bus route list is considered a "travel guide." This is much preferable than having individual bus route articles for every bus route in London, although some historic and important ones might be notable in their own right.--Oakshade (talk) 17:23, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Is it just for convenience that you sum up NOTDIR using only point 1 and dismiss the other 6 alternative points under which an article can fail policy? Particularly in this case Point 4 where it gives a definition of Directory that can quite happily cover this list and examples that are directly comparable (lists of patent filings, Schedules of Events) - At this point someone usually responds in AfDs claiming that it's not a directory because it doesn't have service times, yet the definition given in that policy gives a minimum listing of an id Number (route number) and a name but states that this can extend up to multiple pieces of information mapped against that ID (as in the case of these entries). And no one is talking about multiple articles for individual routes as there is no evidence that the routes are individually notable either, and there is liable to be a clear out of those next. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 17:51, 12 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE, which proscribes "excessive listings of statistics". If kept, this sprawling article needs extensive work; the infoboxes should go (or be drastically pruned) to help reduce the large amount of whitespace. Miniapolis 15:19, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ymblanter (talk) 07:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. School bus routes are normal, everyday things. London's school bus routes are no more notable than all of the world's other school bus routes. This isn't even an encyclopedia article, it's a list of information. epzik8 17:53, 15 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - An article on the London school bus system would be suitable for Wikipedia; a list of its routes really isn't. WP:NOTDIR, WP:INDISCRIMINATE, WP:N. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:54, 17 April 2013 (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.
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