Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interchanges on Ontario provincial highway 401

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 of the debate was delete. —Cleared as filed. 15:14, 20 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is roadcruft at its worst. Just list a bunch of interceptions. WP:NOT a road atlas Delete --JAranda | watz sup 23:58, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Interchanges on Quebec Autoroute 20

• Delete as per road atlas. Tom 23:59, 12 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy keep; no valid reason given for deletion. Think of it this way: if we have an article on a band, we list albums. If we have an article on a railroad, we list stations. If we have an article on a TV show, we list episodes. And if we have an article on a freeway, we list interchanges. This was too long for Highway 401, so it was split out. --SPUI (talk) 00:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep --HappyCamper 00:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm surprised, shocked, and dismayed at the community's reception to this article's content. Has anyone in the community actually tried to contact authorities in Ontario to see whether they would use this information? I actually raked up a large long distance bill doing so to find out that people in the transportation sector, law enforcement, truck drivers, government agencies, postal offices, delivery services, long term care facilities all use this information - on a regular basis, and for their livelihoods. Sometimes we need to go a bit further than our own intuition to determine whether something is encyclopedic or not - and certainly, this is material that is of utility for a large sector of people - many of which can conceivably find it here on Wikipedia. Simply put, if this is deleted, this is one AfD where I feel the community failed in doing its full due diligence in evaluating content worthiness. --HappyCamper 17:44, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • Isn't that why people in the Canadian transport sector have maps and GPS navigation? - Mgm|^(talk) 09:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. And are any of those people in Ontario dependent on Wikipedia for this information? - Dalbury (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment Is anybody anywhere dependent solely on Wikipedia for their information? If so, we've broken WP:NOR Jkelly 02:02, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment The idea of authorities or companies relying on an amateur encyclopaedia for their travel information is utterly laughable. But perhaps you can expense Jimbo for your phone bill. --Last Malthusian 18:05, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep --FCYTravis 00:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why? for both of you --JAranda | watz sup 00:59, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • As per SPUI. I am against cruft, but a list of exits on a freeway is a useful, verifiable, encyclopedic and notable information tool. FCYTravis 01:28, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • This type of information has been culled from a map and is best presented in form of a map. Pilatus 17:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as per SPUI. JAranda's claim that this is just a list of intersections is false, as it also has references and information on possible extensions of the highway. Also, while I agree that Wikipedia is not a road atlas, that doesn't mean we can't have articles about roads. Wikipedia is not a math textbook, either, but we have plenty of useful articles about mathematical theorems. Given that there have been no other arguments for deletion, and keeping it will retain useful and verifiable information, it seems clear to me that this article should be kept. Factitious 01:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • JAranda is right: this IS just a list, and pasting on a few references and sentences doesn't make it any less so. --Calton | Talk 02:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Wikipedia is not a road atlas in prose. The information would be more easily communicated on a map rather than in this format. --Metropolitan90 01:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are you volunteering to provide such a map? Factitious 02:56, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • Mapquest provides such maps on its web site. --Metropolitan90 03:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't think including those images would be acceptable under our license. Also, they're not well-suited to simply showing the interchanges on one highway. It might be nice to have a stylized representation of the road, with the interchanges clearly indicated in order. Providing other geographic information around it would just be distracting. Factitious 05:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. Wikipedia is not paper. Andreww 01:52, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, nor is it an informational garbage dump. As Gamaliel said in a different discussion (and note particularly the last sentence and clause:
    • Wikipedia is not paper, but it is also not the Library of Babel, nor is it an endless and tedious compendium of every bit of trivia and gossip and useless, insignificant "facts". It is an encyclopedia, not a dumping ground. That means we have a duty not to mindlessly compile facts but to present them in a concise and usable manner, making judgments about which facts are important and which are not.
      • I don't think the article in question is useless or insignificant. I also don't think it was created mindlessly. Factitious 02:56, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
      • Wikipedia is not paper covers more than just the amount of information we can include. It looks like this article exists as extra information for the Ontario provincial highway 401 article. I'm not arguing that in a paper encyclopedia there would not be enough space for the info (trees will keep growing) but that it would be almost impossible to organize it sensibly. By braking the extra information out onto a seperate page - in a different dimention not avalable to users of paper - the editors of Ontario provincial highway 401 have found a good way to arrage things while trying to limit the length of there main article which helps readability. Wer should be considering the future of this page in the context of Ontario provincial highway 401 and not as some isolated list. Do you really want to make Ontario provincial highway 401 worse or not have that article? Then delete this page. Do you think we need an article for Ontario provincial highway 401? Then I think this page needs to stay too. Andreww 09:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Extreme roadcruft. Wikipedia is not an atlas, and any geographical information should be, at best a summary or illustrative. I keep thinking of the Borges about some mythical mapmakers:

In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography. --Calton | Talk 02:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• • Somewhat of a tangent: it occurs to me that with Wikipedia, we can provide geographical information of whatever precision users desire, and still have the whole thing be no larger than a laptop (from the user's point of view). This way, we approach Perfection without having the flaw of Magnitude. Factitious 02:56, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Unencyclopedic. NatusRoma 03:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• It looks like this already appears in the article on the highway, so Merge/Redirect to Ontario provincial highway 401. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's because I just performed the merge. If this comes out other than delete, I'll undo the merge. --SPUI (talk) 03:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • The information is useful enough that I agree it should be merged if this article gets deleted, but it's pretty unwieldy in the main highway article. Why not remove it for the time being, to avoid unbalancing things? That way, it'll still be in the history in case it needs to be recovered for a merge. Factitious 05:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect to merged article. "Highway exits should be listed in an article on a highway, not on a separate article" per precedent. Keep after reviewing Wikipedia:Article size. The section is about 13k in size. --W.marsh 03:59, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete not that useful. SYSS Mouse 04:35, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Gamaliel 04:56, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why? Factitious 05:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, insufficient cause for deletion. Posiduck 05:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. There are possibly one or two notable interchanges in the world. If we keep these interchanges, do we allow all of the rest to be listed, too? Edwardian 06:49, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • None of the interchanges in this article have their own articles. This information is in Wikipedia presumably because the people editing Ontario provincial highway 401 felt it was important (and I agree with them). If it's included in that article, it would make up more than half of it, which seems pretty clearly unbalanced. Therefore, the best solution is to split it off into its own article. That's the only solution that both retains the information and keeps Ontario provincial highway 401 easily readable. Merging and deleting both fail at one of those two goals. Factitious 07:34, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete for being unencyclopedic. Tuf-Kat 07:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, indiscriminate and WP is not a travel guide. Gazpacho 08:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Keep there are no valid reasons for the deletion of this article. Keep all articles about interchanges of particular highways, especially this one.--Nicodemus75 08:52, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  Do you honestly expect an admin to close this AfD early, Nic? Gazpacho

• Do you honestly care what I expect or think, Gaz? Nicodemus75 09:38, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep It is of a major highway therefore not indiscriminate. Useful for those studying transportation, which many of us took for granted, but nonetheless encyclopedic. --Vsion 10:15, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: It is not the article on the highway. It is an article on all the interchanges, which makes it an article about a feature of a thing that is already covered. This puts it in the same category as an article about R2D2's claw or C3PO's faceplate, or "The Wing Nuts of The Millenium Falcon." I again remind people to vote the article under consideration, and not some virtual article that you wish were under consideration. This is not about highways. It is not about schools. It is not about anything except the interchanges of a particular highway. Geogre 12:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very well, vote amended, see above.--Nicodemus75 13:38, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Wikipedia may well have no limits on how much information can be dumped into it, but I fail to see how this is encyclopedic, or what purpose it serves in "a well-rounded education". - Dalbury (talk) 14:28, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge' back into main road article or keep merged. Failing that, delete per Geogre. To SPUI: Albums, stations, and episodes are all things that can be expanded upon and can contain information on their own. Interchanges are just links between roads and can only contain information on which roads they connect. - Mgm|^(talk) 14:32, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changed my vote to merge. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:17, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, or keep merged as this action has already been performed. This is somewhat useful information, but the Highway 401 article is not so long that it needs to be spun out into a subpage. - SimonP 14:58, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Geogre. Nandesuka 16:24, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is not a grab-bag of data. Pilatus 17:14, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. If this article is deleted, then we also need to deal with Interchanges on Quebec Autoroute 20, which is simply a continuation of this article. - Dalbury (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Normally I'd prefer to keep highway articles, but so far as I can tell, this information just comes right out of the external links without really adding anything. Recommend just putting the external links back on the main article for this highway, and maybe an extra external link pointing directly to the interchange info. —Cleared as filed. 17:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, unencyclopedic. Eugene van der Pijll 17:43, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• keep, being "cruft" doesn't exclude it from Wikipedia. Conceivably, merge, if the full information can be conserved, but its length seems sufficient to warrant its own article. dab (ᛏ) 17:58, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This isn't even an article. This just seems to be a list of factoids; I'm having trouble what figuring out what the encyclopedic value (instead of value as duplication of source material) this has. - A Man In Black (conspire | past ops) 19:06, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. This is exactly what an encyclopedia is not. Just because it's information doesn't mean it's encyclopedic. It's been mentioned that this is already available as source material. Let's keep it that way. Carbonite | Talk 19:18, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as per MGM and Geogre. → Ξxtreme Unction {^yakł_blah} 19:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Geogre. BTW I don't understand SPUI's remark that "This was too long for Highway 401." SPUI has merged it back and I don't see any obvious issue with the length of the merged article. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:18, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete mainly because I really cannot see why anybody would come to an encyclopaedia for this kind of information. - Just zis Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] (W) AfD? 22:32, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, roadcruft to the extreme. User:Zoe|^(talk) 23:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep notable roads Klonimus 23:54, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• While I think this information is useful, I agree that it may not be displayed in the best way, here. Perhaps create a map with the information and store it as an image? However, even that's problematic, because to include it on an article, it will be too small to see the information. Then the user will have to click on the graphic and wait a possible eternity for it to load. Also, text is easier for people with visual impairments than a tiny squished map is, so we wouldn't be helping them out any. Unfortunately, I can't find a way to include this information in Wikipedia in a way that works. No vote, just pointing out the current limitations of our encyclopedia. Jacqui ^★ 00:14, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Text is also the only way to link to intersecting roads and municipalities. --SPUI (talk) 03:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to Highway 401. Denni☯ 02:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• A list of freeway interchanges is not something that merits its own article. Roads just are not that inherently interesting (and I'm speaking as a self-admitted map junkie here). An interchange list is reasonable enough in the highway's article, but it never deserves its own distinct article. It simply isn't an encyclopedic topic in its own right. Merge. Bearcat 04:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete for a multitude of the reasons stated above. -R. fiend 04:43, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge. Useful information on what is Canada's most important highway. Better kept with the article (I see it's already there) so it's easier to find. Luigizanasi 04:54, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Merge. My first reaction is why do we need this? But that quickly leads to the position that if this table were in the article about the road I would not have any objection. So merging seems like a reasonable action. Vegaswikian 06:31, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. --Stormie 12:32, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete or fail that Merge to main 401 entry. Dottore So 14:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Good God. This certainly ranks as one of the least interesting and least useful (we invented the map for a reason) "encyclopaedia" articles I've ever seen. --Last Malthusian 19:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. WP:NOT a road map. --Carnildo 19:47, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Writing a map in prose is like writing a novel as a map. Useless, and not what Wikipedia needs. Cor blimey, that didn't make any sense, but Wikipedia is not an atlas and that's the cool bit here. Lord Bob 20:12, 14 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete not a useful way of presenting this information --TimPope 21:07, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge into the highway article. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 00:24, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge with the highway.--Sean|Black 08:13, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge with Highway 401 article. *drew 15:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom, or any of the other votes above. -- SCZenz 03:50, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Roadcruft — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.151.95.94 (talk • contribs)

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.