Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Exits (Interstate 83)

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was DELETE. Per the deletion log:

23:20, Feb 25, 2005 Rich Farmbrough deleted List of Exits (Interstate 83) (Vfd, 18th Feb and has been merged)

List of Exits (Interstate 83)

Isolated as the only Wikipedia article that lists exits this way; does anyone plan to create similar articles for other 1- and 2-digit interstates?? Georgia guy 22:38, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Patently un-encyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a roadmap. Delete. Radiant! 22:47, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Wikipedia is not Mapquest. I do not want to see hundreds (thousands?) of articles detailing every exit of every highway. If you feel it's really necessary to have this info on WP, put it on the Interstate 83 article. Carrp | Talk 22:47, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oh, no. Delete for reasons stated. - Lucky 6.9 23:30, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep or merge into Interstate 83. We have lists of train stations, why not freeway exits? --SPUI (talk) 23:51, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- For the record, I was not the creator of this article; I simply disambiguated a link, causing it to show up in RC. Next time I'll leave the undisambiguated link there; that way you won't even know it exists and we'll all be happier. --SPUI (talk) 01:02, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Merge to Interstate 83. —Korath (Talk) 23:55, Feb 18, 2005 (UTC)
Delete'. Unencyclopedic. We have articles on train stations because they are important, often old and historic buildings that are a major feature of most cities, as well as being meeting places for thousands of people. An exit is a quarter mile of pavement. -R. fiend 00:21, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- We have 'major roads intersected' listed in some road articles. We have 'communities served'. This is just the extension of those. --SPUI (talk) 01:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. I would not want to know how long the exit page for Interstate 90 would be (since it is the longest interstate going from Boston to Seattle). Zzyzx11 00:30, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- It would be split into many parts (major parts of I-90 are toll roads, with their own articles). --SPUI (talk) 01:04, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. I wish people would stop being so creative on what Wikipedia ought to be, and just write boring encyclopedia articles. Wikipedia isn't a raodmap. I don't think ports, airports, train stations, and even subway stops are all terribly notable, but at least many of them have an architecturally notable building and a history, and many of them are important gathering places. Freeway exits are just a bit of road that connects one road to another road, and it is hard to see anything notable about them at all. --BM 00:42, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Which is why we don't have an article for each interchange. --SPUI (talk) 01:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete, Wikipedia is not a road map. Megan1967 00:43, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Please, someone tell me what the fuck "Wikipedia is not a road map" is even supposed to mean. Does this look like a road map? No, it's a list. This list should be expanded to include old exit numbers, and details about the interchanges (like opening dates) - certainly not stuff that would be on a road map. --SPUI (talk) 01:00, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete - basically unuseful list in the context of Wikipedia, with no potential to ever become useful. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:46, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete or merge into Interstate 83. Jonathunder 05:34, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
Keep. Wikipedia is not consistent. Rhobite 05:35, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
- I think you may have just stumbled upon Wikipedia's unofficial motto. -R. fiend 06:05, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - If Wikipedia was following more what paper encyclopaedias do (eg. Britannica, World Book, etc), then the guidelines for adding or removing material would be more strict. Alas since the catchcry has always been "Wikipedia is not paper", it is a free-for-all on anything and everything, which is where the problem is. VfD can only do so much or so little in the face of "populist" articles at the expense of genuine encyclopaedic ones. Megan1967 07:26, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Keep or merge per spui. Since wikipedia is not paper, one type of article does not exist at the expense of another. Kappa 09:39, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- They do though, Kappa. VfD is a process of electing to keep (or delete) articles not by merit alone but by which article/s can gather the most support either way. Articles up for VfD are thus subject to not whether they are just encyclopaedic but whether they can receive the most amount of popular support, even if the article is perfectly valid in other encyclopaedias. I am willing to bet that over a period of a few years Wikipedia will become the largest sex and entertainment "encyclopaedia" on the internet, while anyone wanting to do research on let's say a botanist who discovered a certain species in the Far East won't find it here because it wasn't popular enough for inclusion/retention. Megan1967 10:20, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - But the botanist will be deleted (unfortunately) regardless of whether people show up and vote to keep entertainment articles.
Strong disagree with Rhobite and Kappa. Wikipedia is neither paper nor consistent, but those arguments are equally valid (or invalid) for inclusion of everything. Since it has already been established that WikiPedia should not contain everything, you'll have to come up with a better reason for keeping this particular article. Radiant! 09:54, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
- Comment: My reason to keep this article is the same as Spui's, and because it's useful for navigation, a bit like a road itself. Kappa 10:51, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- I was responding to Georgia Guy's suggestion that this article should only be kept if a similar one is written for every other interstate. I think that's a silly, invalid reason to delete information. The reason I voted to keep this article, on the other hand, is because it is verifiable and useful information. That's pretty much all I need to see in order to vote "keep". My definition of "useful" may not be the same as yours. I hope this reason satisfies you. Rhobite 06:35, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
  - Yes it is. And for what it's worth, I agree that it's useful (and, obviously, verifiable). However, I do not think it's encyclopedic. For instance, a list of phone numbers is very useful, and for that we have phonebooks. A list of local supermarkets is useful, and for that we have the yellow pages. And a list of interstate exits is useful, and for that we have roadmaps. None of the three are very useful to people who don't live at that particular place. You don't look in an encyclopedia for navigation, you look there for valuable knowledge. Radiant! 10:11, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
  - Verifiability is also not the same as encyclopedic. Most things that are verifiable (such as our local swimming pool) do not belong in an encyclopedia. And many things that are not verifiable (such as the existence of UFOs) do belong here. Radiant! 10:11, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Concur with BM, Wikipedia is not a roadmap. Should we have a separate list with exits for every road in every country of the world here, then translate it into every language Wikipedia hosts? For every road in the US, for that matter? What makes Interstate 83 so special it deserves an individual article about its exits? What is so notable about its exists that makes such a topic encyclopedic? Below the bar. vlad_mv 06:11, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- We already have this information for some roads (like Florida's Turnpike); it's just in a separate article here. --SPUI (talk) 06:21, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  - Exactly. My point was that Interstate 83 is not notable enough to deserve a separate article for its exits - except for a few very very famous roads, which would be, anyway? I would vote keep and merge to Interstate 83 if enough information was provided to sustain the claim that it is worth a list of its exists in a heading. vlad_mv 06:39, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    - Hmmm, I think I'm going to merge it now; when this VFD is done it can be deleted or redirected. --SPUI (talk) 06:45, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. The general principle here is that it is stupid to hand-copy and hand-maintain tiny, tiny percentages of the available information in categories of information which are available at no cost on the Internet from complete, reliable, and frequently updated databases. Why should anyone go to Wikipedia for information that, for the foreseeable future, can be much, much better obtained elsewhere? Dpbsmith (talk) 23:13, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Comment, maybe the catch phrase of Wikipedia should be "Wikipedia is everything and nothing, simultaneously". -- Riffsyphon1024 10:03, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Redir to preserve history of merged content. Niteowlneils 20:19, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.