Talk:Airlines

Note to editors

After a series of lengthy discussions, Wikivoyage has decided not to have articles on individual airlines. Please do not link airline names in articles or in talk pages. These links should be removed. Ground Zero (talk) 01:15, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Practicality

Having a list of major airlines and links to their web sites might be useful, but I'm not sure how practical it is to try to list all the cities they fly to. It looks like this is still on the "A"s and it's already a pretty big set of lists. Plus, regular flights get canceled and added quite often, so it'll be almost impossible to keep this up to date. (Also added to anon. contributor's Talk page.) - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 11:33, 16 July 2006 (EDT)

This seems like a bit of a Project:Slippery slope edging in on our non-goal of becoming a yellow pages / link directory. (WT-en) Majnoona 21:22, 16 July 2006 (EDT)

I can see a glimpse of utility in a Wikivoyage Worldwide Guide to Airlines containing stuff like "airline x offers lots of leg room and a great VIP lounge at JFK" and "airline y's food tastes like styrofoam" but such reviews would have to be written in a guide-like objective perpective and I agree with Maj that it pushes us too close to becoming a yellow pages/advertising brochure. BTW, as for the current content, we can't copy from Wikipedia, remember? -- (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 20:52, 22 February 2007 (EST)

Deleting pointless airline redirects

Swept in from the pub

So if you have been active on Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion you might know that there are some that interpret current policy as forbidding deleting such utterly pointless redirects as Ryanair, KLM and the likes even while Lufthansa entirely justifiedly redlinks (which would probably also become un-deletable if it were ever created). As the "keep" or "speedy keep" votes are now not focused on the value those redirects provide or possibly could provide to the traveler, but on (an interpretation of) policy, this here is the attempt to change policy. I don't know which explicit wording where would have to be changed to get this needless amount of ballast jettisoned, scrapped and expunged, but I would please change either policy or interpretation of the same to get some consistency in the field of airline name redirects (namely that we don't want them) Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:14, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Reasons to not to delete a redirect, per Wikivoyage:Deletion policy#Deleting vs. redirecting:

The redirect is a term for which links are commonly created, or is a subject that might otherwise be likely to result in creation of an article that does not meet WV:WIAA.

If one user thinks Ryanair is article-worthy and creates an article or redlink, it's likely others will, too. Rather than having to explain every time that there was a past discussion where it was decided that airlines shouldn't get their own article, a redirect of Ryanair to Flying indicates to someone who might otherwise create an article that a past decision was made to handle that content in something other than a standalone article.

Just as important, redirects are invisible - what does it matter if there are one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand "pointless" redirects on the site, so long as they don't fall into the "when to delete a redirect" criteria in the deletion policy? I struggle to understand why there is any desire to delete them unless they are perceived as doing some harm to the site. -- Ryan • (talk) • 17:40, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

First of all, Ryanair does not redirect to flying but rather to air travel on a budget and iirc the argument against deletion was that there was "merged content" in low cost airlines in Europe which in turn was "merged" into the aforementioned air travel on a budget even though nobody could point to a single line of content from the erstwhile Ryanair article that ended up in air travel on a budget. So "we need attribution for merged content" was brought forth as a reason not to delete Ryanair and for KLM and the likes the reason simply seems to be "They're there, why do you want to delete them?". By the way, redirects are not "invisible" (if they were, what's the point in having them?), they show up in the search autocomplete and as such might make people think we have articles on airlines and induce them to create even more of this pointlessness, much more than simply deleting all the left over redirects and be done with it. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:53, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

The following discussions resulted in the current "redirects are preferred to deletion" policy and are useful background for this discussion:

• Wikivoyage talk:Votes for deletion#deleting vs redirecting (from 2007)
• Wikivoyage talk:Deletion_policy#Redirect, don't delete (from 2006)
• Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy#Delete vs redirect (from 2016)

-- Ryan • (talk) • 19:07, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I thought the previous consensus (as invoked here) is that while "real places" are next to impossible to outright delete (as opposed to "merge" and redirect) except in special circumstances which right now only include page creation vandalism (the leftover empty skeletons being gone), travel topics and itineraries are easier to delete on grounds of lack of content. If that consensus does not exist, we may have to be stricter in our rules as to which travel topics or itineraries to allow and we certainly have to change the message displayed at the bottom of outline itineraries. But to get to the topic at hand, while the subject of redirects seems to have come up repeatedly, this seems to be the first time it is not about places Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:14, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I disagree with your assessment that the current policy discussions have not previously focused on anything other than places - I believe that the discussions I've linked to explain why redirects are generally preferred to deletion regardless of subject matter - but I don't want to monopolize the discussion so will leave it to others to comment. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:24, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

When I click on a link, I want it to take me to useful information. Linking KLM to flying is going to irritate me and other readers: in virtually every context it will be clear that KLM is an airline, so I don't want to taken to an article about flying if I click on the KLM link. I think it's better to leave airline links red, and let them be removed by wikignomes like me. Somewhere in a related discussion there was a link to Toronto (Prince Edward Island). That piqued my curiosity because I live a more well-known Toronto (not telling which one!) But the linked article told me nothing at all about Toronto, PEI. At least the page was about PEI, but it kind of comes across as a linking error rather than an attempt to be helpful. Ground Zero (talk) 19:36, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

It is a good thing that we have contributors such as Hobbitschuster who desire clear rules around content and management since (I assume) they care greatly about the quality of this wiki. I would just say that many aspects of WV are ambiguous due to many of us having conflicting opinions on policy, and regardless of who is right or wrong in any given policy I would say that the question of 'low value' redirects here does not substantially help or hinder the traveler in any meaningful way. Effort spent discussing this could be far more productively spent on developing better articles or getting involved with DOTM article discussions. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 19:44, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Like Ryan, my interpretation of past discussions, consensus and policy is that existing redirects -regardless of subject matter- should typically not be deleted unless they do harm (although mass creations of redirects should also be avoided unless there's a consensus). In principle I object to discussions about deleting (especially individual) redirects for the reason Andrewssi2 mentions; there's not enough to gain and they cost too much time and effort that would be better spent on other matters. I also feel we shouldn't use VfD to create policy by setting and invoking individual precedents. That doesn't mean I'm in favour of "forbidding deletion of redirects". I have no strong feelings about the airline redirects. I imagine they indeed prevent the occasional creation of airline articles, but Hobbitschuster's point that a redirect to Flying is of no value and thus (through frustration for the reader) harmful in a way makes some sense to me too. The question we need to answer is, if these "low value" airline redirects do more harm than good. I will not stand in the way of deleting them all if there's a consensus to do so- but in that case, they should also be unlinked (as a general rule) because I believe red links do encourage creation. It is important however to separate this discussion from the much broader discussion User:Ground Zero is introducing above. Personally, I agree that a redirect should ideally be to a page where the search term is at least mentioned somehow - but it's not the same issue and would cloud this discussion. JuliasTravels (talk) 22:16, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Well I do think the outcome of this discussion will apply to all or at he very least most airline redirects. However, I don't think we should end up with a consensus where the creation of certain redirects (e.g. for Air France or Lufthansa) is discouraged but their deletion (at least in theory) prohibited by policy. This would create the very unfortunate impression of "irreversible trolling". Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:28, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I am personally disappointed with our coverage of airlines, and I would prefer that we did have articles that were reasonable targets for redirects from an airline name - somewhere where I could get a reasonable amount of info about the catering, seat quality etc offered by a particular airline. However that it is a different discussion.

When I follow a redirect, it should be obvious why I have been redirected. If KLM redirects to Flying, then it should mention KLM, even if it is just in a list of airlines. The only exceptions should be for spelling errors and other obvious cases like Airplane.

However some of these redirects are the result of mergers and so need to be retained for attribution. If we don't have a suitable redirect target, then I think that it would be better to have a short stub article saying something like "We don't have an article on the airline KLM, please see Flying for some related information, and see w:KLM for a Wikipedia article about KLM." The redirects which are not the result of merges might then be considered for deletion if there is not an article that is a reasonable target. In the specific case of KLM, a better target might be Schiphol Airport. AlasdairW (talk) 23:06, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the discussion of whether we should have articles on airlines (in any form) is indeed a whole other story. But if a redirect is a result of a merger, do we have to retain the redirect "for attribution purposes" even if not a single line of content from the originally merged article shows up in the end result? Does that mean if the "article" vsbwöefaöfkny is merged to Moon we have to retain the redirect even if we ultimately throw out all the content that originally came from the aforementioned string of random letters? Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:48, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

We need to keep the article history if its former content is used anywhere on the site. This is usually in the article resulting from a merge, but it could also be in another article, where the edit summary is "moved from Ryanair". So unless we can find an alternative way of preserving this history, like my suggestion of short stubs, we need to keep the redirect, unless we have a way of checking for current use. AlasdairW (talk) 23:58, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I believe that we need to keep redirects if any undeleted revision contains content from it. The most recent revision of the article isn't the only thing that matters, because people can still see (and link to and attempt to re-use) previous versions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict)By the way, the edit history of KLM does not indicate any merged content ever having been there. To make this debate a little less theoretic, this is mostly about this list and this list which I hope includes all the redirects for airline names. There may be others, but I do not know how we would find them through means other than trial and error. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:01, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

As for Ryanair in particular, this is the only diff that contains anything but a redirect or attempt at a redirect at this location and it lasted in that state for less than two days (which indicates even then the decision to redirect was taken rather fast), this to me does not indicate the need to attribute anything. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:05, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

You need to attribute it if any sentence or other copyrightable element from that version was ever copied to any other page. How long it was shown on the site at that article title is irrelevant. What matters is whether any of that content ever appeared on any other page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Have a look at the edit history; none of the content seems to have been moved elsewhere; at least no edit summary indicates that. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:47, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

If the page is merged, that is usually mentioned in the edit summary. If, on the other hand, content is copied, then there is no corresponding edit in the original article, and thus no edit summary. I know no way of checking edit summaries of all articles (e.g. for a given date), and I cannot think of any list of patterns guaranteed to catch an attribution. Thus anything that ever existed might still be in unnoticed use somewhere.

I do not think we have to be too stringent, though. If the page was not attributed when copied, then the legal responsibility is with the editor (until we get a takedown notice). If it was attributed and anybody is interested in the original, we can restore that version on request. I think keeping the old version is important only if it has content likely to have been copied (or otherwise is interesting enough).

Much more important is having a culture of decent attributions when merging or otherwise copying, linking a permanent version of the used page (ugly urls can nowadays be avoided with the [[Special:Permalink/123]] construct, where 123 is the oldid number).

--LPfi (talk) 09:51, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

I fear this discussion has become sidetracked a bit. There are two (at least) separate issues to be resolved here. First, is there a need/benefit/whatever to deleting those redirects, and if yes, is it possible to delete them with regards to attribution issues. The latter (the attribution issues) would have to be checked separately after the first issue is resolved. Unless of course we decide that if there is any single redirect that is kept for attribution reasons, we have to keep even those that don't need to be kept for attribution reasons. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:08, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

To try to break this logjam, I have proposed a changed to policy here to clarify our intent with respect to airlines. Ground Zero (talk) 18:00, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Airline redirects

Discussion moved from Wikivoyage talk:Deletion policy

At Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion, we have struggled and failed to decide whether airline links should be deleted or redirected to articles like Flying or Air travel on a budget, or, in the case of airlines with a single hub airport, to the airport article (the example that is given is redirecting KLM to Amsterdam Schiphol airport. We do agree that we do not want articles on individual airlines. To try to resolve this, I am proposing to clarify the policy in this area. I think that this issue falls between the cracks of this part of the policy:

A redirect is inappropriate when: 3. The redirect could be considered self-promotion or spam (see also WV:Don't tout). Individual restaurants, bars, hotels or other businesses should not get redirects, although exceptions are made for large and/or important businesses and services like Amtrak (see #3 in the following section).

An airline could be argued to be a "large or important business", but the only example given is Amtrak, which overwhelmingly dominates non-competition rail traffic in the U.S. Airlines rarely ever meet that standard, and the airlines being discussed at VfD certainly don't.

So I propose that we clarify the policy by adding to the above either:

• A: Airlines should not be linked or redirected to another article.

Or

• B: Airlines should be redirected to an appropriate article like Flying or Air travel on a budget. Where an airline's flights pass through one airport at least 80% of the time, the airline should be linked to that airport, if there is an article for that airport

I realise that there are other policies that can be invoked on either side of this debate, but that has not resolved it, so I am proposing to specifically set out our intent with respect to airlines in order to resolve the issue. Also, the wording can be adjusted and improved later, but I am hoping we can get a decision in principle on one approach or the other before proceeding to wordsmithing. Ground Zero (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• A - I vote for A because I think readers will be frustrated and annoyed by links that take them to articles that provide little if any information about the thing that they clicked on. The redlinks issue can be resolved through normal copyediting, just like links to other articles we don't want. Ground Zero (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• I think A is the preferable solution, though maybe the wording could be tweaked. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:52, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

• C: Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion#Another_approach.3F Pashley (talk) 00:43, 23 February 2017 (UTC)
  • Please spell it out here so that the discussion doesn't become more fractured than it already is. Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:51, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Basically, Pashley's proposal is for Wikivoyage to maintain a table of airlines. I disapprove of that suggestion. Just as we don't maintain tables of railway or bus schedules here, we should not spend our time trying to maintain tables of - how many airlines are there in the world today? I'll suggest a choice D, though (or A1, if you like): Redirects only for budget airlines or any other airline for which a redirect to another article is truly topical. If the redirect would be to an article as general as "Flying", it's best to simply delete the link. And if that exception seems unfair or too confusing, let's do away with all redirects from airlines once and for all. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:59, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

The summary is correct; see my link above for more detail. Airlines are certainly important to many travellers and are likely search terms, so having some links for them makes sense to me. There are cases like Lufthansa providing (a? the only?) direct flight from Nanjing to Europe where they seem almost required.

Red links are useless and ugly & redirects to Flying or Discount Airlines make no sense. A table avoids those problems; an airline link then redirects to an article that actually has info on the airline. As I see it, the only sensible policy choices are my suggestion or a policy that all airline links must go to the company web site.

The maintenance burden for this should not be onerous. Ikan is correct that tables of schedules would be a disaster since those involve many trips & the data changes often. However, this would need only one entry per airline — & not all airlines, just major ones or ones that for some reason we want a link for — and the data is mostly static; airlines do fail or merge, or change names or change their hub, but that is rare. Pashley (talk) 09:47, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

First, it hasn't been unusual in the U.S. in the last x-number of years for airlines to fail or merge. But that aside, you really want to set up a standard for what an "important" airline is? Any national airline has to be considered "important" for travelers to that country. And in terms of kilometres flown, I'm sure domestic Chinese airlines are up there. As for redirects to company websites, I don't think we should be doing that, both because it would seem to conflict with at least the spirit of not directly putting people into commercial sites without their deliberate intent to go there and because we'd have to maintain the links in redirects. Does Wikipedia have the kind of table you propose to create on Wikivoyage? In that case, if you feel it's more user-friendly to direct people to a table, can we please make an exception to our overly rigid policy on links to Wikipedia and just set up interwiki redirects, keeping in mind that I daresay most of us think that a table is neither a Wikivoyage-like thing to create as an article nor something we really want to or have the best manpower to maintain? Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:35, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ First, it is not entirely clear to me what a "national airline" would mean. Does that include the likes of La Costeña that has a monopoly on domestic flights in Nicaragua (and dare I say a near monopoly in the kind of transport tourists typically partake in on certain routes) but only exists in a country of roughly six million? What then would be the cutoff point? What about "second airlines" that are or used to be almost as big as the flag carrier? I think there are two practicable solutions to give the information you want to offer via an easier route: One is to link directly to the WP page (maybe using a Wikipedia symbol instead of the slightly different shade of blue we currently use) and the other is a link to the company website (which is undoubtedly the most up to date source we can give, but not always easy to read or navigate and often intent to sell more than to inform). I personally don't bother looking up which airlines go to a place - I just put the place into an aggregator and see what flight to which prices it gets me. But then again, I consider the difference between flying airline A and airline B over 8 or so hours not worth a price difference of more than 100€. What we could do is use existing templates or create new ones to give something like [airline name] (w) where clicking on the thing in [] gives the company website and clicking on the thing here represented as (w) gives the Wikipedia page. Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:03, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I like the idea of B where there is a target which mentions the airline (an airport or a country Get in section), but not to pages like flying - I think that the redirect must be mentionned on the target page. I am not opposed to the idea of a table, as it mentions the airline being redirected, but I would like to suggest an alternative. Rather than a redirect we could have a short stub page. This would say someting like: "Sorry we don't have a normal page for ABC (contributors see Wikivoyage:What is an article? for an explanation.) You may be interested in the following airport articles ...(list of the airlines hubs), these articles on flying..., this wikipedia article on the airline". If a country Get in section described the airline's network that could also be linked. (Personally if I am going to spend about 24 hours in a series of aircraft (UK-NZ), I am happy to spend £200 (20%) more for one airline & route rather than another, and would like information to make that comparison.) AlasdairW (talk) 23:51, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

I think this summary misses some of the nuance in what I posted. Redirects only for budget airlines or any other airline for which a redirect to another article is truly topical. If the redirect would be to an article as general as "Flying", it's best to simply delete the link. That means, don't create any new article in order to make additional airlines topical. It also means that the simplest thing is just to delete all redirects. And then further down, I mentioned the idea of redirecting to a Wikipedia article with a table, which is a more user-friendly thing to do. So my suggestions, in order of preference are: (1) Redirect to a useful Wikipedia article; (2) Delete all airline redirects; (3) Keep only those airline redirects which are truly relevant to an existing article. The reason I don't prefer keeping some redirects rather than none is that I think that policing which airlines merit and don't merit redirects is a headache we don't need. It's so much simpler if either all can be redirected or none can be. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:26, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm willing to admit that there's no good solution here. I agree that creating full articles for airlines is undesirable, but how do we signal that to novices? People expect to read about airlines on a travel site. People will notice their absence and try to create them. It's happened before; that's why we have the redirects we have. Now maybe such activity is rare enough that we can gently redirect the efforts of the well-intentioned novices and remove the new articles. But my concern is that the surprise of finding no airline info on this site may be comparable to the surprise one would experience in being redirected to Flying upon searching for an airline. So if the surprise-factor is a wash, why bother restricting the creating of these redirects? Powers ^(talk) 02:54, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not convinced of the argument that readers will expect articles on airlines. I've never seen a travel guidebook with a chapter on an airline, but maybe they exist, and I've never seen them. People may want to create articles in airlines, individual hotels, train stations, etc., but we don't have to accommodate them. We don't accommodate the desire of some to create articles on every airport out there, or on individual highways (in most cases). Ground Zero (talk) 03:07, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

No, we don't accommodate the creation of such articles, but one of the reasons for creating redirects is to avoid the repeated discussions about why we don't want them and that we don't allow them when people try. As for the expectation factor, I'm not sure many travellers would expect an article about airlines (although more might expect a link to them, but okay). What if we would de-link airlines in all our articles, but create the suggested page with explanation that we don't have articles for airlines, with perhaps a logical link to a relevant Wikipedia page or whatever, and make redirects to that page? In that case, random users don't get redirected to a not very useful page when they simply click a blue link, those who really search for an airline would find the relevant explanation that we don't have them with a useful external link to a more suitable site, and the potential problem of unwanted creation would still be solved because the redirects would still be in place (just not visible in articles anymore). For destinations where only one airline has good connections, for example, we can explain that in text in the relevant article. Including an external link would even be an option in such exceptional cases, and can be discussed on a case to case basis. Wouldn't that settle all the major concerns? JuliasTravels (talk) 09:47, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I think the problem with retaining redirects is that it would raise the question which airline deserves a redirect and eventually debates about creating or deleting marginal cases. I think we have entirely better things to do with our time and the easiest way to resolve this once and for all is to delete all those redirects period. I'm not sure whether I caught all of them but I think airlines redirects aren't to be found in article space currently nor should they be. Hobbitschuster (talk) 10:55, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@JuliasTravels: I don't think I quite understand your proposal, perhaps because I don't have a good understanding of the linking possibilities of WV. Could you provide a short summary for us less experienced editors? Ground Zero (talk) 15:47, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I think your opinion is quite clear, Hobbitschuster, and I understand that anything short of deletion and a ban on airline redirects would be suboptimal in your eyes, but to get to some sort of consensus I do hope you'll consider a compromise of some kind. Otherwise, there can not really be any progress. @Ground Zero, my suggestion is simply to remove the wikilinks in articles, so to remove the brackets in [[American Airlines]], and simply use un-linked text (American Airlines} in articles. That way, most readers will not even think we have articles on airlines, and will not be disappointed when they click on the current blue links. The few people who really expect to find an article on airlines could search for American Airlines in the search field. They would find the redirect to a short (sub)page (could even be a paragraph in Flying or something) explaining that we don't have these article and perhaps get a suggestion on where to find relevant information. That way, the redirects exist, satisfying the concerns of those who are opposed to deletion, but they are not visible in articles. Since they wouldn't be visible, it wouldn't actually matter much if an extra one was created. It's just a thought, though. JuliasTravels (talk) 16:14, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. That makes sense to me. Ground Zero (talk) 18:22, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

@JuliasTravels: is there any link to an airline redirect in mainspace? If yes, please tell me where. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:19, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I think JuliasTravels' solution is the best one, and to clarify: What it means is that any airline's name can be redirected to this brief Wikivoyage article explaining why there are no Wikivoyage articles on individual airlines and pointing users to a useful Wikipedia article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:44, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Hobbitschuster: if any airline page is redirected to Wikivoyage:What is an article?, which already says that airlines do not get articles, then I don't think there need be any discussion about which airlines get redirected articles. There won't be any incentive for airline fans to create those pages in the first place. I am starting to think the JuliasTravels' proposal might be our best chance for a consensus position that would allow us to settle this and move on. Ground Zero (talk) 17:10, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Weighing in at the eleventh hour. My dream scenario would be to link the airline redirects to the Wikipedia article on the relevant airline, while simultaneously striking down our confusing and nonsensical prohibition of inline Wikipedia links to accommodate this new policy. I realize that's a tall order, though, so put me down in favor of JuliasTravels' suggestion if no one wants to shoot for the moon. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 17:22, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I think it is in general a desirable idea to have wp links that work by displaying the WP symbol (or a small blue w) behind the word(s) that is/are used to explain where the link points, perhaps with the possibility to enable a design of [external link] ((wp link)). I think for some things it is only fair to point to WP in equal measure as to an external site. And I think that for some topics (notably keeping our visa information up to date) much better use of WP than is currently made could be made.

At any rate, back to the main discussion. I do not think having a cross namespace redirect that is furthermore a "link that disappoints" - to use a well coined term of User:Ground Zero - is the most elegant or best solution. I think a clean amputation would be the best solution for the dubious growth of airline links, but if there cannot be a consensus built for this I won't let the good be the enemy of the decent, nor the decent be the enemy of the at-least-not-as-bad. This should not be misconstrued however, as establishing consensus on this over any other stated or not yet stated objections to this solution, but I won't stand in its way if that's the only thing we can agree on. I think we should furthermore establish that any newly created article, redirect or whatever under an airline name is to be deleted on sight without discussion and not redirected as well. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:15, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

That last part is simply not going to happen. You will need to accept that this fierce disapproval of airline redirects in principle is something personal for you. While others (including me) share some of your concerns (like wanting to avoid utterly useless redirects) there is simply no consensus -and even hardly any support- for a ban and a "delete on sight"-policy. As has been pointed out before, creating redirects instead of simply deleting has been a long-standing practice aimed at avoiding recurrent creation of some topics. If someone does create an article for a major airline, it should be perfectly acceptable for another user to turn it into a redirect under the same conditions as our other airline redirects. No-one is suggesting to mass-create them or allow mass-creation, but once we have a suitable solution for this matter, there is no reason to treat airlines more strict than other topics that don't meet our article criteria but are still created sometimes, like major attractions. That said, I do agree that Wikipedia links can be used much more to our advantage, and could be in this case. I'm just afraid it's still to early to gain a consensus for that. JuliasTravels (talk) 21:52, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

JuliasTravels' proposal addresses my concern about "links that disappoint" in that it allows us to delete those links immediately. Creating redirects from the airline pages addresses the concern that others have about people using airline names as search terms, and about people wanting to create airline articles. Once they see the outcome of the search, they will be dissuaded from creating the articles. Ground Zero (talk) 01:09, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Summary of the discussion so far

Please change this if I've got it wrong:

• Ground Zero: JuliasTravels' proposal
• Hobbitschuster: delete airline links
• Pashley: link to table with summary information
• Ikan Kekek: in order of preference: (1) per JuliasTravels below; (2) Redirect directly to a useful Wikipedia article; (3) Delete all airline redirects; (4) Keep only those airline redirects which are truly relevant to an existing article.
• AlasdairW: link to an article that mentions the airline, and where there isn't one, to a stub explaining that we don't have airline articles.
• LtPowers:
• JuliasTravels: redirect airline names to page/section explaining policy, and delete links
• AndreCarrotflower: in order of preference: (1) redirect to Wikipedia article, (2) JuliasTravels' proposal.

Ground Zero (talk) 17:43, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Moving forward

Is it too early to conclude that, of the range of views that we have here, JuliasTravels' proposal is the only one that is going to resolve this issue so that we can move on? I think that while there is support for the Wikipedia links idea, that issue is bigger than just airlines, and should be taken up in another forum. Is this a fair representation of discussion?

If so, how do we move forward? I cannot find a logical policy in which to insert a statement to the effect of "airlines should not be linked, but should be redirected to Wikivoyage:What is an article#What does not deserve an article?" (or something to that effect). It does not seem to fit either with Wikivoyage:Deletion policy or with Wikivoyage:Internal links. Any ideas? Ground Zero (talk) 00:57, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm hesitant to redirect cross-namespace; an article in mainspace shouldn't redirect to a policy page. The target should be a mainspace page, maybe list of fly-by-night airlines or something with no more than a {{listing}} for each and an explanation? K7L (talk) 03:23, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm...If we're going to have listings for each airline, are you suggesting merely a long list article, or are you thinking of creating an annotated list with descriptions or appraisals of each airline that could be useful to travelers? Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:54, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

This is similar to what was proposed by Pashley above. There wasn't much support for the idea. Ground Zero (talk) 15:27, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't know what the reasons were when we removed articles like Airlines in Africa from the site, but I guess those reasons were similar to the reasons now given for not having what I presume to be much the same in one single long list page. Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:38, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Indeed, I don't think there was enough support for a list and frankly, I'm also not sure how useful such a naked list would be for travellers in the first place. Also, it wouldn't save us from discussions on which airlines would deserve such a listing (and a redirect to it). A simple text explaining that we don't have articles on airlines and an external link to Wikipedia or something seems much easier. If cross-namespace linking is the problem, let's simply include a small paragraph in Flying. It seems the most suitable place anyway, since that whole article is an explanation about what kind of information we give on flying, with links to where to find it. JuliasTravels (talk) 17:50, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way, I think we should do the same with airlines in x "articles" that we do with the existing airline redirects if we cannot delete them - which, to reiterate, I still consider the easiest and most elegant solution. Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:13, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Is there is a policy somewhere that says that an article should not be redirected to a policy? Maybe we should reconsider that because redirecting "American Airlines" to "Flying" will disappoint readers. It's not so bad without links, but even searching on a term and being taken to an article that does not give you any information about it will lead to irritated readers. Being taken to a page that explains why we don't have a page on the subject will satisfy the reader better. Putting the traveller first and all that. Ground Zero (talk) 19:53, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

But it's perfectly possible to explain that we don't have such articles in the Flying-article, and make any redirect link to that specific paragraph (so not to the general article). For the reader, it wouldn't make any difference in which namespace and which article they end up, as long as it's directly clear how the redirect is relevant and they immediately understand that we simply don't have articles on airlines. Main article namespace also gives us better options to offer an external link to e.g. the link of airlines on Wikipedia. JuliasTravels (talk) 22:25, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I do not think it is a good idea at all to have our article on flying (which is short as is and has been previously featured) to randomly contain the sentence (seemingly apropos of nothing) "we don't have articles on airlines, here's a link to Wikipedia; carry on - tallyho". I think a cross namespace redirect would actually be preferable over that. But the best namespace for airline redirects to point to is redspace. Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:51, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I have created an example page User:AlasdairW/Airlines which shows the sort of page that we could make all the current airline redirects pont to. This clearly states that we don't have airline articles, then links to WP lists of airline articles by continent, our Flying articles and our airport ones. This could be called Airlines or something like We don't have airline articles. A single page is probably more practical that my earlier suggestion of individual pages, although the airport listing is getting long, but I would prefer to keep to the category tree listings which are automatically updated as articles are added. AlasdairW (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

That looks like a good solution to me. Thanks for putting that together. Ground Zero (talk) 01:15, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Seconded. I think AlasdairW wins this thread. :-) Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:37, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I think this is the best solution proposed thus far that could achieve consensus. Have we explicitly gained consensus on how to handle potential new creations of anything that would turn Lufthansa from a red to a blue link? Hobbitschuster (talk) 02:43, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm perfectly fine with placing it anywhere :) If it is to be in mainspace, I'd say Airlines makes more sense than We don't have airline articles (which sounds like a policy page). Just for the record, I thought the general idea was that there shouldn't be a link for Lufthansa in the first place, to avoid average visitors using the redirect? JuliasTravels (talk) 11:28, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

It would be a blue link because it would link to your proposed Airlines page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:29, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Hehe, yes, I understand that part :) What I mean is... do we want to have these links in mainspace (destination) articles after all? As I understood from earlier comments, some consider redirects to anything less than real information on the topic is not very useful for the traveller. That's why I suggested above that we avoid having any linked mentions of airlines in our destination articles, and only leave the redirects in place for people who (a) search for an airline in the search bar or (b) want to create an article for an airline. Personally I don't care either way, I'm just trying to avoid confusion on how to proceed. JuliasTravels (talk) 12:04, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, totally agreed that we should not have any linked mentions of airlines in any destination, travel topic or itinerary article. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:37, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I think we should only point the existing redirects to the new page and do nothing about airline names that still redlink. If and when they are created by page creation vandals or people who know no better, they are to be deleted without discussion. At least that's my proposal to have this issue settled and no need to debate whether Delta needs to include a disambiguation for Delta Airlines which would then point to our article on us not having articles on airlines. Hobbitschuster (talk) 13:56, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

What's the point in that? If the whole point is to have a place to link airline names, any of them could be linked there. Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:05, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Indeed. Again, that suggestion simply has no consensus support. Once there is a proper way to deal with this, there's no point in making a difference between the airline we already have at this (random) moment, and another airline article some newby would try to create in six months. That would be completely arbitrary. Also, your suggestion would not address the concerns some have raised about repeated creation. I think we agreed that we'll have no links in main article space so no, there will not be any disambiguation page for Delta. If someone would feel it's really important to create a redirect from Delta Airlines to the explanation page however, that would be perfectly harmless. I'm not suggesting we should, but say a newby creates an article for Delta Airlines or another major airline, standard procedure should be to redirect that page to the explanation page - not have another of those frustrating deletion discussions. It's just not worth it. JuliasTravels (talk) 14:29, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Minor airlines' names could be redirected, too. Why waste further time on this, once we have an agreed-upon solution? Ikan Kekek (talk) 14:57, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

But let's put, at the top of Talk:Airlines, unless we can find a better place, a note that says something like:

Do not link airline names in articles iron talk pages. These links should be removed.

Ground Zero (talk) 15:01, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

I have put the new content on Airlines. I expect that it could do with some tweaking - for example there might be a better set of WP lists of airline articles - I went for the set of largest airline ones because the main set of lists by continent then linked to further lists by country which included everybody that had a licence, even if they only had one plane for carrying cargo. AlasdairW (talk) 22:09, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Airline destinations

Swept in from the pub

Some editors here may be interested in w:en:Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 140#Should Wikipedia have and maintain complete lists of airline destinations?. At the moment, all such lists (but not similar lists for railways) may be headed for deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

I think they are fine on WP, but I think if the decision is to delete them - we should take them. I don't think WV is a directory either, but I would love to have their editors and readers here at WV. --Inas (talk) 08:50, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

A list of all routes to and from an airport I can see as being useful to a travel site and travellers, a list of routes of an airline not so sure. --Traveler100 (talk) 10:34, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Traveler100. I initially thought they were going to delete all the 'Airlines and destination' tables from each of their airport articles, which would have been a disastrous move for us and WP. But that's not what this is about, and I don't see why it would serve the traveller for us to import all of these hundreds of pages. We haven't got the manpower to maintain such lists anyway (even the behemoth that is English Wikipedia think they're overstretching themselves), so the point is largely moot. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 13:35, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Ryanair redirect and airport thumbnails

Swept in from the pub

Hi, 1) Ryanair and RyanAir as search terms lead to different pages. Is that intentional? Ryanair: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Airlines

RyanAir: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Flying_on_a_budget

2) The thumbnail for many cities (which you can see if you hover over search results, for example) often seems to be the airport for the city in question. Is that intentional too? (Examples: Dresden; Berlin)

Sorry if these topics have been discussed and agreed upon already. They just struck me as odd.

Thanks.

Griffindd (talk) 08:53, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

On the second topic, the preview being mostly airports is not intentional but a consequence of two things. First the thumbnail algorithm is that it finds the first reasonably proportioned image in a page. Second, due to the order of section the first listing with an image in it is often an airport. Now we have tried to get the mediawiki code to be changed so it uses the first actual visible image but that request was rejected a being too complex a code. Trying to put another image near the top of the page sometimes works but not always due to selection rules of the code. I did find a work-around method that worked which involved adding a hidden image and as small visible link to the top right of the page with some extra code in the geo tag and using the default image from Wikidata. But no-one voiced any support for the idea. --Traveler100 (talk) 15:48, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

@Traveler100: If I had seen that proposal, I would have supported it. If you want to repropose, either here or elsewhere, let me know.--ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 17:07, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Ryanair and RyanAir were separately created as articles long ago, and both became redirects shortly after. Airlines was created as a target for all airline redirects in 2017, and I think that RyanAir was overlooked at that time. I have changed RyanAir to redirect to Airlines. AlasdairW (talk) 21:25, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Some time ago I proposed a deletion of all airline redirects, given that some articles were created in times past before it was firmly entrenched that we don't have articles on private companies. There was some resistance because someone somewhere argued that there might have been some hypothetical "merged content" and we this couldn't delete the redirects due to "attribution issues". When we merged the former "low cost airlines in x" articles which were a hot mess to Flying on a budget, somebody insisted the Ryanair redirect which allegedly included some sort of merged content somewhere (nobody has been able to point out one bit of it) was retargeted. I reiterate my demand to delete the lot of them, but it likely won't succeed... Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:30, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for the explanations. Griffindd (talk) 06:51, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

change from travel topic to disambiguation

The way the standard boilerplate message at the bottom reads one could think that Wer desire for editors to "improve" this page. I don't think this is the case. Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:32, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Sadly, it is not a dab page by definition, and we cannot find a better alternative of this boilerplate message. Status quo by default. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 17:28, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

If we delete the boilerplate message, it would wind up to become another ghost article, which impedes the article count. Maybe we should do something that would put this article under the article count without showing any message. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 17:35, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

General description on airlines

Instead of just showing that WV don't have articles on individual airlines, what if we write about airlines in general? Instead of covering different classes of airlines at planning your flight (flag carrier, low cost), we can cover them at here, with a reminder that we don't have articles on individual airlines and WP links to the lists of airlines. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 17:54, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

If we do that, we can breadcrumb airline alliances under this article. --Soumya-8974 (he) (talk • contribs) 17:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia already has an article on airlines. I don't think Wikivoyage needs its own. Wikipedia has a larger pool of contributors who keep articles up to date. Ground Zero (talk) 18:57, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the way our coverage on flying is currently handled is fine as is (with the caveat that updates and expansion are always possible). Frankly, I tend more towards deleting this article entirely than to "do something with it"... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:12, 28 March 2021 (UTC)