Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Woodroffe Avenue

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was delete · Katefan0^(scribble) 18:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• The article was un-deleted on September 30th by User:Earl Andrew [1]. As I feel that there was not a strong enough consensus for deletion, I am upholding the reversal. Please see Talk:Woodroffe Avenue for further discussion. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 18:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Article has been listed on VfU. I am re-deleting the article pending the outcome of the VfU. Ëvilphoenix ^Burn! 18:38, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Woodroffe Avenue

Another non notable Ottawa Road Delete --Aranda56 23:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Extremely important Ottawa road. -- Spinboy 00:03, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Delete nominator. 00:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, oh where to begin? (a) Wikipedia is not a indiscriminate collection of information. Listing the speed limit on an unidentified part of the road and another speed limit elsewhere, and so on, is an indiscriminate collection of information. (b) The article is a description of a map feature. This does not make for readable or understandable prose. Why create so many substandard articles? A picture of a map would describe it so much better. (c) It is not expandable. This roadcruft only serves fragment a relevent description/discussion of transportation. This kind of material should be placed in an article like, Traffic pattern in Ottawa or Road transportation in Ottawa (or whatever community it is in) or what-have-you. (d) It is not notable. Why glorify a piece of infrastructure? It is just a piece of asphalt on the ground. It contributes to notable things, like a transportation network, but is not notable itself (unless I'm missing something and it is somehow culturally or historically significant). --maclean25 00:42, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Important for getting from northwest Ottawa to southwest Ottawa but nothing more; nonencyclopedic. — mendel ☎ 00:50, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete; WP:NOT a map. ♥purplefeltangel ^(talk) ♥ ^{(Contributions)} 01:34, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
  • You guys are forgetting Woodroffe is a MAJOR Ottawa Street, one of the busiest. -- Earl Andrew - talk 01:57, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
    • So? ♥purplefeltangel ^(talk) ♥ ^{(Contributions)} 02:06, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
      • So, major streets are certainly worthy of articles. If we are going to have articles on every single American Dad! epsiode, and every single Pokemon character and not too mention individual articles on all the recent cricket matches, then I think one of the busiest streets in the capital of Canada is important.
        • But I don't agree with having those articles either. Just because we have a bunch of stupid article topics doesn't mean we should just keep making them. ♥purplefeltangel ^(talk) ♥ ^{(Contributions)} 20:13, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
      • This certainly passes the pokemon test. -- Spinboy 03:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
    • But why is the road so busy? This is not the busiest road in Ottawa because of some unique feature it has. It is the busiest road because of how the road network is designed. I think you touched on a major flaw in these road articles. A discussion on why and how it became such a busy road would create an interesting and useful article. Instead, Wikipedia editors have chosen to create thousands of short articles on very narrow and very generic topics. How is this road (I mean the actual road itself, aside from its name and geographic place) any different from the other million paved roads on this planet? The road is not busy because of anything it did, it just sat there and traffic happened to it. --maclean25 03:47, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, perfectly verifiable and of interest to readers. - SimonP 02:17, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Of interest to readers? Which readers? I pray to God I never meet any of them in the pub. -- Last Malthusian 12:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I have no way of judging others, but it is certainly of interest to myself. - SimonP 13:40, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per Spinboy et al. Kappa 05:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Seriously, is this just a stretch of tarmac with lots of cars driving up and down it, or is there anything else to be said about this street? If the best we can come up with is speed limits and number of lanes then delete. Average Earthman 08:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, just another stretch of tarmac. Mention of speed limits and number of lanes is not encyclopedic and only verifiable by original research. If it has to be kept write an article on Ottawa infrastructure. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete The 'unusual features' paragraph makes me drop my monocle in disbelief. I could write a similar article on at least three roads I travel through on my way to work, including their 'unusual features' and discuss the possibility that some of Southampton's roads were designed when an exercise by special needs pupils was mistaken for a road planning document. It wouldn't make them any less non-notable, though. -- Last Malthusian 12:09, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per User:maclean25. Pilatus 15:23, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• As I've explained on recent Toronto street debates, I've always been of the opinion that city streets should only have articles if they have demonstrable historic or cultural significance far beyond their mere existence. Being a busy street doesn't cut it; being a yellow line in the MapArt city atlas doesn't cut it. By my reasoning, Ottawa streets that legitimately deserve articles would include Bank, Laurier, Sparks, Sussex and Wellington. But if going into exhaustive detail on a road's speed limit and how many lanes it has is the only way you can expand a road's article beyond two sentences, then you're dealing with a road that doesn't belong here. In a nutshell, my bottom line criterion for a road article is is this a street that a person who's never been to this city and isn't a map junkie might still conceivably have heard of? For Bank, Sparks or Sussex, the answer to that question is obviously yes, but for Woodroffe, it's no. I have to go with the delete on this one. And it's not Ottawa-bashing, either, because I want the majority of the Toronto street articles sh*tcanned too. Bearcat 16:22, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Woodroffe is a very historical street for those who live in Nepean. It is, basically Nepean's "Main Street" for North South traffic. -- Earl Andrew - talk 21:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
    • That's not in the least bit historical. Historical means, you know, stuff happening, other than people walking or driving through the damn thing. -- Last Malthusian 10:34, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete NN --TimPope 18:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Oh Dear. So far this week I've seen elementary schools, malls, local courthouses and now streets. This kind of cruft will give us a bad name. Wikipedia is not... WMMartin 21:15, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete: If it were up to me, I'd likely delete the whole category of Ottawa roads and others like it. Separate articles for various, non-notable roads in every city in the world is silly. If there's nothing more important to say about a road other than "it's congested" or "the speed limit is this, and it changes to that," it fully meets the criteria of being non-notable. If there's a real story behind a road, something that separates it from millions of other similar roads, fine, it's notable, but a recitation of speed limits and number of lanes is just pedantic trivia. What's next, separate pages for important bus routes in Edmonton or, maybe, articles for each of the busiest sidewalks in Milwaukee? — Cory Maylett 22:19, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete non notable G Clark 22:21, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete for similar reasons to recently deleted Toronto roads. Mindmatrix 22:38, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Non-notable, waste of resource, sub-trivial. Pete.Hurd 04:48, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, nn street. User:Zoe|^(talk) 05:20, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment: You guys keep saying it's non notable, but how can you say that without knowledge of the city in question? Woodroffe is the main street in Nepean! Wikipedia seems to have articles on every single highway out there, so why can't there be an article on Woodroffe, which is more of a major road than most rural rinky-dink highways that have pages? -- Earl Andrew - talk 08:45, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
    • Some more comments: I'd also like to say that there are a lot of links to the Woodroffe Article from other pages, and that means there is deffinately a need for the page, and shows that it is certainly a notable road. Plus, I remember we put some Ottawa roads on VfD maybe a year ago, and they were kept. Why the change of heart? We got the go ahead to make articles on Ottawa's major streets, and now there is a turn against it? It's not very fair to the people who make these articles . -- Earl Andrew - talk 08:54, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
      • Life isn't fair. Perhaps that disclaimer on the edit page on how your work can be edited without mercy should include a bit on "your work may be deleted without mercy if no-one cares on which street you buy milk". If there are plenty of links to the street, then maybe see if there's any interesting information from those articles that could go in this article, but the simple fact is that it doesn't matter if a billion pages link to it - if there's nothing interesting to say about the street, it's not notable! -- Last Malthusian 10:34, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
        • Which is exactly why notability is not, and will never be, a valid grounds for deletion. - SimonP 13:29, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
          • Funny, it's a valid CSD criterion and specifically spelled out as such for certain cases. User:Zoe|^(talk) 00:37, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
          • "Life isn't fair" is not a valid reason why we should delete this page. -- Earl Andrew - talk 18:36, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
    • "Main street through town" does not equal "historic significance". "There are notable things on this street" does not equal "cultural significance". Does the street lend its name via metonymy to an entire industry (eg. Bay Street, Wall Street, Broadway?) Is it listed in the Guinness Book of Records for something? Is it so famous that a person who's never even seen a map of the city in their lives might still conceivably have heard of it? Is it closely linked to a major historical event or political controversy? Does it have some unique feature like Syracuse's upside-down traffic light or Lombard Street's switchbacks? Is it on a Monopoly board? (And yes, Canadian Monopoly counts.) Is it the primary ceremonial boulevard (eg. Sussex Drive, Pennsylvania Avenue) in the nation's capital? Have TV shows been named after it? Those are the kinds of questions that define "encyclopedic", not how many lanes it has downtown vs. how many it has in Barrhaven. Bearcat 17:34, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per SimonP. Sort of. Non-notability is not a valid grounds for deletion. It would be even curiouser indeed if notability were ever a grounds for deletion. Ground Zero | t 13:59, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep per SimonP. Sam Vimes 17:06, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
  • We should forget if its non notable or not should VFD be any person opinion that if he/she thinks that page should be deleted or not --Aranda56 23:32, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
• I'd suggest creating an article Major Roads in Ottawa, Ontario. Merge with that proposed article, and, at such a time when the information on any individual road is sufficient, create an article devoted to the street. Some roads may never get there, while others will demonstrate their encyclopedic nature through a natural wiki process of expansion. Jkelly 19:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
  • While I'm opposed to deleting this article, I think this idea has merit that is worth exploring. -- Spinboy 20:00, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I would much rather see an annotated version of List of Ottawa, Ontario roads, than a hundred separate stubs on each road. However, this particular article isn't all that short and in my view can stand on its own. - SimonP 20:10, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree. As I keep saying, Woodroffe is a major road in the city. -- Earl Andrew - talk 22:11, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
        • And as several others among us keep saying, being a major road within one city is not a criterion that warrants an encyclopedia article. If you want Woodroffe to be kept, give us good reasons why a person who's never even visited Ottawa in their life might still need to know something about Woodroffe. We're not failing to take Woodroffe's major road status into account; you're failing to take into account that some of us legitimately think being a major city arterial isn't enough. Bearcat 22:18, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
          • That's just the point. There is no reason to delete material, even if it is only of interest to people in Ottawa. Qubit Field Theory is only of interest to those who are experts in quantum mechanics, a much smaller group than the population of Ottawa, but we keep all articles like it. - SimonP 22:41, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
            • That's not an answer to my comment. The number of people directly impacted by a topic is not what defines whether it's encyclopedic or not. Bearcat 22:48, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
              • We have tons of useless articles on pokemon characters or Star Trek episodes that are more useless than this article on a road. -- Spinboy 22:54, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
                • Exactly. We don't care if people from outside Ottawa have no interest in the article, just as we don't care that non-physicists have no interest in Qubit Field Theory, that non-biologists have no interest in Leucosoleniida, or that non-Star Trek fans have no interest in Corat Damar. - SimonP 22:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
                  • We do, however, care that to all available evidence there's nothing more important to say about this road than how many lanes it has or what its speed limit is. These are not encyclopedic details. Bearcat 23:01, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
                    • Articles on pokemon are certainly not encyclopedic nor worthy for inclusion on Wikipedia. -- Spinboy 23:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
                      • I agree entirely. However, "that topic is just as out of place here as this one is" isn't a valid reason for inclusion. Come on, guys. You have yet to even attempt to challenge my belief that being a major city arterial doesn't automatically make a street encyclopedia-worthy; you're resorting entirely to distracting tactics that don't address my statement. All I'm asking for is a direct answer (without appealing to the Pokémon argument) as to why a run-of-the-mill city arterial should be important enough to merit an article that tells me nothing more than its speed limit and number of lanes, given that we're already turfing a bunch of Toronto streets of at least equivalent importance to Woodroffe. Bearcat 00:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
                      • Bearcat, what is your opinion on individual highway articles? Woodroffe is busier than most provincial highways. -- Earl Andrew - talk 23:31, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
                        • So are Warden and Broadview, and I voted to can those. I've already gone into some detail earlier in this discussion on what I consider to be some of the key guidelines for determining the encyclopedia relevance of a city street; provincial or state highways are a very different issue, because they're a different thing serving a different purpose, maintained by a higher level of government, marked on larger-scale maps, much smaller in number, much more clearly linked to historical and encyclopedic contexts, etc. Traffic counts are not the determining factor; even a completely unimportant minor street in a major city is probably going to have a traffic count higher than Highway 101. All you've done so far in response to my concerns is to continually repeat that Woodroffe is a major arterial, as if I didn't know that (I lived in Ottawa for six years, for heaven's sake). What I still haven't seen is one good reason why that fact should be important enough to merit an encyclopedia article, one good reason why I should abandon my current criteria for including vs. deleting city streets. Bearcat 00:00, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
                          • What I am trying to get at is, Woodroffe Ave. is very similar to a highway in that it connects Barrhaven, (and points beyond) with the rest of the city. It also serves as part of the Transitway. -- Earl Andrew - talk 00:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
                            • And what I am trying to get at is that I don't think that's a particularly encyclopedic function which would justify a city street having an article. Bearcat 04:49, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
                      • Please remember the context in which these articles are presented. Roads are not Pokémon characters; each Pokémon exists independently of the other and there are actual differences between them (not that I know anything about Pokémon) while all roads are basically identical and exist as a system (network). Why would people in Ottawa want to see an article about this street (I say that while ducking and assuming the article conforms to policies banning business directories, travel guide, indiscriminate collections of info). What can you say about a road that conforms to these policies, is on-topic and will not be repeated a hundred thousand times in other articles. An Ottawan would be better served with an article on the community's road network as a whole. --maclean25 01:05, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep roadcruft. --SPUI (talk) 20:20, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, it's verifiable and wiki isn't paper. It doesn't come under any point at What Wikipedia is not. ··gracefool |☺ 18:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Information like this is not encyclopedic, it is of no use to anyone. If for some reason someone wanted to know which streets intersect Woodroffe Ave., or when it changes directions, they would consult a map. There are many excellent internet maps available, Wikipedia is not one. -- Corvus 05:02, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.