Talk:Hotels
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I have reverted the creation of the Hotels directory. Wikipedia is not a directory of businesses, and such an article would be unencyclopedic. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 22:49, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Let's discuss
In my opinion a list of Hotels in London or elsewhere is of interest to readers of an encyclopedia. Who is going to look up the word "Hotels" in an encyclopedia, if he isn't hoping to find a hotel name and a phone number. After all, the word "hotel" is one of the most searched for on the net, - after sex and Britny, etc. It is also one of the most dis-organised parts of the net. I spend my life in hotels and can never find the one I want on the net. All I find are thousands of sites which want to book me into a hotel for a commission. The net is crying out for an organised hotel index with phone numbers.
An encyclopedia is a fact index, and a list of hotels in a town is not advertising, but supplying the facts that the user wants. I propose that consideration be given to the inclusion of THIS hotel list because it is in such high demand by users. Users desparately need to have a central location to find hotel names, addresses and phone numbers without all the advertising and spamming, and Wikipedia is the best place on the net to make it. Sir George Athelstone II 00:02, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
- I agree that a list of Hotels would probably be useful to some people. However, Wikipedia is not the appropriate forum for such a listing. From Wikipedia is not "Travel guides. An article on Paris should mention landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, but not the telephone number or street address of your favorite hotel or the price of a café au lait on the Champs-Élysées." Perhaps Wikitravel or Wikicities may be more appropriate. -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 17:24, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
[edit] A Hotel List is Good
In my view there are always going to situations when the names of businesses have to be mentioned in an encyclopedia. e.g. Top selling movies, Casinos in Nevada, music labels, Whisky brands etc. etc. The question of whether business names should be allowed in an encyclopedia is a question of whether they are USEFUL to the reader. In fact Wikipedia would be a lot less useful if we went through it and systematically edited out every business name. Hotels are no different. There are hundreds if not thousands of articles about different hotels in Wikipedia, so why should a list of them be so bad.
I think Wikipedia would be a fantastic place to look for list of hotels, because it is the one place on the net where advertising is simply not allowed. The user would get straight to the facts without wasting time - name address, phone, number of rooms etc.
In my view BMIComp's view is far too rigid and narrow minded as to what an encyclopedia should be. He needs to be open minded and accept that others may want things that he does not.
See below the Wikipedia guidance for using lists:
Trickyt 19:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
Purpose of lists Lists on Wikipedia have three main purposes:
Information The list may be a valuable information source. This is particularly the case for a structured list. Examples would include lists organized chronologically, grouped by theme, or annotated lists. Navigation If the user is browsing without a specific research goal in mind, they would likely use the See also lists. If the user has a specific research goal in mind, and there is only one or two words that are used to describe the research topic, and they know exactly how to spell the word, they would probably use the search engine box. If the user has some general idea of what they are looking for but does not know the specific terminology, they would tend to use the lists of related topics (also called list of links to related articles). Development Some lists are useful for Wikipedia development purposes. The lists of related topics give an indication of the state of the 'pedia, the articles that have been written, and the articles that have yet to be written. Like categories, lists can be used for keeping track of changes in the listed pages, using the Related Changes feature. Unlike a category, a list also allows detection of deletion of pages from it, and, more generally, a history of its contents is available.
- A List of hotels is OK as is including their web addresses if available. I would suggest exact addresses are borderline but not out of the question considering the number of hotels that are either historical buildings or places where history has been made. Including phone numbers and room prices is out of the question in my opinion. In other words, treat the list of hotels as one does any list of companies and that would be fine. Courtland 02:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC) P.S. I think the existence of the List of famous hotels suggests that a hotel would best be listed in Wikipedia as long at its notability is not based solely on its being a hotel. referred here by Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Economy_and_trade
