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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 - kept - SimonP 14:19, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Singapore Changi Airport passenger traffic by destination

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Nonsense? Unencyclopedic? Verifiable? This page looks pretty seedy. It could well be notable, but I think it fails in a lot of respects. Dosn't seem to have encyclopedic potential. Ryan Prior 21:35, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

I have not even finished beyond two cities and it gets a vote for deletion? It is not meant to stand on its own. Its part of Singapore Changi Airport so that the later can be trimmed and will not be overflowing with statistical info.--Huaiwei 21:54, 31 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: I am not too sure if this is considered raw data if I had to sieve through and extract relevant information and do a bit of my own number crunching before producing the table? I mean...where do we draw the line? How much "originality" is needed before it qualifies? If we may refer to aviation related pages, how about World's busiest airports by passenger traffic (which incidentally, I moved from World's busiest airport? How about Singapore Airlines destinations, which was similarly listed on VFD after I extracted it from the Singapore Airlines page, but thankfully was kept after much discussion over the issue of "unencyclopedic" and "wikisource" data? Today, that page has since spawned enough cousins to populate Category:Airline destinations. Is wikipedia fairing worse with these articles around?--Huaiwei 01:12, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
My response: Wikipedia isn't the place to post your data. It isn't encyclopedic stuff. Wikipedia is not a web server, and what you're doing is reformatting data and posting it for people to look at - that's best left to you on your own server. If it isn't encyclopedic information, it simply dosn't belong here! I don't mean to deride the idea of an index of airlines by traffic, etc - I think it would be a good resource for the Net. I get the impression from articles such as Wikipedia is not, etc, that this just isn't the forum for what you're doing. Ryan Prior 01:39, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
  • You fail to see the point. I may have churned some numbers, but this is not my data. You appear to think I am treating wikipedia as some kind of data server. If that is the case, may I know how different this is with every other page in wikipedia? Why do people assume pages with text is more encylopedic then pages with a table or a list, when the former is similarly often reformmatted/rewrittern text available elsewhere?
  • I am personally a geographical graduate with speciality in international transport systems. When it comes to aviation analysis (and including something as mundane as trying to understand why airlines and governments are having bitter disputes over city pairs as we can see in newspapers), one often need to find out which airlines are flying the route in question, the frequency of routes (which translates to capacity), and also the actual numbers of passengers carried. This information is not always easily available in one location, nor is it readily available to all for free. And do these "raw sources of data" present these stuff in a manner which allows one to quickly get an overview of traffic flows from one airport?
  • You have not responded to my questions above. How do you explain all pages in wikipedia which are mere lists? Or tables in which the data was simply copied wholesale from just one source? Are you going to get them all removed, considering they appear to require even less number churning than is required for this page?
  • Last but not least, I am quite disturbed by the kind of language you use in dismissing work you do not appreciate. Calling it "nonsense", "unverifiable", and even "seedy" was quite an insult, unless of coz it is your intention to do so.--Huaiwei 08:17, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete not enclyopedic. There already is a format for listing destinations that should be just fine for this airport. The data in the table would be hard to maintain since airlines frequently change schedules and do not announce reductions in service. In any case, the article title is wrong since it is a list of the number of flights and not pasenger traffic. Vegaswikian 05:50, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Firstly, I did mention I will be adding passenger traffic figures later. And passenger traffic, btw, do also include routes and traffic frequencies, so in what way is it "wrong"? Secondly, the data is not hard to maintain, because airlines dont change schedules as frequently as you think. Most airlines make big changes at most twice a year, and new routes and suspensions do make it to the news. In addition, the information posted can be easily updated at anytime. Third, I was the same person who expanded the list of airlines in Singapore Changi Airport to include destinations served. When I considered the possibility to expand it further to also include annual traffic figures broken down by city-pair, etc, as well as the fexibility of seeing data by airline or by city, it clearly becomes impossible to keep expanding that list in the airport page. Hence the creation of new subpages to present these in full. I suppose if I merge the entire data back into Singapore Changi Airport, then the content suddenly becomes "encyclopedic"?--Huaiwei 08:17, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Vegaswikian is of course correct on all points. Quale 06:45, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge into Singapore Changi Airport (which may also include all of it) and delete - Skysmith 07:58, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Comment: I created this page so that the size of that list in Singapore Changi Airport could be reduced or even completely removed. This is part of wikipedia's preference in moving extensive lists of data to seperate pages in order to keep the main page salient and free from too much clutter. Moving these information back is contrary to what has been done since. Why should data moved from main articles to reduce clutter suddenly be deemed unencyclopedic, only to become less so when moved back to its main page?--Huaiwei 08:23, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Response: Information that is not encyclopedic does not belong anywhere on Wikipedia, whether as a helper article or as part of a larger article. The information was unencyclopedic when it was part of its origional article, and it still is. Ryan Prior 17:41, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Comment: This is getting pure ridiculous. Would you mind stating your stand on what is encyclopedic, and what is not, before we go further?--Huaiwei 19:25, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Suggestion: Write an article detailing the methods you use to obtain and process this information. Such a reference would be very useful to anyone with an interest in this sort of research. Ryan Prior 17:41, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
Comment: This is odd and contradictory. This article in question is not an attempt to demonstrate "methodology" of any sort. It is a presentation of data in such a way that it combines data from multiple sources and re-configured to be compariable, cohesive, and usable for wider analysis for its mother article, namely for Singapore Changi Airport. An encyclopedia does not create new methodologies and explain them, something you are asking to be done. I do apologise if I sound rude, but I do have a feeling you appear to have a shaky understanding of what an encylopedia is, or your familiarity of the article in question?--Huaiwei 19:25, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, very relevant. It may be difficult for those who have not been to this region to understand the relevance of the article. Singapore Changi Airport is a major air hub that serves at least two very important trans-oceanic routes: the "Singapore-India" route and the "Singapore-Australia" route which is part of the kangaroo route (This route is so important that it was given a special name). The many travelers who fly these routes would agree that the article is relevant and notable. Similarly, those who fly between Singapore and different cities in China, would find the information useful. Often, this is not about planning a specific trip, but rather, this route-focused information is always something good to know and be updated about, as air travel has become so much a part of our lives. It's very much similar to freeways in Southern California, (see Category:Southern California freeways). -- Vsion 11:26, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Comment: The proponents of deletion here do not think that the topic is irrelevant. It is notable and important, but it is not encyclopedic data (however high-level it is). What would be encyclopedic would be a page on the method used to extract the sort of data presented here from the raw data provided elsewhere. Wikipedia is not an archive; I would not go to a page about a highway and, every day, post the number of cars that travelled. On the page about SlashDot, I would not put up the number of words in every slashdot-referenced article day-to-day and run statistical analysis on those numbers. Those could be valuable activities, and there is notability abound because of the importance of those figures. However, the information is not encyclopedic and, unless sources and methodology are cited, the figures themselves are not verifiable (and/or can be considered origional research.) Ryan Prior 12:59, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
Comment: I strongly refute several assumptions and generalisations in the above statements:
  • Presenting facts for the purpose of an encyclopedia is quite different from explaining the methodologies used to obtain them. Do you have articles in wikipedia directly explaining how a page like Earth is written? An encyclopedia presents facts, be it in textual form or otherwise. It does not create them, nor does it spell out how an article is created other then the listing of sources used, etc.
You entirely missed the point there. Read what I write before you strongly refute me. The creator of this article has interpreted it and processed data in order to write his page. I do not suggest a page about the method for creating the page; and you are right when you say that Wikipedia does not, and should not, have a page explaining how Earth was written. However, we do have a page explaining how proteins are made, and how a quicksort works. Spare me for a moment, if you would, your pointless ranting about how air travel is not like biochemistry or data sorting. A page about how something is done can be and often is encyclopedic. Thus, a page explaining how to take traffic figures and, by analyzing them, find yearly air traffic motiffs would be encyclopedic. Q.E.D. Ryan Prior 20:32, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia IS an archieve, and indeed, it is even being celebrated as being a medium which is able to track and record facts as they pass us by in a way more dynamic then any physical medium could. If wikipedia could present trends over temporal scales, would this be considered an "archive", and hence worth removal?
  • Using daily traffic data on a motorway to compare with this page appears to suggest your unfamiliarity and overall ignorance when it comes to transportational studies. Anyone with enough years in academia would have pointed out, that the "significance" or "worthiness" of data is not fixed on the temporal scale. You cannot assume daily traffic on a highway is as useful as one for passenger volumes on an airline. Temporal scales are often tweaked according to noted patterns in movement numbers. Aviation traffic, for example, tend to have seasonal swings which span a calender year. Motorway movements, on the otherhand, tend to have traffic patterns repeating itself on a weekly basis. Obviously, the scale chosen similarly depends on the research objectives as well. But it is quite obvious that no one can simply start plucking random examples to deride the value of another. Proof to us that annual passenger figures are as useless as daily traffic figures on a motorway, and then we shall talk.
I don't like your argument here. I did not choose highway traffic because it's just like air traffic. I chose it because it is similarly unencyclopedic. The only potentially encyclopedic facts are the conclusions which rise from those facts. I know you'll say this is an interpretation. I say no - this is a listing. An interpretation would say, "In 2004 when X corporation moved to Singapore, traffic increased in January because of the movement of businessmen." A listing says, "November 2003, X passangers. December, Y passangers. January, Z passangers." In my humble opinion, the interpretation has encyclopedic potential while the listing does not. Ryan Prior 20:32, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Your comparison with SlashDot is equally disturbing. This list aims to show the traffic flow into and out of the airport on an annual basis, with the number of flights updated on an ad-hoc basis. Is this the same as your comparison with SlashDot? This page does NOT aim to list every single nitty-gritty data out there. For example, we could start listing flight numbers. We could list flight times. We could list types of aircraft used, and the capacity and number of seats for each. And in fact, these ARE important information as well in much aviation analysis. But no. It is kept to reasonable editing limits to include only the destinations, frequency of flights, and the pasengers carried annually to meet its primary objective. Your SlashDot analogy in seemingly trying to present me as an inclusionist is obviously a shot in the dark.
Once again, please grasp my point. If I were to log the number of words on every referenced SlashDot article, the listing would be quite simple (like, say the frequencey of flights to and from a Singapore airport). Useful analysis of these might yield the fact that SlashDot-referenced articles are getting shorter, which might suggest either that online reporting's style is changing or that SlashDot's editors are getting lazier and click past drawn-out articles. Neither of those are true to my knowledge; I speak hypothetically here. The numbers do not have encyclopedic potential, while the conclusions drawn from them might. Ryan Prior 20:32, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Last but not least, I again notice your shaky foundations when it comes to "defining" what is encyclopedic. You know claim any information presented here which does not have a source is naturally "unverifyable", and inevitably "unencyclopedic". I suppose I must have dreamt up the number of flights and passengers carried yesterday night, or I got my dog to walk on my keyboard to get the numbers?
I would like to have a link to your source, just in case I want to check the work. If these are origional numbers, then this qualifies as source material. If they aren't, they must come from somewhere... right? Ryan Prior 20:32, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I would certainly love to hear your views on these. And meanwhile, may I know what kind of research methodology courses have you done in your lifetime, and how familiar are you with the international transport industry?--Huaiwei 19:25, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I work in research. Yes, I know what research methodology is. Internation travel is in my family, and statisticl analysis of data to find trends and draw conclusions is not a foreign concept to me. Ryan Prior 20:32, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Notice: I officially obstain from this discussion. I beleive that anyone who reads what I have written understands my position on this article without further explanation. Furthermore, I believe that commenting further would only serve to provoke those who oppose my opinions. Ryan Prior 20:32, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Huaiwei states this is a helper article. Fine with that then. SchmuckyTheCat 14:39, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • keep this please it is a helper article Yuckfoo 16:08, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete not encyclopaedic. JamesBurns 10:01, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep and would be nice to extend such project to other airports too. — Instantnood 05:07, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep Interesting and useful info. No objection to having it seperate from Singapore Changi Airport  The Steve  06:38, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Wikipedia is not a statistics database. —Lowellian (talk) 13:03, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
    Also, Wikipedia:No original research. —Lowellian (talk) 13:04, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)
    Er...in what way is this "original research"?--Huaiwei 14:38, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • It comes under this section: However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information from existing primary and secondary sources is strongly encouraged - still looks good to me.  The Steve  23:22, Jun 5, 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.
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