English Wikipedia @ Freddythechick:Articles for deletion/London lighting-up times

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Cirt (talk) 13:32, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

London lighting-up times

London lighting-up times (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

To me, this looks as pure a violation of WP:IINFO as it's possible to get. But, it's been live for three years with no objection, so maybe I'm wrong.  – iridescent 18:02, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

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  • Drivers should possess the RAC Lighting-up Time Table for 1949 and Mileage Indicator just published. This folder shows the beginning and end of lighting-up time […] with a correction table giving the variations in minutes for a number of large towns. — Motor industry. Vol. 67. Motor Commerce, Ltd. 1948. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • The whole of 1970 is included in the RAC table of lighting-up times which has recently been published. Times are based on London but there are correction times for seven other cities and towns in the UK. — The Commercial Motor. Vol. 130. Temple Press Ltd. 1970. p. 59. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • It shows lighting-up times for each day of the year for London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow and Belfast. — Roads and Road Construction: A Monthly Record of Road Engineering and Development. Vol. 37. Carriers Pub. Co. 1959. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  • I think someone from the north of England might suggest that lighting up time is more than a few minutes different? — Martin Norgate (2004-03-26). "NOTES from PRATT'S ROAD ATLAS of ENGLAND AND WALES, 1905". HantsMap Notes.
• So three things are evident:
  • This information isn't widely useful unless it is corrected for geographical latitude and longitude, a correction that this article doesn't even mention (although lighting-up time does), let alone provide.
  • There are at least two other sources for this information, one a "perpetual timetable" and the other published annually by the RAC.
  • The London-centric bias exists in the sources.
• Uncle G (talk) 19:55, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
  • While I'm (obviously) not arguing to keep this "article", the London-centric bias is reasonable enough when the subject of the article is explicitly about the times in London (cue nightmare vision of a similar list for every other city…) – iridescent 23:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
    • You're missing the point. "These are the times for London. You provincials can make do with a few offsets, or just go hang." is how this human knowledge is known, and documented. So there isn't support for lists for cities other than London; there isn't support for Wikipedia not being London-centric. It's how the information is known, and documented, outside of Wikipedia, so it's how it should be documented inside Wikipedia. But, part and parcel to that is the fact that this information is documented, by several independent publications (at the least, the book cited in the article, the RAC publication, and the 1905 road atlas), and has been since at least 1905.

      The argument against having an article doesn't hinge on its indiscriminacy. It's no more indiscriminate than, say, the Roman Catholic calendar of saints is. The argument that it does hinge upon is the reliability (in the long term) of the sources and thus whether it is possible to maintain an accurate article, as stated by Chris Neville-Smith below. Since at least one source has been republished annually, the question is whether these data are stable from year to year. Uncle G (talk) 11:43, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• Delete per nom - clear WP:IINFO violation. Nick-D (talk) 22:42, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. Sheesh! Does this article disagree with WP:NOT in any way at all?. Eddie.willers (talk) 23:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete as indiscriminate information. It would be far better to include a link at Lighting-up time to another site that will calculate the lighting-up times for any location, which I'm sure must exist, than to try to have such information here on Wikipedia. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 01:53, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and Uncle G. Drmies (talk) 05:34, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. Even if you disregard policy, this is utterly impractical to maintain, especially as you'd have to update this every year and every other major city would expect an article too. This information would be far batter conveyed by providing links to a site that gives information on sunrise and sunset, which are quite easy to Google. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 09:22, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
• Delete. Pointless recitation of information better resourced elsewhere - this is not Old Jimbo's Almanac. Kbthompson (talk) 08:29, 21 April 2009 (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 a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.