Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of the busiest airports in the European Union

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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 no consensus. Consensus is roughly split between keeping the article as is, or redirecting to List of the busiest airports in Europe. Neither action requires an administrator, so can be done by normal editing after this AfD. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 17:10, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of the busiest airports in the European Union

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List of the busiest airports in the European Union (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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As I mentioned in the previously contested proposed deletion, this list mostly duplicates List of the busiest airports in Europe, and it does not present sources covering this topic area as a whole, which means it's in violation of WP:SYNTH. Melmann said 'the article is useful because EU is one regulatory area and a single market when it comes to air traffic, therefore, while there is significant overlap with Euriope, EU is not synonmous with Europe as a whole'. I think this is a reasonable argument to make, but it needs to be followed up with edits to actually prove it, and in the last few months nobody's even tried to do that. The article was only created in March 2021‎, while the EU and its airports have existed for many decades before, which sounds to me like this is just a novel WP:NOTSTATS violation. If this is a legit topic, we need to start with e.g. Air transport in the European Union first. Right now we have a handful of unsourced sentences in Transport in the European Union#Air transport. Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:58, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Aviation, Lists, and Europe. Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:58, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to List of the busiest airports in Europe, mostly per nom. Deletion is okay as well. The overlap is substantial, and an interested reader can simply ignore the entries in the Europe article which aren't in the EU. Ovinus (talk) 20:06, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect to List of the busiest airports in Europe. The information is basically the same so there is no need to merge. 𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝 👋❤️ (𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚔🤔) 20:27, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - I continue to believe that 'Air traffic within EU' is a worthy topic area for Wikipedia to cover. While I do not contest the fact that the article is poor, and essentially excision of content from List of the busiest airports in Europe, in my experience simply being of poor quality is generally not a valid argument for deletion of an article on a notable topic (unless it's potentially a WP:BLP issue or pure spam, which is not the case here). Such arguments are against WP:DEL-CONTENT, WP:NOTPAPER and are essentially WP:RUSHDELETE. I do not think it is useful to enact policy on the fly by saying:"Right, improve within certain timeframe, or we're deleting the page." which has, in my experience, never been the case on Wikipedia.
    • Further to above, I also oppose redirecting to List of the busiest airports in Europe should this article end up being deleted. Doing so is simply conflating Europe and EU, which are most definitely not the same and not interchangeable, especially when it comes to air traffic, regulation of which is a core competence of EU, and where there are material differences between air traffic in EU countries vs non-EU/EEA European countries. Melmann 21:28, 5 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's a worthy topic area to cover, sure. But why don't we actually do that then? Instead of this list here, and it is just not the same as coverage of this topic area. This is apparently a copy&waste magnet for anonymous spamming of largely meaningless statistics on a public website. You're basically just arguing about WP:POTENTIAL, which is fine, but when practically none has been demonstrated, it's just not a great argument. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 18:40, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as a volunteer-only project, we cannot compel anyone to write on any particular topic. That's why we have better articles on individual Pokémon than some very notable women. If the topic of the air travel within EU is notable (which I'm taking as granted, given that nobody so far has contested it) then I do not see how it makes sense to delete the article merely because it is not yet as good as it should be. Being of poor quality has never been grounds for deletion except in very egregious situations mentioned above, which is not the case here.
Further to that, should we then go ahead and delete the List of the busiest airports in the United States because it is substantially overlapping with List of busiest airports in North America? If your argument is that such statistics lists don't belong on Wikipedia, why not make a broader argument to delete them all rather than singling out this particular instance? Melmann 22:05, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean poor quality has never been grounds for deletion? I've seen WP:TNT referenced in deletion discussions for decades now. And, the reason for singling out this particular instance is already explained in the nomination - it's an egregious violation of the improper synthesis policy as it stands. Is it technically possible to rescue it? Sure. But with nobody even trying to do so, we're left with 70 kilobytes of essentially claptrap masquerading as encyclopedic coverage of a topic, and no help in sight. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 23:32, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have already offered you a sound argument on why this is not improper synthesis; EU is not the same as Europe, and EU is one regulatory area when it comes to regulating air traffic. An example of this is that the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen shut down EU airspace to Russian planes unilaterally. She did not need to rely on the authority of EU member countries' regulatory authorities, but used her own authority to do so.[1] This, in my opinion, means that talking about EU air traffic is a worthy topic for an encyclopedia, and is not an improper synthesis. If this article was about a random assortment of unrelated countries, picked for no underlying reason, I'd agree with your synthesis argument, but that is not the case here.
In my experience, WP:TNT arguments are invoked and accepted for severe violations. Copyvios, BLP violations, vandalism, spam, hoaxes, attack pages, severe cases of sock puppetry or paid editing. I have not seen any evidence to indicate that this article is a severe violation warranting WP:TNT treatment; thus I oppose it. Melmann 15:02, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ "Ukraine invasion: EU shuts airspace to Russian planes". BBC News. 27 February 2022. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
I'm sorry, but your interpretation of the improper synthesis policy is incorrect. Just because there may exist an EU-related discussion of busiest airports somewhere out there, that doesn't invalidate the simple fact that this list is not actually based on such sources. Rather, it is anonymous editors using original research to compose a list that isn't actually sourced to anywhere else. The underlying concept of EU air transport certainly exists in the real world, but that does not imply that this is not synthesized. You could fix this problem if you cited a reference that lists the actual busiest airports in the EU in the article, but somehow we've exchanged a lot of words here over many months, and that still hasn't happened, so how can we expect that it will? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:55, 8 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Melmann. Europe is not the EU. The EU is a notable geographical entity in its own right. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 14:26, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Completely unnecessary content fork of the list for Europe. Similar such lists seem to be grouped by continent rather than economic or political zone, and there's no reason Europe can't be too. This seems to be a textbook case of WP:NOTDIR #3 (non-encyclopedic cross-categorization). Not one shred of discussion of this as a grouping has been offered or even seems to exist to meet WP:NLIST. 2603:9000:8505:319B:DF8:B0A:B645:D5A8 (talk) 22:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Discussion was closed prematurely by an IP with no other edits, using a deceptive sig. I have reverted per WP:BADNAC. (non-admin unclose) --Finngall talk 17:39, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: I'm relisting this discussion which seems to rest on whether or not "Europe" can be equated to the "European Union". If they can be, then this article can be redirected, if they are two clearly disintinguishable entities that a separate article is warranted.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 22:56, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • I don't have a problem with redirection—a discussion like this can become pedantic. But because members in the EU are in... Europe, there feels no need for a separate list. If people are looking for this subset of European countries, they can construct one themselves by eliminating non-EU members from the list. SWinxy (talk) 19:47, 13 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think this is pedantry when it has material impacts. EU is not just a free trade area or some words on the paper, it is a supranational level of government that exercises its powers independently of the member states. When you travel by air with the EU, you're protected by a specific set of consumer rights. Should any carrier attempt to abridge your consumer rights, you can directly seek redress from EU's institutions. This is far more than merely international travel as defined by ICAO, and you can have a European flight which is not covered by EU's regulatory rules, such as Serbia to Macedonia. Thus, it is a mistake to conflate Europe and EU. Melmann 16:26, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Whether it has material impacts in that context seems irrelevant. Does it have material impacts for how we (should) cover it in the articles List of the busiest airports in the European Union and List of the busiest airports in Europe? It is not necessarily the case that it is a good idea to have separate articles (especially list articles) covering proper subsets of something we already have an overarching article about. We could conceivably also create e.g. List of the busiest airports in the Schengen Area and List of the busiest airports in the Eurozone, but should we? TompaDompa (talk) 18:02, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    No, because Schengen and Eurozone are not relevant to air traffic. Do you imagine that EU and Europe is just an arbitrary distinction without meaning?
    In the monetary policy/economy area you mention, we have Economy of the European Union and Economy of Europe which overlap to a large extent, but talk about two different things.
    Regarding border control, we have Schengen Area, Common Travel Area, Nordic Passport Union, Freedom of movement for workers in the European Union, and Citizens' Rights Directive all of which talk about some type of movement of people in Europe. Should we delete them all because they overlap? Melmann 19:22, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Relevance to air traffic does not necessarily translate to it being a good idea to have separate but largely duplicative list articles which pretty much exclusively consist of statistics. What benefit does it confer to have an article about statistics for individual airports in the European Union when that same information is contained in an article with the slightly broader scope of airports in (geographical) Europe? TompaDompa (talk) 22:46, 15 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 08:32, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Regarding WP:SYNTH concerns, Eurostat has comprehensive statistics related to the busiest airports within the EU (table 3). There is value in separating EU airports from European airports, since as the nominator reminds us, the European Union acts as a single market and EU institutions impact the EU air transport (ex: 1, 2), and there is a net gain in having the reader be able to have a proper list without Russian, Turkish, and other non-EU airports (about half of the top 10, scores in the top 100). Beyond the inclusion of Eurostat statistics, the other concerns of the nominator, which are valid and deserve discussion, are in my view best addressed on the respective article talk pages and in WikiProjects. Pilaz (talk) 02:02, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The fact we managed to find a page on the Eurostat website that replicates the topic after a month of searching does not instill a lot of confidence that WP:NOT#STATS is observed. At the same time the same site explicitly discusses air traffic with a lot of the rest of Europe, including Turkey, so the argument about excluding the rest because that's somehow proper - seems moot. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 03:50, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I infer from your response that your original WP:SYNTH concern is resolved. And you're incorrect regarding Eurostat, the database in question does not include Turkey (speaking of which, I'm baffled that a BEFORE and half a dozen of editors did not manage to find it). The counterargument to WP:NOTSTATS, which is not a rejection of statistics but a rejection of unexplained statistics with little to no encyclopedic utility, is countered by the informational utility that this list can provide over the Europe one - there are useful statistics for each airport such as the proportion of domestic, intra-EU, and extra-EU flights which cannot be achieved at List of the busiest airports in Europe. As WP:LISTN makes it clear, there is no current consensus on cross-categorization lists such as this one, and we've had enough precedent at AfD that if it meets recognized informational, navigational, or developmental purposes to justify keeping this article too. You think it's indiscriminate, I think it's useful. I mean, do you really think List of the busiest airports in the United States should be let go or merged with List of the busiest airports in North America? Pilaz (talk) 05:11, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    No, actually, it's not resolved by the existence of one sole source on the planet that discusses the same topic. Each and every piece of documentation about sourcing in this project talks about sources in the plural, and that is not an accident. If we find nobody else in the world who's doing a comparison of EU airports other than the one official body which is probably formally tasked with doing that anyway (making it suspiciously close to a primary source, too...), and Wikipedia is basically copying and pasting one of their lists (while sprinkling in arbitrary anonymous edits, as usual) without actually putting it in some sort of a context (for which there are various references), that's hardly the definition of a useful part of an encyclopedia. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:24, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Your original WP:SYNTH concern (which, in my view, was not SYNTH) was that "it does not present sources covering this topic area as a whole". List of the busiest airports in the United States relies on one source, the FAA. Why can't this article rely on a single reliable source too, Eurostat, like most list articles? Pilaz (talk) 23:44, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    That is a fair question! --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:12, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I have taken a few hours out of my Saturday to expand the article and harmonize it with List of the busiest airports in the United States. More specifically, I have found an overarching source, Eurostat, (factsheet, databases) that covers the list as a whole, which was a key concern of the nomination since previous yearly tables used individual data from each airport (sidenote: a quick survey of "List of the busiest airports in X" shows most articles having that flaw, including List of the busiest airports in Europe, but whatever). Additionally, I have brought the list up to date to 2021, and I have added tables for airport traffic based on domestic flights, intra-EU flights, and extra-EU flights, making this article fundamentally different from List of the busiest airports in Europe. Finally, I have addressed the nomination's concerns regarding Transport in the European Union#Air transport by expanding the section somewhat and sourcing it to EU and academic sources. During my search, several sources turned up with charts dedicated to the busiest airports in the EU (excluding therefore Russia, Turkey and other non-EU associated countries): the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (p.54), The Guardian, etc. although it is worth noting that when specialized publications mention airport business in Europe, they tend to more often do it in EU+ format (EU + Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and UK), EU+ plus Turkey, or Europe as a whole, which raises questions as to where to cut off a page about EU airports traffic: do we want EU-only airports? (we can). do we want EU+ airports? (we can too, without tarnishing the EU-ness of the list). To me, the question of whether we can separate Europe and EU is yes, regardless. With that being said, over 1 billion passengers transited through EU airports in 2017 alone (European Commission). That's nothing to scoff at. Given that we have similar nested articles on the other side of the world, with List of the busiest airports in California, List of the busiest airports in the United States, and List of the busiest airports in North America, I see no harm done to the encyclopedia in having the same three layers with List of the busiest airports in France, List of the busiest airports in the European Union, and List of the busiest airports in Europe. Pilaz (talk) 04:34, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    The EUASA source seems the best so far to actually reinforce the concept, it shows an addition on top of this data source concept, although it's still an agency directly connected to the EU. The Guardian's illustration is directly sourced to Eurostat, but let's say it contributes to a general impression of notability for the concept. A lot of this is sort of "in-universe"... and I'm not sure if the precedent of other copy&paste lists justifies having more and more. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:52, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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.
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