Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of foreign consulates in Oklahoma City

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. The keep arguments are very weak, and do not address the reasons proposed for deletion. As for the issue about mass nominations, each article is basically the same, and I do not feel many seperate AfDs would be helpful. east.718 at 21:45, 11/4/2007

List of foreign consulates in Oklahoma City

Fails WP:Notability. Unimportant, superfulous... It's a borderline speedy deletion candidate, but I'm just not completely sure. Okiefromokla•talk 02:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just realized that similar articles were created for a number of other U.S. cities by the same user (Daltnpapi4u) within the last week. May need to nominate those as well. Okiefromokla•talk 02:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep as I have gone threw this with the other 40 pages that were proposed to be deleted however all were saved, AND HAVE meet wiki qualifications to keep Daltnpapi4u 02:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please also refer to previous pages for this as well http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_foreign_consulates_in_Phoenix&action=history

Per User Ricky81682 on July 23, 2007 WP:NOT is not a reason for speedy. This included the cities of Anchorage, Phoenix, Detroit, Orlando, Houston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Honolulu, St. Louis, Cincinnati and MinneapolisDaltnpapi4u 02:56, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete bad idea for a list. JJL 03:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC) Addendum: Delete all. JJL 21:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. This is trivial information that changes frequently, making our keeping a list useless to those who actually need it. Many "consulates" are not proper offices at all but local businessmen with a connection to the home country. They serve functions similar to post offices or immigration offices. I don't see that we need to track this information, and if we do, I see us failing at it as articles are not guaranteed to be maintained. --Dhartung | Talk 04:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment So this raises the question: does someone really have to go through and nominate all 40 something of these articles separately, or can this take care of all of them? Okiefromokla•talk 04:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment You can put the AFD template on each of those pointing to this article, then add the list just below the nomination. The discussion should run five days from the time these are added. --Dhartung | Talk 08:46, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done, thanks. But, the list seems overly cumbersome. Not sure how else to do it. Maybe another editor can clean it up. Okiefromokla•talk 20:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all per Dhartung--victor falk 10:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete this and the others, on the basis that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a directory. Emeraude 15:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ Changing my vote to Keep all, since the discussion has been changed by Okie and Dhartung into a mass nomination of every consulate in every city. While I don't think that individual articles are necessary about each town's consulates, the presence of foreign consulates in various American cities is notable. There must be some efficient way to identify which foreign consulates are in which locations, without making a directory. Why there's a diplomatic mission from Bolivia in Oklahoma City, I don't know, but it's part of a larger picture. Joke had to be removed, Sooner or later. Mandsford 21:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If that's a joke about Oklahomans I take offense :P Okiefromokla•talk 19:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

comment you must actually list the others to be deleted here, not just blanket tag them with the AfD notice. Chris 20:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

strong keep, by the way. This is useful especially as we are available to social studies classes who have to write letters, in my case fifth and eighth grades. Chris 20:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oregon-related deletions. —Katr67 20:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all. Violates WP:NOT#DIR. Also note that WP:USEFUL is not a valid keep reason. meshach 21:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Well, WP:ATA isn't the arbiter of validity. Also note that WP:NOT#DIR doesn't say directories are impermissible (if it did, we would have to delete around 5-600,000 lists, and a similar number of categories). — xDanielx ^T/_C 21:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Colorado-related deletions. —Chris 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete (whole list) as violation of WP:NOT#DIR, despite a plea of WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. --Orange Mike 01:00, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all; If all of these consulates were independently notable, and had individual articles, a list would make more sense. But they don't, so this is WP:NOT#DIR. Masaruemoto 05:44, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete 'em all, per WP:NOT#DIR. Majoreditor 18:37, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Request for Administrator intervention I have a lot of problems with the way that the nominator has handled this one. This is one of the few cases I've seen where the history of the page should be reviewed, since the rules of the game got changed right in the middle. It started out with the nomination of an extremely weak article, a list of the "honorary consuls" for Oklahoma City. That one was easy... OK City doesn't actually have any real foreign consulates. After that, it turned into a mass nomination. Nominator's comment about individual nominations was "Yeah, right." That said, I have looked at the individual articles, and frankly, I think I'm the only person who has done so. I don't think it's proper practice to lump the diplomatic missions of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles in the same category as some volunteer in a backwater like Oklahoma City or Tulsa. It's bad faith to nominate something that one hasn't actually looked at, and the assumption of good faith is pushed to the limit by the way this one has been handled. "Wikipedia is not a directory" is convenient, but not necessarily applicable. Somebody in charge, please give us some guidance. Thank you. Mandsford 22:43, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I assure you, I've looked at all of these articles (I tagged them all by hand for this discussion). I also assure you that had anyone not specified to delete all articles of this kind, I would have contacted them after adding the others. But as it stands, only a few people chimed in before the list was added, and those people quickly returned to the page and saw the additions. I agree with the consensus that WP:NOT#DIR applies here, but there have been other, stronger arguments. See Dhartung's comment above. I certainly hope people have looked at a few of these articles, but it's hard to question so many people specifying "Delete all". Okiefromokla•talk 23:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I appreciate that you've looked at the pages, and I apologize for suggesting that you didn't-- but is this information, per se, unencyclopedic? And is it fair, as Dhartung suggests, to compare a foreign consulate to a local "post office"? We have articles such as Diplomatic missions of Bolivia, which list the embassy in Washington, and the two consulates in Los Angeles and New York, but not the "honorary consul" who resides in OK City. Granting that the "honorary consuls" shouldn't be listed, why shouldn't there be a guide to which American cities host the consulates of which nations? For instance, Diplomatic missions of Mexico #North America shows that Mexico has diplomatic offices in many places that have a substantial Mexican population, from Brownsville, Texas to St. Paul, Minnesota. And Russia's consulates, which answer to the embassy in Washington, are located (for whatever reason) in New York, Houston, Seattle and San Francisco. I would argue that the foreign offices that another nation maintains here are notable and that the information about where they are located is important. My suggestion is that articles about those cities that have only an "honorary" consul (or only one true consulate, like Brownsville) should be deleted; those that have several permanent diplomatic missions should be kept, with the ceremonial appointees not included. My point is, let's not throw out the good with the bad. "Delete all" or "Keep all" votes don't seem to be appropriate unless, like you and I, people have actually reviewed "all" the articles. Mandsford 01:40, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have absolutely no problem with articles like Diplomatic missions of Mexico, but to have an article for every city where there is a diplomatic mission is like having a diplomatic phone book for each city, and Wikipedia is not such a directory. It makes much more sense to have articles specifying the diplomatic missions of each country, as such articles are vastly smaller in number, easier to update, and more practical. Where do these city articles stop? Every city where there is some kind of diplomatic mission? And how hard will it be to keep these articles about frequently changing consulates up to date so it is useful to anybody? They are low priority articles that will not receive a whole lot of attention down the road, and are repetitive of the "diplomatic missions by country" articles. For example, do we need articles like List of movie theaters in New York? On the other hand, an article about a movie theater company that includes information on where its coverage area is and where its major venues are - that's perfectly fine. My point is, the consulates for each city is a no-no: it’s cumbersome, and too much like a directory or phone book. But having the diplomatic missions of each individual country is great. They’re two different things, though: one is encyclopedic and one is not. Thanks for the vote of confidence on my good faith, by the way. I do appreciate it. Okiefromokla•talk 02:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep, all of these articles are extremely important. What's the difference between all of these and those in 'Category:Diplomatic missions by country' or 'Category:Diplomatic missions by host country'? These articles should remain as they are, and not be changed nor deleted. Aquintero 17:10, 29 October, 2007 (UTC)
Delete all, per Dhartung above; I had similar thoughts when I first noticed the Nashville article. -- Huntster ^{T • @ • C} 00:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete All per Dhartung. I agree. businessman332211 03:07, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to List of foreign consulates in state/province-type articles, rather than List of foreign consulates in city. Diplomatic missions are notable in aggregate (but not individually), but we don't need these small lists — they should be merged up as much as possible. Or maybe even List of foreign consulates in the United States and List of foreign consulates in Canada--Pharos 11:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see how it would help here--there is almost never more than one in a state, except for California and Florida (and perhaps Texas)DGG (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually there 11 to 16 depending on whether you count honorary consuls: Alberta, Arizona, California, Florida, Missouri, New Jersey (H.C.), New York, North Carolina (H.C.), Ohio, Oklahoma (H.C), Ontario, Pennsylvania (H.C.), Quebec, Tennessee (H.C.), Texas, Wisconsin. --A. B. ^(talk) 12:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, merge to List of foreign consulates in the United States and List of foreign consulates in Canada then. Anybody have a rough estimate on the total number of foreign consulates in the US? And if that's too large, we could divide it by sponsoring country, and countries with only a small diplomatic presence can be grouped together by continent.--Pharos 18:55, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Mandsford. Each city should be evaluated individually as to whether or not the list should exist. "Delete all" is invalid here. Postoak 04:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all is certainly valid. This is trivial directory information that changes frequently. And its repetitious; these are basically copies of pages like Diplomatic missions of Mexico, which specify the diplomatic missions for each country. It's just the same information repeated in directory form for each city. I hate to use the same argument over and over, but Wikipedia is not a directory. Okiefromokla•talk 05:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all - for the purpose of this discussion - nom must nominate each one individually for individual evaluation. Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 08:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- comment - I strongly disagree with Mandsford et al.! These are all basically instances of the same idea, with no distinguishing characteristics that differ; they could have been created with a template, or by a bot. There are no arguments for or against one city's list over another's. Keep all, merge all or delete all; don't waste everybody's time and energy by splintering this into dozens of petty squabbles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Orangemike (talk • contribs) 13:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree. They need to be dealt with as a group because they are all directories and they are all repetitious. To have a AFD discussion for each of these 50+ articles would be a waste of time and space. Okiefromokla•talk 14:37, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, discuss each individually or not at all. Dont waste our time with a Mass AfD when you know Mass nominations are frowned upon. 'with no distinguishing characteristics that differ' how do you know that in a Mass nomination? Only individual discussions will discover whats chaff and whats not. Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 14:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

They are all directories, no matter if one city has a consulate general or if one has just honorable consulates. A directory is a directory, and Wikipedia is not a directory. And each and every one of them is information entirely repeated from 'diplomatic missions by nation' articles except in directory form over dozens of tiny lists for each city that has a consulate. It's trivial and pointless to have so many of the same articles, and its hard to keep track of the rapidly changing consulates for so many cities anyway. I don't want to waste people's time with 50+ separate nominations that fail the same notability standards as directories. They all stay or they all go. Okiefromokla•talk 17:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Exit2DOS2000. Each should be evaluated individually. The lists should not fall under a blanket nomination because the nominator assumes that each list has no distinguishing characteristics. Postoak 20:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It really doesn't seem like anyone is reading my arguments against this point. A directory is a directory is a directory. And repeated information is repeated information (no pun intended :P ). I've been to every one of these pages and each one is a list about conulates in that city. But I don't care if there are 20 consulates or just a handful of honorable consulates. It's all trivial, repeated information in directory form. WP:NOT#DIR Okiefromokla•talk 23:15, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all per Dhartung (please do not pollute AfD with dozens of identical requests). Wikipedia simply cannot serve as a database for something what may change frequently. Implement MediaWiki support for scrapping government websites and it may get useful. Pavel Vozenilek 18:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the originally nominated article (only) - List consulates/embassies/diplomatic are generally not notable in my opinon (insofar as the article on the city should be the place where such things are noted) unless the city is a capital or other major city where the list of embassies does warrant a specific article to keep the city's article from being overlong. Also for a capital city (where the embassies are) it would be worth noting them in a separate article with other information such as addresses, diplomatic history et cetera. So, in the case of OK, where there are just a handful of honorary consulates, it is easy enough to say that either on the "(Country's) missions to the United States" page or the page for OK itself. However we can't block-nominate every city with an article like this because - to do it properly - we'd have to look at every city's article and judge each one on it's own merits, so they need separate AfD's. A1octopus 18:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong delete all. These lists are best retained as sections in the city articles. There is no reason to split them out. Where do you draw the line as to the smallest number of consulates that merits a list? One? Vegaswikian 06:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Merge as per Pharos' suggestion above to something like List of foreign consulates in the United States. The information is useful as a whole, as I think it is informative to know what foreign nations have consular offices in places besides Washington D.C.; in its current state though, it is a bit scattered and unwieldy. Plus, as Dhartung mentions above, the individual lists tends to give a lot of entries "fluff" (aka, the businessmen turned honorary consuls). But just becasue there's some trivial fluff for several cities, I don't think all of the information (such as the information and pictures about San Francisco's consulates) should be lost. Thehedgehog 07:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It wouldn't be lost. List of foreign consulates in San Francisco contains the same info as is in the 'diplomatic missions by country' articles. The pictures are also in such articles, such as in Diplomatic missions of Mexico. Okiefromokla•talk 00:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it's the same thing. If it was being used simply as a directory, and I wanted to find where all of Ecuador's missions are located, then the mass delete would be okay. But these articles tell a little something more about the individual city, and that's what I meant would be lost. I would not have known that San Francisco had 41 consular missions in the city (not honorary) without the article, nor would I have known Miami has 33. I think that is an important piece of information about the city -- the same can be said for many others under these articles. The mass articles do seem a bit much, but this information should be kept either in a mass merge as Pharos said, or perhaps as an extra paragraph in each of the cities' primary articles as Exit2DOS2000 suggests below. The current layout for this information could use some improvement, but that doesn't mean the idea should be thrown out altogether. Thehedgehog 03:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly, I am not completely opposed to that. Merging is definently much better than keeping all of these. In my opinion, the List of consulates in (country) format would be best if merge was the consensus here. Okiefromokla^{but I'm not a hick} 04:08, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comments
- Honorary consuls are relevant. "Honorary" conjures up images of a retiree living as a resident alien in some small town with a nice certificate from his home country's dictator. Often they're lawyers on retainers who are paid to get a country's nationals out of jail, issue passports, etc.
- Everyone's dumping on Okiefromokla about this AfD. I think we need to assume a good faith here. S/he originally nominated just one article, then it was suggested to nominate the rest, so he went around tagging a bunch of stuff -- that's a lot of hassle. Then he gets criticized here. Likewise, it was a lot of work for Daltnpapi4u to put all this together

Stating that everyone is dumping on Okiefromokla because they have alternate opinions is not assuming good faith either. Postoak 05:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

- Lots of little lists are often not watched for spam as closely as a few bigger lists. --A. B. ^(talk) 11:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! The nominator often seems to get criticized. I don't take it too personally. Also, good points. Okiefromokla•talk 00:43, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge per any of Pharos's suggestions. What would be more useful would be lists of consulates, honorary consuls, trade and tourism offices by country for Canada and the U.S.: List of diplomatic, consular and other representatives in Canada by country. I think more readers will be interested in finding the nearest Albanian mission so they can spring Mama from jail or get a visa rather than finding what random countries have missions in a particular town. Here are potential resources for Canada and the U.S.. --A. B. ^(talk) 12:42, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A merged page like that may sound good in theory, but consider the individual City Articles that already exist. They would look better with a 'sub-article' describing all the consular agencies in that perticular city and not directing the reader to a section of another page that shows every consular agency in the country. That would be unwieldy. Exit2DOS2000^•T•C• 23:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge on a county-wide basis and cut out "honoury" consuls as per European countries (see List of diplomatic missions in Ukraine) unless someone can convince me that either Canada or more likely the US has an unusually large number of foreign offices present on its soil and therefore that won't work. Kevlar67 08:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The individual lists are important information, highly relevant, they should be kept. Why would anyone propose to delete it? It seems like it would be too large to merge. Thomas Paine1776 18:42, 3 November 2007 (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.