Talk:Bus travel in Israel/Archive

New name, fully allowed now

Just like Rail travel in Europe, Skiing in Austria, Driving in New Zealand, or Rail Travel in the United States are just fine, this article is now also completely allowed and no more VFD. (WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006

Changing the name of the article doesn't necessarily mean the content is the kind of article we want, or the best way to present the information. When someone puts an article up for discussion of whether it should be deleted, you can't unilaterally remove the VFD notice. That is for the community to reach a consensus on, not you (or any other one person) to decide. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 20:47, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

The content is now nearly equal to the content of articles such as Rail travel in Europe and I will work on it more in the coming days. What I smell here is a bunch of antisemites attacking me and my article simply because it is about Israel. Why do you not VFD the articles about rail travel in Europe and North America? Why don't you VFD the articles about cheap air travel? Why do you have to single out MY article for deletion? I smell a very unfair standard here, which I am not going to allow just like that. You either delete my article and all other similar articles as well, or none of them. --(WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006

Put down the attitude son. There are a great many topics which are of interest to some travelers, and we simply can't cover them all. My personal favorite is that I'd like to know where parks are for when I'm travelling with my kids. Wikivoyage doesn't keep track of this. It's not that Wikivoyage hates my kids, but rather that it's too much information.

In the case of busses and trains, the specifics of the routes are generally best maintained by the Route Operator. You made a case to us that the operator of these busses fails to make the routes available to the General Public, and therefore this is an exception to the general rule of "don't include route timetables." We agreed to keep this article based on that argument.

But that doesn't mean it's just your article. Wikivoyage is a work of a community, and the community gets to change articles around as it sees fit. Kindly refrain from assuming editors who dare touch or comment on your perfect work are prejudiced against you. As it says at the bottom of the page whenever you edit here at wikivoyage, "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." -- (WT-en) Colin 21:16, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Dear Collin, the problem here is that my article (only my article) has been singled out for deletion. Now that I have changed the article completely (the text, not only the name, if you will check!) it completely complies with the rules. If my article is not allowed now, then neither are the articles I mentioned above. Deleting my article while not deleting those articles constitutes a very clear anti-Israel bias, and discriminating against things concerning Israel while ignoring other countries constitutes anti-Semitism. There is no way to deny that. My article now fully confirms to all requirements, so there is no case in deleting the article today or tomorrow. --(WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006

(I made this point elsewhere, but just want it here too): if you take a look at the Project:Deletion log you'll see that we delete a lot of stuff-- including, recently New South Wales by rail, Eurail pass, Maine outlet shopping, and several dozen other travel topics. Really, it's not just you! (heck, two of my travel topics were deleted too !) (WT-en) Majnoona 00:20, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

You imagine a conspiracy where none exists. (If you knew me, I think you'd be ashamed of making that slanderous accusation.) The issue that people have with this article is that it consists primarily of a very long list and that this information might be more useful if it were split up and moved to the various destination articles. The fact that it's associated with Israel has nothing to do with it. At all. The key point here is that the decision of whether to keep that article or not is not yours (or mine or any one else's) to make. It must be made by discussion and consensus, not by the author of the article. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 21:25, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Regarding your argument involving Rail travel in Europe. This article was once VfD'd, however, after hard work on improving the article editors and administrators involved with Wikivoyage came to the consensus to keep the article.

Furthermore, just because there is a Rail travel for Europe an North America doesn't mean the community rubber stamps every idea or proposal. An article for rail travel in Japan was proposed, however, the community decided against it.

Additionally, if you take the time to read the ongoing discussion on the VfD page you will notice almost if not everyone was voting to move the information into the respective Israeli articles that the information would best fit in. - (WT-en) (Sapphire) 21:26, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Which basically means, deleting the article. I am not going to edit hundreds of articles - many of which do not even exist yet - with this information, which is simply impossible. There is nothing wrong with this article right now. I will maintain it and will keep improving it. If not, I will insert all of its content into the Israel article, which will then probably be about 50 pages long and totally unusable. But I guess that's preferable. I will do it, in any case. --User:(WT-en) Daniel575

Hey, I just wanted to let you know that the upside of this whole "community" idea here is that you dont have to edit "hundreds of articles. I'm happy to do a couple dozen, some other folks will do some more, and before you know it, it'll be done. If you don't believe me, ask about how we managed to removed the "External links" section from something like 5,000 articles in just a few months... Look, we're really glad you've got this great if and we certainly want it here for travellers to find it, but part of contributing is letting the community help! (WT-en) Majnoona 22:03, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

On second thought, no. Please take a look at Israel#Get around. This already looks much better than it did. If necessary I will insert this entire article there. --User:(WT-en) Daniel575

Portions of this article are picked up directly from the WikiPedia article List of Egged bus lines [1]. Based on the identical user name, I presume (WT-en) Daniel575 contributed portions of that article as well, but not all of it. The Wikivoyage version does not seem to adequately fulfill WikiPedia's requirements for attribution. Where does that leaves us as far as license? Obviously (WT-en) Daniel575 can release his own intellectual property anywhere he sees fit, but using other derivative material seems to be playing loose. --(WT-en) SHC 22:21, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

That article and 90% of the information in it was written by me also. The other person there suggested that it is an inappropriate topic for Wikipedia and really belongs on Wikivoyage, so I created a similar (but more touristically oriented) page here, which involved hours of editing since Wikitables cannot be used here. Apparently, the article belongs nowhere... Oh by the way, Wikipedia information is fully released, I cannot think of any legal problem in using Wikipedia information in a Wikivoyage article. User:(WT-en) Daniel575

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Wikipedia's standard license is the GFDL. Wikivoyage's is the CC-BY-SA. Although these two licenses have a lot of the same principles in common, they are not interchangeable, and material from Wikipedia can't be copied directly into Wikivoyage. See Project:Why Wikivoyage isn't GFDL for more info about this. The good news is that anything you've legally contributed to 'pedia you can also contribute to 'travel (or anywhere else you want) because it's your own creation. It's just a matter of dual-licensing it (GFDL and CC-BY-SA). And of course the raw information itself (rather than the written expression of that information) is (according to most legal scholars) free from copyright or licensing restrictions. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 23:06, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Also, Wikitables most certainly can be used here (see below), what problems did you encounter? (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:22, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Line	Route
Yay	I'm a Wikitable and I work all day!
1	Jerusalem CBS - Malchei Yisrael Street - Meah Shearim Street - Damascus Gate - Western Wall - HaNevi'im Street - Strauss Street - Malchei Yisrael Street - Jerusalem CBS
2	Har Nof - Givat Shaul North - Jerusalem CBS - Kiryat Mattersdorf - Kiryat Tzanz - Bar Ilan Street - Shivtei Yisrael Street - Damascus Gate - Kotel (Western Wall)

Old discussion (when the article was called 'List of Egged bus lines')

Honestly, I think that this is not an article. In fact it might be useful for some users but it also opens the door for people to create a countless number of articles such as List of Delta Airline routes and stuff like that, and I don't think this is one of our goals. An article on Bus travel in the Middle East that contained part of this article's info could be welcome, though. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 16:40, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

I agree. This is no more an appropriate article than would be a list of daily transatlantic flights, or the various lines on the Swiss Federal Railway. Let's salvage what we can and put it in Isreal which is where this info belongs. -- (WT-en) Mark 17:06, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

I believe a lot of well-meant work has been put into that article and much of the information there is really usable in spite of being at the wrong place. I've thus pasted the general info into the Get around/By bus section of the Israel article. The list of lines within Jerusalem were already in the city article too. Someone could re-work the list of intercity lines into region/city articles before the article is gone, so we do not lose those details when/if the article is deleted. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 19:12, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

Excuse me??? I have been working on this article for hours! If this article is deleted, I will indeed quit Wikivoyage forever. You people have no idea what you're talking about. Egged does NOT provide this information to its passengers. Delta DOES. There is NO map of Egged bus lines. There is no information like this to be found anywhere. I am quite shocked. Go ahead and delete it, but please don't expect me to ever put a single minute of work into Wikivoyage ever again. -- (WT-en) Daniel575 20:28, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

Still not an article

There's still not enough information in here for this topic to warrent its own article. It would be much more useful for travellers to have this information incorporated into Israel and into the articles for the various towns or cities. If nobody else feels like doing it I will. -- (WT-en) Mark 08:04, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

That said, the user who first created this page has a good point that the Egged website is more-or-less useless, but we can't compute optimal bus routes using Mediawiki. What this problem really needs is its own website. I fully expect this discussion to result in exactly such a thing. -- (WT-en) Mark 08:20, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

vfd discussion

Article has been completely changed and as of May 30 complies to all requirements. --(WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006

• Delete. Sorry but this is neither a destination nor a travel topic. It's more like encyclopedic information. For the most part a traveller would be better served by information provided on site by the primary source. -- (WT-en) Mark 17:49, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
• Delete. It's TMI. When the contributor is gone, who is going to maintain this list? No one. Better to provide general information about Egged lines which is less prone to change, and let Egged lines handle distribution of fully up-to-date information about their routes and schedules. -- (WT-en) Colin 17:57, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

So we should delete every page which is written and maintained by a single person, because if that person would leave, nobody would maintain the page? I think we should delete about three quarters of Wikivoyage, then. -- (WT-en) Daniel575 20:39, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

• Keep. I worked on this article for hours. I am threatening (yes, you read it correctly): if this article is deleted from Wikipedia, then I am deleting myself from Wikipedia. I invite all of you to go to www.egged.co.il/Eng and take a look for yourself. You try to find yourself a way to travel from Kiryat Shemona to Bnei Brak there. Or from Jerusalem to Ramat Beit Shemesh. You won't. That website is deserves the consumers prize for the most user-unfriendly website ever built in the entire world of travelling. It is totally useless to anyone.

Let me explain: if you want to leave from Jerusalem to anywhere, you have to *know* from which of the tree bus stations your bus leaves. If you don't know, you won't get any results. For example, there are 4 lines from Jerusalem to Ramat Beit Shemesh. Three go from Jerusalem Har Chotzvim; one goes from Jerusalem (meaning, central bus station). The first bus from the central bus station leaves at 14:00. The other three lines also have a stop 50 meters away from the central bus station, right in front of it. They leave every 15-30 minutes each, from 6:00 to 23:00. Now, you are a tourist, and you want to go to Ramat Beit Shemesh. So you go to that website, you look for Jerusalem - Ramat Beit Shemesh, and what do you see? Ten buses a day. While there are in fact at least 50 or so (probably more).

This gets even worse if you want to travel, for example, from Tel Aviv to Haifa. In Tel Aviv, there are two major bus terminals - in Haifa, there are three. Thus, you will have to try SIX different options if you want to find buses from Tel Aviv to Haifa!

This article I am writing here is intended to replace that information which Egged itself does not provide. Egged is the most horrible company in the world when it comes to providing information to (potential) passengers, which is a shame indeed, since the buses are very neat and luxurous, and fast, and cheap. But for 'outsiders', Egged is almost unaccessible, because of the extreme difficulty involved in obtaining the travelling information that you want.

Now, once more, I repeat, delete this article and you can delete my entire account with it. -- (WT-en) Daniel575 20:39, 10 May 2006 (EDT)

• One more note. You really seriously propose that I incorporate the entire article into the Israel page? Sure, I'd do that, if you want. Fine. Just that the page will suddenly be twice as long and look extremely weird. What other country page has a list of bus lines on its country page?! But if that's what you want, fine. -- (WT-en) Daniel575 20:51, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
• Delete. It's simply not a destination, nor a travel topic, nor an itinerary, nor anything else that fits into the "article" category as defined here. We hope you'll stay, and we'll miss you if you don't, but this isn't Wikipedia. -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 21:34, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
• Delete. The info should be incorporated into the individual city pages under Israel: buses from Tel Aviv into Tel Aviv, etc. (WT-en) Jpatokal 22:02, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep (at least for now). If what Daniel says is true, it's possible that this information isn't being made avaiable to travellers anywhere else. It's really, really not in keeping with our typical guidelines, but I'd like to find this data a home rather than wipe it off the site forever. Daniel, your work is appreciated, but this level of detail on schedules is just too fine-grained for being part of the Wikivoyage guide area. Would you consider moving it to your "user area", like User:(WT-en) Daniel575/List of Egged lines? That would keep the information available, but also avoid setting a precedent for Wikivoyage (that we write and maintain bus company schedules, which is just too big a burden)? --(WT-en) Evan 22:18, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep (on user page?) until step 2 of the nomination procedure (i.e. preparatory work) is completed, then delete. We can't afford to waste a well-meant and useful wikivoyager's work. Following Jpatokal's comments above and mine on the article's talk page, I think the list should be merged into the corresponding city or region articles when appropriate, whereas the general part should be (actually, it has been) put into the country article. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 22:54, 10 May 2006 (EDT)
• OK, let's move it. Daniel, sorry this hurt your feelings, but we really do have policies and guidelines about what sorts of things we have articles about. We are not WikiPedia. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks also for making us aware that this information simply doesn't exist in a coherent form elsewhere. Anyhow, I suppose the correct place to put this information, which is to say the place where travellers would be looking for this information is in the Get in sections of all of the destination articles in Israel. -- (WT-en) Mark 08:15, 11 May 2006 (EDT)
• Agree with Mark and others above. This is valuable information, but it's most useful to the traveler if it's put (selectively, of course) in each destination's "Get in" and/or "Get around" sections. For example, if I want to know how to get to Petach Tikva, I'm going to look at Petach Tikva#Get in where it should tell me that Egged bus 423 (express) from Jerusalem CBS, 642 or 921 (regular) from Tel Aviv CBS, or 627 (regular) from Zoran will get me there. Granted, that will probably make it more work to maintain than keeping it in a single article, but that's our goal here: to do the hard work so others don't have to. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 10:16, 11 May 2006 (EDT)

• Keep We have space and the information is probably useful. By all means put some stuff in Get in/Get out sections of other articles, but link here for details. I'd vote for delete only if someone who knows Isreal well says there's another reasonable way to provide this info. (WT-en) Pashley 23:21, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

So what happened here? As far as I remember, the article being voted for deletion was List of Egged lines, which still exists as a redirect. Even if the "bus travel" article stays, the redirect is unnecessary. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 09:20, 30 May 2006 (EDT)

Indeed, as you can see, I have changed the article in such a way that it should now be fully permissible. The redirects (both 'List of Egged lines' and 'List of Israeli bus lines') can be deleted. The article is now on its way to become a full guide to how to deal with the Israeli bus system (which is basically the only realistic mode of transportation here). --User:(WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006

• It looks like there is somewhat of a consensus to keep this article. I'm not sure I agree in this case since bus routes have proven impossible to maintain in the past, but since several people have spoken out in favor of keeping this can we resolve this VFD? -- (WT-en) Ryan 15:19, 2 June 2006 (EDT)

• • Is there a consensus to keep it? My reading of discussion above is that only a couple of people (the contributor who wrote it and me) wanted to keep it, and everyone else said delete. I think keeping it is the right decision, but I don't think there's a consensus on that, or at least not yet. (WT-en) Pashley 06:00, 3 June 2006 (EDT)
    • I guess the consensus is not to get rid of it for now. It doesn't seem entirely fair to the article's author to debate this endlessly, so perhaps we can remove the vfd and put a note on the article's talk page that the content should be re-worked into the relevant geographic articles? That would solve the problem of having good info that's currently in the wrong place. -- (WT-en) Ryan 19:42, 3 June 2006 (EDT)
      • Ryan's solution makes sense to me. As an example of what the residual article might look like, check out Eurail and Inter Rail. The present article could become useful if the individual routes were moved to the destinations and general system information remained here. Remember that our general philosophy is one of trying to improve subpar articles rather than deleting them. That said, this article is subpar, and it needs improvement. Let's keep it for now and move on, but check back occasionally to see if improvement occurs. (Hm -- should we start putting some articles in "provisional" or "probationary" status? Not sure I want to go there ...) -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 22:09, 3 June 2006 (EDT)

vfd follow-up

The lengthy VFD discussion (see above) seemed to come to the conclusion that while some of the information in this article is useful, it would be better off integrated into other Israel articles in the "Get in" sections. In general, bus routes with route numbers tend to fluctuate over time and have proven very difficult to maintain, but the fact that a certain company offers buses to specific destinations is valuable and not nearly as tough to maintain. A sufficiently motivated person may want to take up the task of moving the info in this article to the more appropriate places, after which this article might again be considered for removal. -- (WT-en) Ryan 14:45, 4 June 2006 (EDT)

How to proceed

Putting all of this information into the different destinations is impossible. 1) The list is just a beginning. 2) 90% of the places listed do not have a page yet, and creating pages for 100 towns just for this purpose seems a little weird. Now if someone wants to create 100 news pages all containing just the bus lines going there, fine. It seems like a very inefficient thing to me, since there are basically no other people currently writing about Israel aside from me. Next, I am fully motivated to work on this article and turn it into something useful and keep updating it. Also, bus lines here do not change so frequently - they very rarely do. If there are any changes, they are only minor. Thus, for the time being, I will soon (tomorrow) start updating this list a lot and make it more useful by proving more practical advice. --(WT-en) Daniel575 23:39, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

I think you mean "creating a free travel guide from scratch is impossible". ;) Wikivoyage's mandate is to cover the whole world, including all towns in Israel, so if you need to create 100 stubs that say "Get in: line 345 from Kiryat Shwarma and line 67 from Maktesh Falafel" then so be it.

Please try to look at this from the traveler's point of view. Let's say you want to get from Jerusalem to Eilat using Wikivoyage -- what are you going to do? You're going to take a look at Jerusalem, and if you don't find the info there you're going to look at Eilat. You are not going to look at Bus travel in Israel, because how would you know the article even exists? (WT-en) Jpatokal 23:52, 6 June 2006 (EDT)

Article will be expanded

I have been a little busy for the past couple of weeks due to losing my job (I and my whole team were basically fired) and finding a new job. I'm soon going to resume updating and expanding this article. --(WT-en) Daniel575 07:56, 22 June 2006 (EDT)