Wikivoyage:Votes for deletion/June 2015

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List of airline baggage limits: Out of scope, useless, impossible to keep up to date, yet another list Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:09, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment: Due to CC BY-SA attribution requirements, there is no "merge and delete" option. If we keep the text, we need to keep the contributor list. K7L (talk) 01:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or Merge and redirect. I am reluctant to support deleting an article after it has been around for six years. It also has nearly as many readers in the last 3 months (291) as Frequent flyer programmes (301) which is about to be a featured article. I do have considerable doubts about article traffic statistics but I think that they can give some idea of relative popularity. When planning a recent long haul flight the luggage allowance was a factor in my choice of airline, so I think that it could be useful information. AlasdairW (talk) 22:32, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Undecided. There have been several additions to this article recently. If people believed it would be kept up to date, would that change your opinion on whether it should be deleted? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:50, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Alasdair; we should not delete this. But we should also try to avoid having an unmaintainable list that is almost certain to be out of date much of the time. Ideally, I'd say link to an external list that someone else maintains, but I cannot find a good one. w:Baggage allowance does not seem adequate. Pashley (talk) 23:04, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - hopelessly impossible to keep up to date or complete, and a serious potential for causing huge hassles for travellers who show up having following our misinformation. Texugo (talk) 23:07, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Redirect (at worst) I don't have an opinion on whether to keep this article or not, but in the worst case redirect it rather than deleting so that anyone searching for this subject is sent to an article with related information, so we don't break external links that might point to this article, and so we don't lose the SEO value of an article that has been around for a while. Note that the deletion policy calls for redirects rather than deletion when possible/appropriate. Ryan • (talk) • 23:22, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or Merge and redirect I disagree that the article is out of scope and useless. I do agree that it is out of date. I'd suggest removing all the airline specific information (I'm guessing most of it is now inaccurate) and have an article related to airline baggage. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:37, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Does every airline have a page that details their policies on baggage? If so, it would be important to link to all those pages somewhere on this site, don't you think? And in that case, the need for those policies to be updated on Wikivoyage would be obviated. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, when I fly a new airline I always check out that information on their website. I've yet to come across an airline that doesn't do this. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 23:53, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Right. But wouldn't we want to have a repository of such links on an article about baggage limits? You also don't need much or any of the information in our articles about flying for first-time flyers, but we have all that information on this site. I know we have captain obvious to avoid really self-evident remarks, but we shouldn't ignore things that are obvious to frequent flyers but could be overlooked by less experienced flyers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:15, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - What? Luggage limits isn't relevant to travelers? Actually I'd say most of our travel topics are less important (and many of them doesn't contain much of anything and probably won't be expanded anytime soon, just look at some of our most exotic phrasebooks) than this one. We should have the information somewhere (and of course update it) if this article gets deleted. At least links to airlines' websites. ϒpsilon (talk) 05:19, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Luggage limit IS relevant, a list of it is not necessarily something we should keep. Not only do the limits change, but also airlines form and fold and the structure of their websites change, so a list with a reasonable degree of comprehensiveness, currency and usefulness would require A LOT of maintenance. I also agree a reasonably maintained list is hard to find precisely because of that - nobody really needs all that in one place, even flying on an RTW ticket you are probably going to use some six carriers in total and you will be able to check all the details yourself on the respective airlines' websites (and your booking confirmation will usually include this info anyway).
With IATA having just unleashed havoc with their latest announcements, I would much rather we conceded we cannot maintain this article than mislead travellers. PrinceGloria (talk) 07:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That is precisely my concern. There is no one here who is going to be responsible for consistently checking back regularly and frequently with every airline on the list or so to make sure there has been no change, and that's just with the random selection of airlines we have now — 4 of the last 5 international airlines I've flown are not even on the list yet (TAM, TACA, China Air, Turkish Air), and dozens more are missing. If we expanded the list to be reasonably complete, it would be even that much more maintenance needed on a regular and frequent basis, probably at least weekly if we actually want to avoid inadvertently causing travellers to have to throw some belongings away at the airport or buy new luggage last minute. We simply don't have the manpower or the commitment to do the job right, and as PrinceGloria mentioned, there is no reason to compile all this info in one place anyway, because the vast majority of travellers will only need to check one or possibly two airlines for their trip, and the information is usually already included with the booking information from the airline. Plus, in the unusual event that it is not included, any smart traveller would check directly with the airlines anyway, instead of relying on a third-party wiki with no guarantee of veracity. I'd say that if we truly, objectively want to give the traveller the best advice from the traveller-comes-first perspective, that advice in this case is to always check with directly with the airline regardless of what any other site says. That's what I always do, and that's the advice I'd give to any friend who asked me. Texugo (talk) 11:54, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think you may be misunderstanding the use of the information - I see it as being useful in deciding which airline to fly with, before booking. (When flying from London to Auckland the amount of luggage included with an economy ticket can vary by a factor of two depending on airline and routing.) The fact that some of the information is wrong is no different from the fact that some of the hotel prices here are wrong. I expect the traveller to know what allowance they have when they buy the ticket, just as they should check prices when booking a room. AlasdairW (talk) 14:47, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That is one possible use, but not the only or most likely one. And if you're actually in that minority that would choose an airline based on their luggage restrictions before other considerations and you've already researched enough to figure out which handful of airlines to compare for a given route and itinerary, you still don't need a giant table of all the airlines in the world, and you've probably already got a more reliable source for that information open in another tab anyway. Texugo (talk) 15:07, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Plus many people search flights through aggregators anyway and many aggregators have precisely that data somewhere in their database and are paying people to do nothing else than keeping this rather trivial piece of information up to date. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:21, 12 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep or merge but add one extra column indicating when each entry was last updated. With airlines increasingly charging inflated fees even for the first checked bag, this issue is becoming a bit of a sore point with frequent fliers at the moment; the airlines responding with stricter enforcement of carry-on limits is only adding fuel to that fire, even before IATA stuck their foot in this mess. K7L (talk) 15:16, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:K7L, feel free to scrub through the article's edit history to create that column. When done, look at it and see whether it looks serious to provide data with that currency. Oh, while at that, could you at least add data for all full and associate members of the three major airline alliances? You may want to add data for other airlines with at least 10 aircraft after you've applied for a permanent full-time position tasked with updating this list. PrinceGloria (talk) 02:19, 16 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd assume we'd just want the majors (British Airways, Delta, United, AA, Air Canada, WestJet and the like) and not every Cape Air or Air Creebec-sized operation. IATA looks to be backtracking, which is likely just as well as their proposal was more restrictive than the existing bag limits, but this does leave a different size for each airline which, while confusing, is relevant to travel. K7L (talk) 20:00, 17 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do not find this a reasonable assumption. We do not skip Paraguay because "nobody goes there", and how should we define "majors" anyway? Your examples make me think your view is quite US-centric, where indeed the number of major airlines is limited - three major ones, Jetblue, Alaska, Hawaiian, Southwest, Frontier and perhaps Spirit, with an occasional sprinkling of Canadian, Mexican and major international carriers. But for other regions of the world this is not that easy - there are at least 50 airlines in Europe alone that carried over 1M pax in the last year. Africa, Asia and South America add another 70-100. And many of those have different limits for different sub-brands or particular flight types (e.g. domestic, international, long-haul). Trying to compile a reasonably useful list in the first place would be a major undertaking, let alone maintaining it. PrinceGloria (talk) 20:55, 17 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Not to forget the various no service airlines that don't allow any luggage at all or have arbitrary limits or have arbitrary size limits for carry-on. And most customers of Mr. O Leary and his ilk (at least in Europe) are of the kind that rarely fly and thus get it wrong a lot, hence the handsome "ancillary revenue" of Ryanair and the likes...Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:01, 17 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • comment: If the article is kept or the information it should contain (and right now doesn't) is merged somewhere, should we wait until the storm caused by the recent news of IATA trying to become the "international association of making people take the train" is over? I mean carry-on is a big part of luggage (some people flying with nothing but carry-on) and thus if we do decide to keep this list or the information contained in it, I don't think it wise to have things that can change on a day by day basis in the next two or three months. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:32, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
IATA: I'd Advise Trains as Alternatives? ;) K7L (talk) 15:45, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Good one. Hobbitschuster (talk) 15:48, 15 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sooooo..... What are we going to do? If we do not delete the page, we should remove the vfd tag. If we do, we should delete the page. For whatever reason the discussion appears to have died down... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:16, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is no up-to-date information to be merged, nor a logical place to merge it if there were, nor a mechanism by which it could be reasonably kept up to date. And anyway, the bottom line is that there would have to be a consensus to keep it, and there is not, so it has to go. Texugo (talk) 15:38, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So you think all that information should be simply deleted? How does that help the traveler? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:25, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. It helps the traveller by not providing them with possibly bad information that might lead them to have to be throwing away stuff at the airport or buying additional expensive luggage last minute at the airport. It helps the traveller by encouraging them to get the most up-to-date information from the official source instead of depending on us, since we do not have any workable way to consistently offer up-to-date information on that topic. That is what is best for the traveller, because we can't even come close to doing the job well and being a reliable source. This argument was already made above. Texugo (talk) 18:49, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And what about the links to airline information about baggage limits? Is deleting those links from this site useful to travellers? Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:05, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The question of "is deleting x useful to travellers" is not the sole criteria for what we keep or delete. There are loads of links which might technically be useful to the traveller but which run afoul of our external links policy. The links in question here are third-party sites analogous to hotel aggregators (which we specifically do not link to), only for airline info instead of hotel info, and one of them is even a part of TripAdvisor, which we definitely avoid linking to. I don't believe those links pass our external links policy at all. Additionally, one of the links is to a fairly cheap or shady-looking text-only site I'm not sure is reliable, and yet another is to a site which no longer exists Texugo (talk) 19:29, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Result: Merged & redirected. -- Ryan • (talk) • 15:08, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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