Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of radio stations in Sacramento


 * 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 merge. Information from this article was evidently used already to fill in information at List of radio stations in California, so this is no longer a candidate for deletion for GFDL reasons. However, there is no consensus to keep this as a stand-alone list and plenty of arguments advanced for deletion or merger. With respect to incorporating this material into any future articles on Media in Sacramento, such material can of course be obtained from the article's history as long as the merger is properly noted per Help:Merge.--Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:08, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

List of radio stations in Sacramento

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Article is a list of radio stations in a particular arbitrarily-defined radio station market. List of radio stations in California already covers this particular area and is both current and of the currently accepted form (United States radio lists are on the state level). This is one of only two lists covering United States radio stations in this manner. (See also Articles for deletion/List of radio stations in Stockton and Articles for deletion/List of radio stations in the Monterey Bay area, currently up for deletion.) JPG-GR (talk) 07:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Keep. Far from being "arbitrarily-defined", media markets such as these are well-defined by Arbitron (see list of markets here to see how Sacramento is the #27 market). Radio markets are the industry standard for geographical categorization of radio stations. This list has been recently updated from two reliable sources: RadioStationWorld page for Sacramento and an Inside Radio station search (type Sacramento into the City/Market to get an equivalent list). While stations may serve or have listeners in more than one market, every station serving a market has a primary market to which it can be assigned, and is assigned, according to these sources. (Some stations might not belong to any market, but that is no reason to delete lists of stations which do serve a market.) List of radio stations in California does not incoprorate all of the information from this list, instead, the statewide list is now simply a wikified FCC database dump which does not have Owner and Format information updated, and omits Branding entirely (many stations are known more by their branding than by their callsign, yet this important information is omitted from the statewide lists). The statewide list contains 800+ radio stations and is 62KB long, and such a long sortable table causes performance issues in some browsers, as well as being unhelpful for the reader and/or editor seeking information about stations within their own market area, which is generally the set of stations to which such a typical reader or editor will be able to tune and listen. I happen to think having to sort and search through a list of 800+ radio stations, to find the 5 to 20 percent or so that I can actually hear from any given location in the state, is rather inefficient, especially on slower computers which may take a while to sort that table. Then having to know the name of every city in the region which has a radio station to find them all. I may not be the only one who thinks these large statewide lists are unwieldly, because so far very few have bothered to update the Owner and Format fields in List of radio stations in California, or List of radio stations in Texas for that matter, both large unwieldly lists (owner and format information, as well as branding, was included in the lists before JPG-GR replaced the lists with the new tables). The only reason so few of these market lists remain is that the nominator recently prod-ded many other lists I was working on, and I had not objected in time. (I am often away from editing Wikipedia for extended periods of time due to other priorities in my life.) When I requested undeletion, the deleting administrator did not restore the articles as is usual practice for a contested PROD, but userfied the content instead. Other similar lists (including statewide lists which were organized by market area), which had existed in the past for years, were also redirected a few months back, also by the nominator, and replaced by wikified FCC database dumps. The FCC does not track radio market areas, but many other reliable sources do. Market-area lists such as this one conform to our content policies of verifiability based on reliable sources, no original research, and neutral point of view, and conform to notability guidelines and list guidelines, so there is no policy-based reason to delete these lists. We all agreed that the previous state of inconsistently-formatted and spottedly coordinated SIX statewide lists for each state, became unecessary because of the new sortable wikitable feature, and there was consensus in the discussions at WT:WPRS to replace most of these with sortable wikitables, because the lists sorted by city, owner, format, and frequency could all be sorted in one sortable table. But there was no consenus on what to do about market areas, and you solely made the decision to keep them out of the new tables. I asked that the separate market area lists remain, and you appeared to concede to leave the California market lists alone so that I could work on them. Now, less than 5 months later, you've proposed and nominated them for deletion! I know I am to assume good faith, but I can't help but wonder if I am being "punished" for having other priorities and not working on them in these last few months, or if I would have wasted my time had I actually worked hard on them and completed them, only to still have them nominated for deletion? Redundancy is not a valid reason for deletion, and similar to how categories, lists, and navigational templates are encouraged to co-exist and be used to update each other in synergy, the market lists should be considered to complement the statewide lists and market templates, and each should be used to update the others. The templates are a basic navigational aid, while the lists give a more comprehensive overview of each region's radio stations. Even deletion policy says that duplicate articles should be merged and redirected, not deleted outright. But if market lists are redundant to statewide lists, does that also mean that the state lists are redundant to the nationwide callsign lists? All the information in the 50 state lists should also be in the 12 or so national lists, so they're "wholly redundant": should one of these sets of lists be deleted? DHowell (talk) 09:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Question This is a rather lengthy argument, so forgive me if this question is addressed, but it sounds like you're saying this layout is better than the layout in the state page. My question then is, why not merge it into the state page and alter the rest of the state page to allow this type of content to be added to all stations in that article.  Just because a reputable organization chooses to categorize information in one way doesn't mean WP should or must follow suit.  Concensus seems to be to list by state as it results in an understandable organization of the information into articles that are neither too long or too short.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Verdatum (talk • contribs) 18:28, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The state page is already 62KB, and adding owner, format, branding, and market area to each station would no doubt push it way over the 100KB limit where we are supposed to split pages. This is hardly not "too long".
 * The current state list has no accomodation for branding or market area so I'd have to add new columns to 800+ lines of wikitable at once.
 * I have reason to believe that JPG-GR would revert any attempt to deviate the state list from the format he has personally decided all state radio lists must be in. (JPG-GR is free to correct me if I am wrong in this assessment).
 * I designed these market lists so that they could be transcluded in a way that we could have both a statewide list and market area lists with no redundancy, as all information could be in the market area lists but could appear identically in a statewide list. This is what this list and this list was supposed to be, but now that most of the market lists were PRODded and not restored, they are somewhat screwed up. (An existing mainspace list which builds a larger list by transcluding several smaller lists is List of DirecTV channels, so there is some precedent for doing this kind of transclusion).
 * There has never been any consensus to eliminate market area lists, JPG-GR did this on his own with no real discussion. (There was discussion about consolidating existing statewide lists and using sortable tables, but the issue of market area was never really resolved, JPG-GR just continued to insist that organizing by market area is impossible, despite that fact that this is exactly what many reliable sources do.) Besides the California market lists, there were other lists based on market areas such as List of radio stations in Chicago by name, List of radio stations in Las Vegas, and List of radio stations in Arizona by market area, before JPG-GR redirected them all in October.
 * Even if merging were the demonstrably correct thing to do, how does deleting these lists without any effort to merge the information going to help this? DHowell (talk) 10:52, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * From WP:SIZE, "Two exceptions are lists, and articles summarizing certain fields."
 * This is what scripting is for. It isn't hard.
 * This argument has nothing to do with AfD.
 * Currently, "Call sign", "Frequency" "City of license" "Owner", and "format" are redundant to the state article (basically, everything but "notes")...so, huh?
 * prod represents concensus. So does AfD, that's why we're here.
 * Exactly, I'm asking why vote "Keep" instead of "Merge" which is the direction I'm currently leaning. -Verdatum (talk) 15:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The next two sentences in WP:SIZE are "These act as summaries and starting points for a field and in the case of some broad subjects or lists either do not have a natural division point or work better as a single article. In such cases, the article should nonetheless be kept short where possible." I claim that market area is a natural division point and wish to keep the base lists short as possible. Meanwhile, a longer statewide list can transclude many shorter lists, just as List of DirecTV channels does.
 * I'm not saying it's hard, but will take more of my limited wiki time; time which I would rather use to find sources and update information.
 * It does when the nominator of the AfD is the same person as the primary editor of the statewide list. (JPG-GR has shown willingness to accept changes below, but still seems to demand that any changes I make must be made to all 50 state lists within an unknown timeframe.)
 * Transclusion would eliminate the redundancy.
 * PROD only represents consensus when it is uncontested. I've contested the PRODs. The only reason I haven't DRV'd them is I'm waiting for the outcome of these AfD's. The relation of AfD to "consensus" is tenuous at best, and has very little relation to do what is described at WP:CONSENSUS. But that's a whole other argument which I'd rather not get into right now. It is less of a problem here now that we are having an actual discussion, though it irks me when people vote "delete" without addressing any of the arguments I made.
 * I'm saying keep the market lists because they are smaller and would be easier to update for the average editor than the huge state lists. Most people don't contribute by dumping databases, but by contributing information about stations that they are familiar with, and people are going to be familiar with the stations in their market area, not throughout the entire state. Transclusion would give us the best of both worlds; smaller, manageable market area lists, useful for most radio listeners; and a larger statewide list for whatever purpose they serve. DHowell (talk) 19:07, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't own these lists, so any modifications you'd like to do are fine. HOWEVER, it seems ridiculous to add a market column to this already screen-wide list if California is the -only- station you intend to do that, too. The whole point to the new lists was a uniformity. JPG-GR (talk) 18:09, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I still have to start somewhere. I happen to live in California, have lived in both the Northern and Southern areas of the state, so I am familiar with many of these stations. But I have no objection to working on the other states, it's just that I don't have as much time to work on this as others may have, so it is a little unreasonable to tell me I can make changes, but only if I am willing to personally do it to 50 lists containing a total of some 10,000(?) radio stations. The whole point of the wiki process is for different editors to be able to make incremental changes leading to a useful reference work. For me, uniformity is not as important as the preservation of information, and your enforcement of uniformity led to a net LOSS of information—owner, format, branding, and market area—information which was wiped out in your quest to standardize the lists (sure, people are slowly restoring owner and format information, but this work proceeds at a slow and sporadic pace, just like my own work on the market lists). Making me responsible to ensure that all 50 lists uniform (an unimportant goal to me; secondary to the addition and preservation of information, and secondary to making it easier for others to contribute information) is no different than to make you responsible for filling out the owner and format fields and restoring branding and market information to the state lists (information that is important to me, but clearly not as important to you). There is no deadline, so we have plenty of time to make things uniform after all the information is complete.
 * Now the most sensible way for me to work on this information is by market area; forcing me to work within the confines of the current state list, which I currently find unwieldly, is essentially a rejection my voluntary contributions. My time is limited as it is. My intentions were to complete the various market lists, using the sources I noted above; then to match the resulting list up with the FCC database list, resolving any conflicts, and finally replacing the existing statewide list with one which transcludes the market lists, ensuring no information was lost in the process. Once done with that, I would proceed to another state. Now at the rate I am doing this, it might take me years to complete all 50 states, but again, there is no deadline, so please stop enforcing one on me. DHowell (talk) 18:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * "uniformity is not as important as the preservation of information" - perhaps, but uniformity is more important than the preservation of information that was largely found to be out of date, unsourced, and just plain wrong. I still argue that a market column is wholly unnecessary, as each station included in a specific market should include a transcluded version of the appropriate market template. These market-specific lists are just another redundancy that requires updating when something changes. Wholly unnecessary. JPG-GR (talk) 18:57, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, editing policy says otherwise—even information that is "out of date, unsourced, and just plain wrong" is to be corrected, or tagged with fact, not removed, unless it is about a living person. Your argument that a market column would be unnecessary because the information is in the station articles would apply equally as well to the frequency, city of license, owner, and format columns, since all of this information should also be in the station articles. (of course then we would be reduced to a list of call signs, which would be redundant to a category). I don't understand why you think where the station is heard is not as fundamentally important to a radio station as where it is located on the dial, what kind of programming it has or who owns it. Actually I didn't even really want a market column, as I my intent was to have a single statewide complete list, and a statewide list by separated by market area, both transcluding the market lists; I've explained in my reply to Verdatum above how transclusion could eliminate the redundancy between market lists and state lists; and I believe redundancy with the market templates would be a good thing as I have been getting the market information from reliable sources and so it would provide an easy way to check the templates, which are unsourced by design, against a sourced list; exactly as described in WP:CLS. But if these market lists are deleted, adding a market column to the statewide list is the only alternative. DHowell (talk) 03:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for assisting me in proving my point - "where the station is heard" is not the same as the market it is in according to you. For instance, take my local clear channel station WJR, which can be heard throughout the majority of three different states. It's licensed to Detroit, Michigan and that information is already found in the List of radio station in Michigan. The designated market for the station is redundant and unnecessary. Moreover, WJR ranks highly in numerous markets, including Toledo, which isn't even in Michigan. Saying it's in the Detroit market is very concise and lacking in the grand scheme of things. JPG-GR (talk) 07:32, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, good job at focusing on an unfortunate choice of words and ignoring all my other points. You're right that "where the station is heard" is not technically the same as its primary market; perhaps I should have said "where the station is primarily heard" or "listened to", or "where the primary target audience for the station is". The 1% or so of radio stations which are clear channel AM stations (and there is a list of those in the article) are a notable exception to the general rule that most radio stations are typically listened to in one primary market and a few surrounding markets; and even the clear channel stations recognize a primary market that they serve—I'd bet that WJR has far more advertisements for local businesses in the Detroit area than it does for local businesses in Toledo (if they even have any); and I notice it carries coverage of Detroit sports teams. If Toledo is so important to WJR why isn't it mentioned anywhere in the WJR article, and why was its slogan once "WJR Radio 76 Cares About Detroit" and not "WJR Radio 76 Cares About Michigan, Ohio, most of Indiana, parts of Pennsylvania, and the Buffalo, New York area"? Ok, its city of license is Detroit, so this doesn't necessarily prove anything. But let's go up the dial to WCHB. Its city of license is Taylor, Michigan but just try to find out that fact on their own website. No mention of "Taylor", but 100 mentions of "Detroit". No mention of Toledo", either, even though they have the same power in the daytime as WJR, and is closer to Toledo, so must certainly be audible there. WCHB clearly cares more about its primary market (Detroit) than it does about its city of license or other markets in its listenable range. If "market area" is such a useless concept as you seem to think, why shouldn't we delete the market navigational templates as well and replace them with state templates? And why do industry sources such as Arbitron and Inside Radio even bother with the concept? And why does a station like KQJK say "Sacramento, CA" on their website when they are licensed to Roseville, California? DHowell (talk) 03:02, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking of unsourced and wrong information, what made you think that KABC (AM), KGO (AM) and KLOS are owned by Clear Channel Communications? DHowell (talk) 03:45, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete Wikipedia is not a directory, and this is covered in the list for the state. Edison (talk) 20:39, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Where is market area information currently covered in the list for the state? And how does "Wikipedia is not a directory" apply to the market area lists and not to the statewide lists or the callsign lists? DHowell (talk) 10:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment Owner and format information from this list has now been used to fill in appropriate blank cells in List of radio stations in California. JPG-GR (talk) 19:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, now what about branding? Would you object to me transforming the current List of radio stations in California (and the other state lists, for consistency, though I can't guarantee a timeframe for doing this if I have to do it myself) to one using the radiolist start, radiolist AM, radiolist FM, radiolist end templates as the market lists currently do? DHowell (talk) 03:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge to List of radio stations in California per JPG-GR's comment and per my discussion above. -Verdatum (talk) 20:18, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge to List of radio stations in California per JPG-GR. - Dravecky (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete. The state list is just fine.  There is already a market area nav box so we don't need a list, category and nav box.  Vegaswikian (talk) 22:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment: The Sacramento, California article links to this list in its Media section. Would it be acceptable to refactor this list into a Media of Sacramento or List of Sacramento media article, which would comprise the television station and newspaper lists from the current city article along with the radio stations? There is precedent for this: see List of media in Cumberland, MD-WV, Media of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Media of Nashville, List of media outlets in Quincy, Illinois, List of Salt Lake City media, and Media of Toledo, Ohio. DHowell (talk) 05:16, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge to List of radio stations in California per JPG-GR, the state pages are well maintained by a number of WP:WPRS volunteers, this is not. Anyone interested in maintaining the quality of radio station information in the Sacramento or any other area is encouraged to join up with others in the WP:WPRS so that there can be some consistency to these articles, categories and templates.--Rtphokie (talk) 12:11, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Radio-related deletion discussions.   —DHowell (talk) 05:43, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions.   —DHowell (talk) 05:49, 12 March 2008 (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.