Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/NIBS (bus company)


 * 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. Ultimately, content on Wikipedia must be verifiable by citation to reliable sources. If you're voting keep at an AfD you need to show, specifically, that these sources exist. As no one has been able to demonstrate that the subject passes the general notability guidelines, there is a consensus to delete. Sam Walton (talk) 13:25, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

NIBS (bus company)

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Small non notable bus company - Fails WP:NCORP & WP:GNG - (Checked everywhere and literally found no evidence of notability, Also the articles been up for 8 years and has barely improved and IMHO what with the poor lack of information out there I don't think It'll be improved anytime soon.) – Davey 2010  •  (talk)  07:27, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. No evidence of notability.Charles (talk) 09:38, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Keep. This reminds me of Davey's attempt to declare Nu-Venture as a "non-notable" operator (I'm sincerely hoping it's just a coincidence that every time I look at Wikipedia, which is pretty infrequently, I seem to find an attempt by Davey to delete a bus company - I hope it's not something he's actually doing regularly).

He claims he "Checked everywhere and literally found no evidence of notability", yet it took me 5 minutes to find a local newspaper report about how they were the operator selected to run the long campaigned for service from Wickford to Basildon’s Festival Leisure Park, but the proposal to cut the funding (and thus the service because it's not profitable enough on its own), is understandably causing controversy. http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/11255717.print/

While the article doesn't contain much information right now, based on my investigations, that's not because there is none out there. It's because Davey and Charlesdrakew have been systematically deleting every scrap of information from bus company articles like this as "trivia" or "non-encyclopedic", cutting them to the bare bones so they merely to say where the company operates and how many buses it has. That's why a reader, if they came to Wikipedia to follow up on that press coverage, they don't find any information about whether or not that route is still running.

The fact is, Davey (and Charles) don't seem to have any topical knowledge of the UK bus industry at all, so aren't really in any position to judge relative importance in the field, certainly not given they already clearly have a bias against the very idea that Wikipedia should have any information in it about bus transport at all, and seem to be doing their best to limit it to the absolute minimum amount (which results in articles like this, which are no use to anyone for any purpose - even though I have regular cause to research the history and current state of the UK bus industry, I already know not to even bother consulting Wikipedia because the paucity of information like this article is the norm, not the exception).

It's an indisputable fact though, one that needs to be put on record here regardless of the outcome, that in the UK context, while NIBS cannot be described as a "big" operator, with 40 routes and 28 buses, it cannot be described as a "small" company by any stretch of the imagination either. The level of investment, training, staffing and marketing required to get to that stage is not insignificant, not in the regulatory environment that exists these days.

Which brings me to my next point - I have absolutely no doubt that when Davey (and Charles) claim to not find any evidence about bus related topics, they are not consulting (or even considering) the coverage an operator of this size always gets in the print media, such as magazines or books. Once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern. I think it's pretty obvious that the extent of their checking only goes so far as typing the company name into Google, and dismissing anything that's not a national newspaper report.

And as I said in the Nu-Venture case, when they're doing subsidised or schools work, it's a certainty that they will covered in the local press lots of times. I don't know enough about Essex to judge if it's firmly in the second tier or not, size wise, but if pushed I would bet that it is (see the Nu-Venture deletion page for what I mean by "second tier operator").

I do know for a fact this particular company has had a front page cover in an issue of Buses Magazine, because I've seen it with my own eyes. I have no doubt that this company will have been subject to "significant coverage" in other print media, or the many books that get published on subjects like bus transport in the English hinterlands, where you would no doubt find information to add to the article.

I suspect a negative feedback loop is in effect, the end result of which is that Wikipedia coverage of UK bus topics doesn't even come close to matching what is actually out there in the real world. It's a shame that Wikipedia, which purports to be the free alternative, in topics like this, is actually forcing people to stick to the old model of having to pay for information in the form of magazines or books.

I've lost count of the number of times I've read a historical fact in a book or magazine about UK buses/operators/routes, then failed to find it, or anything even close to it, in Wikipedia. And in anticipation of their accusations that I'm simply a 'bus fan' or some of the other insulting terms I've seen be used on Wikipedia against those who they see as merely trying to add/retain trivia, I'm talking about the sort of basic facts which form the cornerstone of mainstream national coverage from the BBC no less, such as that seen in this year's Year of the Bus celebrations http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25338867. It is of course absolutely no surprise to me to see that Wikipedia doesn't have an article on Year of the Bus. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 20:16, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * 1. I very rarely nominate articles at all (I'll admit like everyone here we all at times nominate articles that are quite simply a bad mistake at times)
 * 2. The Nu-Venture article was and still is non notable in terms of sourcing... Which BTW I fail to see how this has any relevance anyway,
 * 3. Last but not least please stop following me around - I appreciate you're a bus enthusiast & want every bus company here saved but unfortunately not every company can be kept, And instead of moaning about a previous AFD and the fact You like buses & what not please cite a real reason to keep, (And as a side note editors should comment on the content not the editors, Cheers, – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  20:28, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * How predictable. Even though I said that was exactly what you would do - here you are attempting to dismiss me as just a bus 'fan' who wants to "save every article" just because I like buses (I note with some amusement that you have since changed your original comment to read bus "enthusiast", while seeking to advise *me* not to comment on content not the person). Your "every" comment makes no sense at all - I've only tried to save this one and Nu-Venture so far. I'm not following you around at all, if this is the only bus operator you've tried to delete since Nu-Venture, then it's a complete coincidence that I noticed it, I wasn't even looking up anything bus related today (for the reasons already stated - that's not what I come to Wikipedia for, because I already know the coverage of it is in a shit state, of use to absolutely nobody who is actually coming here for knowledge). The two issues are related because your inability to see their merit seems to have a common cause - your apparent ignorance of the subject matter and total lack of appreciation that there's a world of sources out there on this subject beyond the internet. It's pretty ridiculous of you to be claiming here that Nu-Venture is still not notable, when you yourself withdrew that attempt because "the community deem it notable." Now that I look more closely, their fleet size and number of routes are remarkably similar in fact - 41/30 vs 40/28, so why you thought the community would come to a different conclusion in this case is not clear to me....perhaps you can put that into terms people will understand, so that it doesn't just look like you decided to have another go with a different article because you just don't like buses. Perhaps I should be following you around if you're this reluctant to accept the will of the community. Who knows how many bus articles you might have tried, or succeeded, in deleting since August. I only have your word this isn't a regular activity of yours. I certainly see your name all over the edit history of bus articles when trying to figure out why it doesn't say X or Y. Like it or not, the reasons to delete this article are not obvious to me - not because I'm a bus "fan", but because I happen to know a lot more about buses and bus operators than you clearly do, and know exactly how much coverage operators of this size get in real sources in the printed media, compared to actual "small" and not-notable operators. And from what I've seen, pointing out how you appear not to know anything about the subject, and haven't got the first clue where to look for sources on it, is a "real" reason on Wikipedia to keep an article - because asking to delete something you don't understand and can't research properly isn't a "real" reason in the first place. It's not quite incompetence, but only because I don't doubt that you did actually try a Google search before coming to this conclusion. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 21:41, 14 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Trust me I know rather a lot about buses and I would probably say I know a hell of a lot more than you! but anyway You clearly have your opinions and I clearly have mine so lets just leave it at that. – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  23:47, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Why should I trust you? What kind of a bus enthusiast has never read a magazine or a book about buses? The very magazines and books that do actually cover operators like this in detail, precisely because they are in no way "small", not in terms of the UK industry at least (where you only need one bus to be able to legally call yourself a bus operator). No bus enthusiast would be claiming that there's no information out there which could be added to this page (which, you will note, doesn't even say when the company was founded), not unless they were trying to deliberately deceive people. Come on Dave, given what you said above, are you really claiming that if I looked, I wouldn't be able to find a book or a magazine which mentions when NIBS was founded (I'm deliberately ignoring the companies house database which also gives that info, as that data exists for any registered company, whatever their size). The fact is, based on the evidence, I don't think you know anything about buses and therefore are most certainly not what you claim to be (an enthusiast) - you certainly seemed not to know that Nu-Venture was well known for its fleet makeup (again, making the same ridiculous claim that it gets no coverage, when in reality companies with unusual fleets like Nu-Venture's get extra attention precisely because of that). What kind of bus enthusiast wouldn't know that? I'll tell you what - one that knows nothing about one of the major types of London bus, the Leyland Titan B15, which Nu-Venture latterly operated the last examples of in public service. As anyone could probably work out, a claimed bus enthusiast based in Kent (as Dave is) would be the last person not to know that sort of stuff (since Nu-Venture is one of the major operators in Kent). I suspect the reason you're wanting to "leave it at that" is because if I asked you to demonstrate that you do actually know something about buses, you'd not be able to. This is not much different to an aviation enthusiast based in (insert your preferred airport name) claiming not to know anything about an airline that is based there. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 20:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 23:18, 15 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom.  ayc li ffe talk 14:12, 19 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Case in point. Today, I was reading about the operator R&I Coaches, which was a London bus operator which was taken over and absorbed by a bigger company, MTL London Northern, many years ago (20 years to be precise). Despite the fact that R&I too never operated more than 40 buses, you can find lots of information in books and magazines about them, in considerable detail (enough to write a Wikipedia article). Why? Because of the various things about them which made them notable in the field of bus transport, particularly regarding the regulatory regime in London at the time as well as in terms of what was happening with vehicle design at the time (the details of which I won't bore you here with - if you're interested, perhaps Dave the supposed bus enthusiast will be able to tell you - LOL). Although of course, because all this happened long before the internet, and no doubt long before the likes of Charles and Dave were even born, if you simply do a 5 minute Google search, you of course will find "no evidence of notability". As a result, unsurprisingly, there is precious little information in Wikipedia about R&I Coaches at all, let alone a full article. Ironically it gets most mentions in bus route articles, which of course shouldn't be in Wikipedia at all according to Dave and Charles, as "Wikipedia is not a travel guide" (and good luck trying to get them to explain exactly what kind of 'travel guide' tells you what bus operator ran the route 20 years previously). Even the company which took over R&I only warrants two lines on Wikipedia in the article of its own parent, MTL (transport company), and then only to say it existed from 1994 to 1998. That's the entire Wikipedia entry for a bus company that operated hundreds of buses in London over a four year period. Pathetic. But this is the sort of crap you end up with in your so called encyclopedia of everything, when the decision of what to include and what to exclude is left to ignorant people like Charles and Dave, who despite the latter's claims to the contrary, clearly know absolutely nothing about the subject. If he still wants to claim to be a bus enthusiast, or know far more about buses than me, perhaps he can explain, if it's not down to the sheer ignorance of people like him and Charles, what it is about Wikipedia which means it is doing such a shit job of writing about obviously notable bus operators like MTL Northern, and their obviously notable acquisitions like R&I, if the very concept of 'notability' is whether or not other people write about them in books or magazines? For all I know (and which is why I no longer even bother checking Wikipedia for historical info like this, even though it's clearly well within its supposed remit), there may have even been an article here about R&I before, and it was successfully deleted by Dave or someone equally as ignorant of the topic, for the very same reasons he wants to delete this article. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 18:40, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Doesn't cite any websites independent from the company itself, therefore failing WP:GNG. Also fails WP:NCORP. -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 19:20, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * WP:GNG, and indeed WP:NCORP, requires "sources", not "websites". Am I seriously the only person here who understands that "sources" includes the print media? Unless or until these people make a specific declaration that they have consulted the print media in these various pronouncements of lack of evidence of notability, then I'm not seeing any reason why their views shouldn't simply be summarily dismissed as patently invalid. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 19:31, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * If there's "print media" available to you, then please add it to the list of references. Those things aren't available to everyone. -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 19:34, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I refer to you my previous statements on that matter at the Nu-Venture discussion. Don't confuse me telling you it's out there, with a willingness to do the leg-work for you. It's your website, it's up to you to stick to your own rules. All I'm asking for is a bit of integrity here - by all means delete NIBS for lack of notability if you must, but only after you've properly demonstrated you understand what sort of coverage a UK bus operator of this size actually gets, and what sort of an article could be written if someone was stupid enough to spend the time researching it and summarizing it here, all for free, like a complete mug, instead of doing what I do and sticking to paying for your knowledge, on the assumption it's actually being written by subject experts. Davey has already demonstrated, twice now, that he's not doing his due diligence in this subject area, which if his claims of being knowledgable about buses are indeed true, is pretty bad form. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 19:51, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * First of all, Wikipedia is just as much your website as mine, and I am not obligated in any way to improve this article, because we're all volunteers here. Second, we can't take your word and add refs to printed media without proper research, and currently you are the only one able to do any proper research, because we don't know what newspaper said what, when. -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 19:58, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid you're just going to have to, as I'm really not interested in doing it for you, and I certainly wouldn't ever put my name to Wikipedia, not given how poor a resource it is in this field. To give you a specific example - I mentioned above that that this company has had at least one front page cover in an issue of Buses Magazine. In terms of effort, there's a world of difference between me telling you that out of the goodness of my heart, and me actually having to find out precisely which issue it was, just so I could tell you here (let alone reading the article and adding all the juicy bits to Wikipedia, like the founding date!). This is part of what I'm talking about - publications like Buses Magazine don't make any of this info available online because they're still making money out of publishing it in print form - that shouldn't mean that Wikipedia ignores them as a source (and if Dave is being honest about being a bus enthusiast, he'll be able to tell you just how dominant Buses Magazine is as a source, at least for contemporary information, which of course NIBS falls into). To ignore the very existence of the dominant publication in the field of contemporary UK bus transport when talking about the notability of a current UK bus operator is, as I hope you can see, quite a perverse stance to take. At least it is to outsiders like me, I'm starting to realise though that it may be more commonplace an approach than people might reasonably expect. You're not obligated to improve the article, of course not, but you are expected to follow your own rules before you delete one out of simple ignorance. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 20:11, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * But you're the one voting to keep it, not me. If you want the article to be kept, then you should be willing to fix the article's problems. That's all I'm going to say. Regards, -- Amaryllis Gardener  talk 20:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * And? You're the one wanting to delete it. If you're not willing to listen to the reasons why that would be a mistake, what does that say about you? Notforlackofeffort (talk) 21:06, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Firstly establishing corporate notability is going to need wider secondary coverage than a specialist bus fan magazine, and that is the right place for that kind of detail. Second, if you are not interested in helping to improve Wikipedia why are you wasting so many bytes moaning here?Charles (talk) 20:43, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Stop trolling Charles. Anyone knows (or would be able to tell with a little research) that Buses Magazine is more than just a "specialist bus fan magazine". There's so many things wrong with that description, it's just not even worth explaining, since it's pretty obvious to me by now that the only reason you say such things is to troll. Suffice to say it illustrates your complete ignorance of the topic quite well. If you're willing to dismiss a source like Buses Magazine, then you're probably not going to find anything to write on Wikipedia about any bus operator in the UK (which appears to be your goal). I mean, and I think I already know the answer, you do actually realise who it is that writes whole books on the biggest bus operators in the UK? Hint - it's not bloody Penguin Books. It's the publisher of titles like Buses Magazine. I await with amusement to see what the Stagecoach Group article is going to look like once you strip out all the sources your ignorant mind is apparently willing to dismiss as "specialist fan" fare. I note with some hilarity that currently, the only sort of source establishing 'corporate notability' of the Stagecoach Group on Wikipedia, are simply newspapers. Some encyclopedia that is. How many books about Stagecoach have been written? Why am I even asking you, as if you'd even have a clue. Whatever the true nature of 'specialist' sources is on Wikipedia, I'm pretty sure nobody here thinks that when GNG or NCORP mention "sources", they don't simply mean newspapers. And while I said I'm not interested in adding to Wikipedia, I can certainly do my best to stop the removal of what's already here simply for reasons of pure ignorance of the topic. Notforlackofeffort (talk) 21:06, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It's remarkable how moaning about me is far more important than attempting to fix the fucking article, Sure I nommed it because I didn't find jack, But If you can find something add it to the fucking article instead of moaning about how shit I am at one thing or another. – Davey 2010 •  (talk)  21:10, 21 December 2014 (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.