Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of the 2000 Atlantic hurricane season


 * 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 KEEP ALL as spinoff articles. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 14:25, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Timeline of the 2000 Atlantic hurricane season

 * – ( View AfD View log )

As with the 1997 season, I thought I'd bring up a broader AFD on hurricane season timelines. These all follow the same logic. They're basically content forks of the season articles. They contain the same information on the same storms, with subtle differences (that is, the format). Several have been outright merged on their own, since they really didn't contain any additional content. Also included are all of the similar timelines, the ones that are not featured. Those are:


 * Timeline of the 1974 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1980 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1985 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1986 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1988 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1989 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1990 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 1999 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2001 Atlantic hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2002 Pacific hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2004 Pacific hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2008 Pacific hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2009 Pacific hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2011 Pacific hurricane season
 * Timeline of the 2005 Pacific typhoon season
 * Timeline of the 2006 Pacific typhoon season
 * Timeline of the 2007 Pacific typhoon season
 * Timeline of the 2008 Pacific typhoon season
 * Timeline of the 2009 Pacific typhoon season
 * Timeline of the 2010 Pacific typhoon season
 * Timeline of the 2007 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2008 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2009 North Indian Ocean cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2007–08 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2008–09 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2009–10 South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2004–05 Australian region cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2007–08 Australian region cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2008–09 Australian region cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2009–10 Australian region cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2010–11 Australian region cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2002–03 South Pacific cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2006–07 South Pacific cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2008–09 South Pacific cyclone season
 * Timeline of the 2009–10 South Pacific cyclone season

I am excluding all featured lists, as well as Timeline of the 2002 Atlantic hurricane season and Timeline of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, since they are up for featured list candidacy right now. I also removed the timelines for 1995 Atlantic hurricane and 1992 Pacific hurricane, since both are rather notable seasons in the 1990s and warrant separate discussion.

Majority of the timelines listed are of stub or start class. In addition, all of them are solely based off the data from their respective warning centers. For the layman, that means the Atlantic timeline articles are only based off information from the National Hurricane Center, the same agency that classified those storms. It's a circular logic. If the NHC didn't classify the storms, then there wouldn't be info on those storms to put in the timeline. By contrast, if the Philadelphia Phillies didn't put a certain person on their website, and yet there are sources documenting a player in a certain year, you could have a non-biased and well-documented List of Philadelphia Phillies players in 2011 (or something). It may seem like a lot of timelines, but most of these have been swept under the carpet. They are simple and unabashed redundancies to all of their respective season articles. They contain minimal to no extra information, and if they do happen to have info that isn't in the main article, we can simply move it over. All in all, however, we need a discussion on this with a wide audience, ideally. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 05:10, 6 January 2012 (UTC) As for the other arguments in the nomination, they are either invalid or irrelevant. AFD is concerned with the desirability of a certain topic in Wikipedia, not the current quality of the articles. Mentioning that the articles are assessed by WP:WPTC as Start-Class or Stub-Class is in fact a textbook example of using AFD as cleanup: There is nothing that would prevent anyone from working on one of these timelines and improving them to much better shape. The other argument that these basins only use RSMC data is not valid, as nobody contests that such sources do not meet reliability standards, or that they are not scholarly sources. Even if you were to make an argument about them being primary sources, they still meet the main criterion for using such sources, as a) they are not used to make any novel interpretations of the topic, and b) they are used to "make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source," which is the criterion that WP:PRIMARY sets. In short, the arguments presented for the deletion of these articles are not supported by policy, and the nature of bundled nominations make singling out individual timelines to delete a nightmare for the people commenting as well as for the closing administrator. Hence, keep all. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 09:48, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep some, but merge others  since I feel it's best to go this case by case, every season is different, some of the shorter ones can fit in the season article, other can't. YE  Pacific   Hurricane  05:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Which ones would you keep? In general, all of them follow the same principle. ♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 05:32, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The logic underneath the nomination is fatally flawed. The relevant guideline here, Content forking, states that "Sometimes, when an article gets long (see Wikipedia:Article size), a section of the article is made into its own article, and the handling of the subject in the main article is condensed to a brief summary. This is completely normal Wikipedia procedure." (emphasis mine). Each one of these timelines is a summary style expansion of the chronological evolution of a particular hurricane season—a topic that many would reasonably expect to be covered in a hurricane season article. Now, if we look at a particular example from the batch of nominated articles, Timeline of the 2011 Pacific hurricane season contains detailed information of when each tropical cyclone in the season changed intensities. In particular, the timeline article is helpful to identify that three tropical cyclones (Jova, Irwin, and Tropical Depression 12-E) were active at the same time—a fact not mentioned anywhere in the parent article, 2011 Pacific hurricane season, except in the EasyTimeline image that is used as the summary of the timeline article. Moreover, the timeline article also shows that Hurricane Irwin weakened as Hurricane Jova strengthened—something that is again not mentioned in the main article, which is probably not necessary to mention in the season article, and which not even the EasyTimeline shows. I could go on, but in general, the 2011 timeline is a proper application of WP:SUMMARY—a type of content fork explicitly authorized by WP:CFORK. Similar arguments can be made for the other timelines, which makes a batch nomination unhelpful.
 * As for your first point, none of these were created when their season article became too long though. The more recent ones (like 2009 Pacific hurricane) were created while the season was active with little regard to length. The same goes for old ones, which were created while the season articles were fatally incomplete. That new bit of information in the timeline (those three storms being co-active) can easily be put in the season article, and it probably would have been mentioned if the season was closer to being finished. Then again, it might not have. If no outside sources highlighted the fact that three storms were active at the same time, then I'm not sure we should emphasize that. It's not our job to synthesize information to make it look more important than it actually is. In essence, we're just rehashing the information from the best track in each respective basin. The season article on its own is made up of a variety of sources, including the best track. By splitting off the one aspect that doesn't have any outside sources, we are doing a POV fork. As for the start/stub, I didn't mean that as AFD as cleanup. I fully intended this to be about the desirability of a topic. And I'm not saying by using the warning center/best track they are primary sources. I'm saying they're not notable. As I said earlier, I removed some of the more notable seasons, which by extension would have a moderately notable timeline. How notable is a timeline, really, of the Timeline of the 1974 Atlantic hurricane season? Is that really needed? --♫ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 16:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Timelines are currently edited simultaneously as the season progresses as a matter of convenience, which has no bearing on the end result of them being a reasonable method of presentation of chronological information of the season. As for the argument that nobody mentioned that there were three ongoing storms, a quick Google search yields news reports that directly contradict this, e.g. . But again, similar arguments can be made about each individual season, and mass nominations for a broad series of articles will get you results targeted at the entire group of articles.
 * Besides, calling timelines POV forks does not make it true. POV forks are "a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts" (emphasis mine). Timelines are not POV forks, as a) the topic (hurricane season chronology is not controversial—there are no distinct viewpoints in the way global warming has; b) A comprehensive, verifiable listing derived from reliable—heck, canonical—sources does not favor a viewpoint over another; and c) how there can be positive or negative viewpoints about how random clumps of cloud began appearing over the ocean is beyond me, to be honest.
 * As for the entire point about notability, you have not presented any argument that directly addresses the general notability guideline. I posit that the "significant coverage", "reliable", "sources", and "presumed" criteria in that timeline are addressed by the walls of text I wrote above, and I won't rehash the same arguments. The only point where there could be any contention is the ""Independent of the subject" criterion, which asks for"produced by those affiliated with the subject or its creator. For example, self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, the subject's website, autobiographies, and press releases are not considered independent.[4]" However, a) we could simply source everything to news articles which basically cover RSMC data; b) we could write the same timelines using scientific journal data (e.g. all the Monthly Weather Review season summary articles); c) the data sources we are using comprise the foundation of many journal articles (see e.g. Landsea et al. (2008)); and d) the whole point of this criterion is "so that we can write a fair and balanced article that complies with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and that articles are not advertising a product, service, or organization. "(emphasis mine again). How using National Hurricane Center data—data from a government agency tasked with producing that data—is an advertisement for the National Hurricane Center is beyond me. Long story short: timelines meet our notability guidelines. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 18:25, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Then, Tito, should the already merged timelines be reverted? and should renetion periods be added for FT/GT season to have timelines? YE  Pacific   Hurricane  02:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Asking to undo all previous merges is completely outside the remit of this AFD, and is as counterproductive as trying to delete 35 articles at once. Each one has to be discussed on its merits. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 03:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The only problem with discussing them one by one is the fact that we were asked to discuss them all at once in the last AFD.Jason Rees (talk) 15:06, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep per the policy-supported argument given by Tito.  HurricaneFan 25  —  15:02, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 19:28, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 19:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 19:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep all per Titoxd: summary style is not content forking. Jclemens (talk) 19:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep all per Tito — Hink, I really do not understand why you keeping trying to rid Wikipedia of hurricane timelines. Look above. Timelines are not harming Wikipedia or Hurricane articles. And while I understand you should not base your opinion off of "it's not harming anything...", timelines are an acceptable type of content fork. – TropicalAnalystwx13 (talk) 21:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * WP:HARM. YE  Pacific   Hurricane  02:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete All - they are all content forks IMO since they are just rehashes of the season articles, which are meant to be summary style themselves and the time spent writing would be better speant improving the season article.Jason Rees (talk) 20:41, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think I have been thorough enough explaining why they aren't content forks. As for the other half of your argument, it's based on the assumption that people will want to work on the season article (a much more complicated task) even if you were to eliminate all timelines. I have never seen any evidence to back up that assertion. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 20:51, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Its a lot easier than you think to work on a season article.Jason Rees (talk) 21:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Which is again, not based on statistics. And ultimately, it is also completely irrelevant to this deletion discussion. If somebody doesn't want to—or doesn't feel comfortable—working on a season article, removing timelines, storm articles, or tropical cyclone will not make them more likely to work on the articles you want them to work on. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 21:53, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep All – These articles all appear to be very reasonable and functional content forks, per WP:SPINOFF. The presentation style in these articles is useful for Wikipedia readers who want to view a chronological summary of hurricane and typhoon seasons in a convenient list format, and the format of the articles allows readers to compare different events in the context of a timeline. These articles serve to enhance Wikipedia, rather than being detrimental to it. Northamerica1000 (talk) 18:42, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Reject AfD out of hand, this is a long list of long lists. Given the heavy amount of information within each list, each list needs to be looked at individually. Aside from that, AfDs are concerned with articles that fail or potentially fail the notability guidelines, as pointed out by another user. Neither the deletion rational nor the arguments above indicate there is a problem with notability, rather citing editorial and content disputes. These are best taken to talk pages, WikiProjects and proper template usage, not AfD. -- Jelly Soup (talk) 06:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep all, don't delete/merge/redirect/trim. The timeline articles provide additional information than the main articles do.   D r e a m Focus  16:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep all per Titoxd. -DJSasso (talk) 16:53, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * keep all well sourced articles which have been created only for years that warrant such an article. I'm a bit concerned about bad faith in this nom as well. RadioFan (talk) 18:13, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep all per policy, as admirably explained by Titoxd. -- 202.124.74.20 (talk) 11:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge all per WP:INDISCRIMINATE, WP:Duplicate, and WP:LIST. From what I can tell there is very little information contained in these timelines that is not already contained in the article on each respective hurricane season. Given that, this article is essentially just listing a bunch of dates and statistics relating to the hurricane season. None of these timelines appear to offer useful purposes for navigation or provide any information that cannot simply be added over to the article on the related hurricane season.--The Devil&#39;s Advocate (talk) 21:43, 15 January 2012 (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.