Talk:List of Britten-Norman Islander operators

Mass deletions of operators

In a series of 3 edits User:FOX 52 has performed mass deletions of operators in the BN Islander article.

In fact, he deleted 9,308 bytes of the previous 14,774 bytes which equals a deletion of 63% of the entire article.
Of the previously listed 243 operators, a mere 36 were left in place, equalling a deletion of 85% of all operators.
Apparently, he feels that this might be justified by his "remove un-sourced content" comment.
However, it appears somewhat ridiculous to me to demand one quotation / source for every one to four words (= one operator) in a long standing article. Using this method, one could delete some 90% of the entire Wikipedia contents.

The previous content has to be restored, possibly by adding a note like "still partially unsourced", and efforts might be continued to raise the perecentage of sourced material. Wholesale deletions like those having been done cannot be tolerated. Alternatively, the matter might have to be taken to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. --Uli Elch (talk) 17:26, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

I may challenge it at any time per: WP:PROVEIT All content must be verifiable. The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the claims - Also the list contained a huge amount of non-notable operators WP:GNG - FOX 52 ^talk! 04:06, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Not my bailiwick (the topic sounds like HAM radio to me, actually :p), but FOX 52 is entirely correct that unsourced material can be removed at any time. List articles are not exempt from sourcing requirements (see WP:LISTVERIFY). Regarding redirection, that's a separate issue and subject to discussion and consensus-building; FOX 52 should be willing to undo that (or have it undone) and discuss on request. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 23:01, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

And of course am open to giving the "Britten-Norman Islander operators list" its own page- just as long as it has some notability, & offers the reader so useful information.- FOX 52 ^talk! 05:05, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

This action is very odd and contra to building the encyclopedia and WP:SUMMARY. I split the operators out of the parent article as its section length was overwhelming (in accordance with WP:SPLIT). It is a generally accepted common sense rule that blue links that contain reliably sourced information that proves valid inclusion in a list are not cited. For instance the Falkland Islands Government Air Service was listed without a cite, visiting the blue link has the cited fact that Islanders are used. FIGAS now appears in the parent article with a citation where it doesn't require one. I'm sure many more operator articles would be the same but no time appeared to be spent visiting them to check.

There are numerous ways to deal with unsourced entries on Wikipedia, article templates, section templates and individual entry templates, the most commonly used one being Template:Citation needed. Before the mass deletion none of these templates had been applied. Another good solution is to request at WT:AIR for editors to assist in improving an article or contact the creator to see if anything can be done. Neither happened in this case. I have been editing here for almost 14 years and it's the first instance I can remember of an article being 'unsplit'. At some time in the future the article will need to be split again, whoever does that might wonder why the title List of Britten-Norman Islander operators already exists. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:33, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

He deleted more than 100 operators with blue links like New England Airlines, Aurigny or Belgian Army, the articles of which include the operation of the BN-2 Islander, perfectly sourced. Deleting links to articles with sourced entries en masse is close to vandalism. --Uli Elch (talk) 09:50, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

We have two issues here - what to include and what to cite.

Inclusion: There is specific style guidance at WP:AIRCRAFT-OPERATORS, which I quote in full for reference, and have bolded some of the more relevant sections to this discussion:

Links to airlines or air forces, along with squadrons and other units that have used this type. May be separated into military and civilian sub-sections if applicable. Do not place potential operators here, only confirmed orders with likelihood of near-term production. Potential orders and interest by governments should be covered in the main text, either under "Development" or "Operational history", as fits best in the article. Operators should be in one list and not separated between former and current operators, former operators can be indicated inline with a reliable reference.

Civil aircraft types that have many operators, each with just one or two aircraft can have a general statement, as applicable to the role and operators of the individual aircraft type, with wording similar to: "The aircraft is popular with air charter companies and small feeder airlines, and is operated by private individuals and companies." A mention may be made of particularly large fleet operators.

Citation: The essay WP:You don't need to cite that the sky is blue offers a useful perspective on the WP:Citing sources guideline. Both pages link to further guidance, for example to essays on WP:Citation overkill and WP:Citation underkill. Clearly, there is a balance to be struck. Further to that, WP:Notability (including WP:GNG) is concerned with article topics and subtopics, it is not relevant to minor factoids; for this, we need principally WP:Verifiability and and a little WP:Commonsense.

I would like to suggest that if editors focused on following all that stuff and not on arguing for extreme positions, we might find ourselves converging on a viable consensus. Hope this helps.Steelpillow (talk) 12:32, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I've managed to restore most of the Military operators with cites - although I note that several of the deleted entries were already cited. Perhaps more thought needs to be given to civil operators, as there will be an awful lot of them - probably in the hundreds, most of which will never warrant an article and will have only operated one or two.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:45, 18 May 2021 (UTC)