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 no consensus fishhead64 05:24, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Area codes in Germany[edit]

Area codes in Germany (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Overly long, non-notable, unencyclopedic mess that in no way conforms to the manual of style. Reads like a street directory, and, as such, I have nominated it for deletion. —ÅñôñÿMôús _{Dîššíd3nt} 06:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - as nominator —ÅñôñÿMôús _{Dîššíd3nt} 05:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - this is a phone directory, which Wikipedia is not. You might also be interested in these and these. MER-C 06:37, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, in that case, they should all be deleted. We should nom every one of them for deletion. —ÅñôñÿMôús _{Dîššíd3nt} 07:56, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not in the mood for mass noms, especially after this one. MER-C 08:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong keep - this page has been very useful to me. I'd hate to see it disappear. The page presents information in a way no other source does. Anyway not one I could find. --Nikolaj Winther 07:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please read WP:USEFUL. MER-C 07:51, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. I guess it is Delete then, though it pains me to see it disappear. --Nikolaj Winther 08:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - WP:USEFUL - along with all of WP:ATA - is a personal essay, not Wikipedia policy - iridescenti (talk to me!) 13:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak delete Wikipedia is not a phone book, and all the information is easily available elsewhere. - iridescenti (talk to me!) 13:00, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete This is not a directory. If you want to know area codes, go to a phone book. --Cyrus Andiron 13:17, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Wikipedia should not be a phone book, or a rate card for long distance or a complete international zip code directory, or a transit schedule. Such info is available from the website of the service provider in accurate and more up to date versions. Edison 14:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - Consider this a mis-named list and a sub-article related to the explanatory Telephone numbering plan. Take a look at Category:Telephone numbering plans and Category:Area codes. Here's a more familiar example for U.S. residents: List_of_North_American_area_codes. If the verdict is delete, then a conversation should be started about all of the telephone "numbering plan" and "area code lists or articles. -- Yellowdesk 14:45, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • North American area codes encompass more cities than the German area codes, though. (Well, they often do. Area codes like Area code 612, which serve only Minneapolis and Richfield, Minnesota, and Area code 312, which only serves the Chicago Loop, are exceptions.) A listing of all cities served by Area code 218 would be a bit too much. 218-488, for example, serves about 40 customers in Wawina Township, Minnesota. I guess what I'm trying to say is that comparing North American area codes to German numbering codes isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 15:03, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: The German Wikipedia has an article at [1]. (I should figure out how to do interwiki links in text.) Their article has a map and a summary of links to subsections that list the various cities. That said, I can't see a need to keep the detailed lists in the English Wikipedia. Maybe a summary, like the first page of the German Wikipedia article, would be useful, but the detailed lists of all prefixes are a bit much. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 14:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Further comment Agreed, the list is too detailed. The map on the German article is wonderful, and a strongly edited version of the article proposed for deletion would greatly benefit from that map, if it is in the Commons. ...And it may amuse that the detailed sub-articles of the German article look a lot like the one under discussion. -- Yellowdesk 17:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I thought this would provide some perspective. Perhaps based on the some of the deletes here, the list of large lists should be examined by some project. The list of large articles provided by http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Longpages&limit=100&offset=0 Shows that nearly all of the large articles are lists. This one is number 45 in size today, with the largest, ‎List of former members of the United States House of Representatives ‎[541,348 bytes]. I wish to ask, if the list under discussion were reduced to something comparable (meaning a factor of two or three) to List of North American area codes, should the list survive? And, contrarily, should List of ZIP Codes in California ‎[162,811 bytes] ever survive?

-- Yellowdesk 20:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete due to WP:NOT violations. Not only that, but at 179 kilobytes in length, it is extremely long. Acalamari 19:06, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep In principle, don't we cover all countries, not just the English-speaking ones, as long as usable information is available? (Though I suggest we should give some thought to a possible better place for articles that are data collections, I wouldn't suggest removing them in the meantime. ), The length has nothing to do with it; there was an attempt this winter to eliminate ultra-long articles, and it got closed down very fast. DGG 02:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - My first reaction was that this is non-encyclopaedic, but if there are lists of codes for other countries, we should keep this one too. My first thought was that this information must be on an existing website maintained by Deusche Telecom, and so unnecessary in WP, but it has a use, in that it provides a link to articles on the places to which the codes relate. Some one (above) described it as a street directory. It is not: it is a directory to a whole country of 70 million people. I recall that categories villages in Worcestershire, exist, so why not a list of the places in Germany arranged by area code. I am not clear how small an area American Zip codes cover (not being an American), but this is not necessarily a good analogy. Peterkingiron 17:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Please see WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS peter. —ÅñôñÿMôús _{Dîššíd3nt} 00:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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.