Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Latur Municipal Transport

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. As many editors have pointed out, the subject is a public transportation organization for Latur, a major Indian city. Several editors argued that the article should be kept or that the content should be preserved because it is more likely than not for the public transportation organization of such a major city to be notable. However, throughout the AfD, an in-depth investigation into available coverage of the organization was conducted, and there has been no evidence presented that a public "Latur Municipal Transport" exists. According to a few sources, it is possible bus transportation within Latur is provided by a private organization, not public. There is also a general feeling that a "Latur Municipal Transport" may have once existed; however, even routine coverage (historical or otherwise) such as bus times couldn't be found, even by one user (the nominator) who lives near the area. While I appreciate the argument to preserve content where possible, the article is unsourced, and absent evidence of verifiability, I don't see any other outcome here than delete. The title may be redirected at editorial discretion. Mz7 (talk) 22:03, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Latur Municipal Transport (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Not encyclopaedic topic. No scope for improvement as no sources are available online nor offline. None of the provided links in the references section work either. In other words no source/refs to entire article. The topic of the article can be efficiently described within the article of Latur —usernamekiran[talk] 11:48, 13 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep WP:AFDISNOTCLEANUP. As the public transport provider for a medium sized city this organisation is clearly notable. References are not required to be online. AusLondonder (talk) 00:31, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, AfD is not cleanup. But keeping every article ever created is not "building encyclopaedia" either.As it was mentioned in the article itself, the number of buses and ferries are considerably low. Not notable. It can be adequately covered in the article of Latur city. —usernamekiran (talk) 23:35, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Northamerica1000: this is being a ping-pong. Would you please take a bold decision either to keep or delete the article? Thanks. —usernamekiran (talk) 15:16, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Public transport in a city of significant size. Clearly passes WP:GNG, even if sources aren't online. And AFD is not cleanup, as noted above. Smartyllama (talk) 17:41, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete/Merge--Absence of any WP:RS.Winged Blades ^Godric 07:22, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Is there anyone we can ping who knows WP:RS for India and can easily verify articles like this? I tried looking on Urdu and Marathi (kn) Wikipedia and did not find much. I would suggest keeping, but without any WP:RS, what if this was entirely made up? I will note that the article has been here for 7 years, yet it is not even mentioned in the Latur_district#Transport. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:50, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment @David Tornheim: I am from the city near Latur. I visited Latur like 2-3 years ago, at that time there were not many ferries, just a few. They were on very limited routes too. It is definitely not notable for wikipedia article. But as I am the proposer for deletion, my comment shouldn't be considered. And my findings while I was in Latur city can't be taken as source either. I think the article should be merged in article of Latur city, with appropriate description on Latur Municipal Corporation.
  The article seriously lacks WP:RS. I tried a lot to find even unreliable sources, but couldn't. Before proposing deletion, I tried to improve the article, but there is no way to improve it. I think, the article should be merged. But as it was on wiki for a very long time, and for other reasons, I could not perform a bold merger. —usernamekiran(talk) 15:32, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I see where you are coming from, and I would support a merge, if I could be sure it even exists. I could find nothing in Marathi, Kennada or Urdu by doing Google and Wikipedia searches that confirms there is such a thing as "Latur Municipal Transport" with the letter "LMT" on the buses. (Admittedly, the article on our Wikipedias in these language are very weak compared to those in English). Can you find anything? Even images of these buses? Since I don't know these languages my searches might not have been correct, but I did spend a while and was surprised I could not find anything. --David Tornheim (talk) 22:54, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: This photo on flickr is the most confusing one. It was taken on August 22, 2012. The LED panel on bus reads "Latur Municipal Corporation Transport Project". The uploader was surprised to see ads of private companies on these buses (govt offices mostly advertise for other govt schemes or awareness), one comment stated the buses are privately owned, the other comment corroborated this claim.

The article from Sakal news Nov 19, 2013; states municipality proposed to establish city bus service (not a decision).

This facebook post of clipping of same Sakal newspaper, dated May 26, 2015 (newspaper date) states that only two buses were provided to municipal corporation. So we can be sure that there was no city bus service by government (LMT) till at least April 2015. The article is obviously based on false information. —usernamekiran(talk) 23:49, 5 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Did you notice the comments at the bottom of the picture on Flickr?

1. Latur Municipal Corporation runs its mini buses by ACGL. These buses have ads from private bus operators on them.
2. This services are operated by Pushkaraj Travelles......!!
3. Thats why it has ads from Pushakaraj Travels on it.

That suggests that Pushkaraj Travelles is the private entity that runs it, information that was just deleted by Ninney on 4 May 2015. I was confused for a while, because I mistakenly thought that Latur Municipal Corporation being established as recently as 25 October 2011 with abbreviation "LMCG" (sounding like a stock Ticker symbol) meant it was a private for-profit corporation that ran buses for profit and possibly for other things, and I thought this was some promotional article. I have to rethink my previous approach based on that mistaken assumption. Now I see that according to our article, it is actually a new form of government of the city. So it is possible that LMT is the government entity that oversees contractors, such as Pushakaraj Travels.

Is it safe to assume you are fluent and/or can read Marathi, Kennada, Urdu and/or Hinidi? Trying to google all of these things in four different languages, none of which I know is quite a challenge--but I do like a challenge!  :) Certainly interesting learning about other cultures by being able to read direct documents via Google translate.

One thing I had trouble figuring out was how to use the government run website(s) to find a public run bus system. I believe one official website is latur.nic.in (Google Translated to English) (which appears to be for for Latur district rather than Latur city), which I found from the Kannada page for Latur, kn:ವಿಶೇಷ:AboutTopic/Q61394 (Google translated to English). I would think that would help answer our question. However, when I went to that site (in Marathi) (and possibly some others), I did not see anything on a public bus system, only that the municipal corp. runs the bus stops. For that site (latur.nic.in), there is a link for "Bus reservation" (in English) that is part of Maharashtra_State_Road_Transport_Corporation which is for regional intercity rather than intracity. Our page says that it runs both intercity and intracity. Are we really sure that there is such a thing as the Latur Municipal Transport? I'm losing confidence this is a separate entity and not simply part of the MSRTC.

This might be the City's website: http://www.mclatur.org (Note: upper right has an option to read page in English), which has a copy of the budget here, but unfortunately Google translate can't translate the PDF to English. I imagine the budget should say home much money is dedicated to intercity transport and might include who the contracts are with. Pinging @Usernamekiran: and @Ninney: for this and my most recent posts preceding.

The "tenders" page lists the various departments for the City, but there is none for transportation or buses, but maybe under another department? --David Tornheim (talk) 07:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: Yes, I've native fluency in Marathi, and Hindi. I've level 2 fluency in many languages from India, including Kannada, telugu, tamil, gujrati, and marwadi among a few others. But I can't read any of the languages except Marathi, Hindi, and Sanskrit. I'm level 3 in Urdu, but again can't read it.

I checked through all the links you provided, you are right, there are no mentions at all. While searching, I also came across Latur Municipal Corporation, which makes few blatant false claims. But I can't remove/change them without RS. I will do it once we are done with this AfD.

As you said, the MSRTC is totally a different organisation. It is Maharashtra state government's dept. It owns buses for intercity travel only, and in some tourists spots, they have guest houses too. From the sources I have been going through since past 2 weeks, all I could get was peacock words, and no mention of LMT. Some sources made passing references that the bus stop is handled by municipal body, which can be applied for the bus stop of MSRTC, which provides only intercity buses. Or the sources might be talking about bus stops for privately owned buses. Like taxi stands, government body provides place for taxi stands, where individual registered taxi drivers can park their vehicles. In this case, there should not be an article.

Actually, because the recent findings, I'm not even sure if LMT, if there was any, is still operational. While in Latur, I might have seen a private bus which I mistook for govt bus.

In any case, the article should be redirected to LMC or Latur, with appropriate content with RS there. At the least, lack of content might attract anon users to add some content which can we later verify. —usernamekiran(talk) 08:49, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your reply. Now I know who to ping when there is a question regarding those languages. :) Sounds like we are on the same page. FYI, I made this edit based on our discussion. We might want to copy some of this discussion to the talk page of one or more of the articles, or as least point to it. Regarding MSRTC, you said it is only intercity, but our article says in the sidebar "Local bus service in selected cities," so I think they do some intracity, and that might include Latur City. Of course, that article might be wrong. Did you find it stated else where that MSRTC is exclusively intercity? Also, you did say that the bus in the Fickr picture said "Latur Municipal Transport," so the author of the article might have based on it on seeing those names. Possibly the name is not a legal, corporate or other official entity but just an identifying moniker that MSRTC and/or a private entity slaps on the buses for the benefit of their customers to know that it is local bus rather than intercity. Does that sound right to you? I agree with you from my reading that it appears that many bus stops are maintained by a government entity (I think Latur District), and I too got the feeling that some or most of those stops were used by other entities, likely including private buses such as Pushkaraj Travels. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:30, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Ping to creator of the original article. @Jazzradio: I see you are the creator of this article we have been discussing at length and that you are still around editing. Maybe you can help us out? --David Tornheim (talk) 14:30, 6 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: I will be more than happy to provide my assistance. :-)
I just read this primary source, and didnt find anything about intra-city. I am sure they would have boasted about it lol. As per my knowledge, not official though, MSRTC usually provide vehicles to Municipal corporations or other bodies, and traning for the employees. But the "intra-city activities" fall under the local governing body including transport. So in most of the cases they are owned and operated by local governing body.

Yes, the LED panel in the photo says "लातूर महानगरपालीका परीवहन उपक्रम" (Latur Mahanagar Palika Parivahan Upakram, Latur municipal corporation transport project). The square box on left says "city bus" in devnagiri. The board kept on dashboard/windshield says "गंजगोलाई"/Ganjgolai, a landmark from city, and an article that I boldly merged to Latur a few weeks ago. —usernamekiran(talk) 04:35, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Take a look at this:

"City Bus Services

S.T. operates City Bus Service in 7 different cities of Maharashtra State. City Bus Service is operated in Nashik, Nanded, Ratnagiri, Miraj, Vasai, Nalasopara, Aurngabad & Chandrapur."

So it looks like they do some intracity bus service, as was mentioned on the MSRTC page. This is where they show the bus depots and bus stands they run. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:18, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Usernamekiran: I think I found what we need! Look at this [1]:

"Intracity transport

'Latur Municipal Transport' is an intra-city bus service which covers almost all parts of the city and also connects to the more distant industrial suburbs. LMT (Latur Municipal Transport) intra-city buses ply throughout the city including the outskirts and connect different parts of the city and adjoining suburbs together."

Of course, there is a chance they got the information from Wikpedia... --David Tornheim (talk) 04:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought it does appear to have been taken from Wikipedia. I see other site has the exact same language in other wikipedia-like articles: [2][3] [4]. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:32, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: yes, they do operate/provide service in cities, but it is owned by local body like municipality or municipal corporation.

yes, it is exactly like a previous version of either Latur or LMT page. But don't know which came first, wiki or that website.

also, the ST website doesn't mention Latur. I don't think LMT exists currently. —usernamekiran(talk) 12:12, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All three of the links given by Mr. Tornheim clearly identify wikipedia as the source of the information - there is no question about "which came first." Kuru (talk) 14:44, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks to both of you for our comments and observations. I am going to go with delete, since I think usernamekiran is correct that it might have existed at one time, but if so, it probably doesn't exist any more. --David Tornheim (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per above discussion -- LMT service might have existed at one time, but there is no evidence it still exists today. --David Tornheim (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
• Don't delete - neutral on whether this should redirect to a section in the city's article or be a standalone article, but it's a transit organization for a significant city and is thus notable; we should WP:PRESERVE this information. That it might not exist currently is irrelevant. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 14:43, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Ivanvector: hi. Thanks for your input. I agree with your point of WP:NOTTEMPORARY, and preservation. But I am still not sure how many buses were operated by government. The only available source says two buses were provided, but they were used ones and require maintenance. The source doesnt mention if they were actually used by the corporation later. The other buses which were operational were privately owned (on limited routes, and not many ferries), so the size of city becomes irrelevant here. As it was owned by private company/companies, it isnt exactly a "public transport". I think it should be merged in the article of Latur city, with mention in Latur Municipal Corporation. —usernamekiran(talk) 17:40, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Usernamekiran What reliable secondary sources do we have that establish the existence (or prior existence) of Latur Municipal Transport? I do believe with much confidence based on the many observations we have and other forms of evidence that it must have existed at some point. The problem we have had all along is having no decent WP:RS, despite hours of research looking. So, I'm not sure even a redirect or any mention at another article is even appropriate, until WP:RS can be found. It is of particular concern to me that we might give the impression that a defunct set of buses is operating if it is not--misleading potential riders. If we delete all mention of it, and it does (or did) exist, then perhaps someone from Latur would show up, argue for creating the article (or other mention of it), and once again we can ask for the badly needed WP:RS. What do you think? --David Tornheim (talk) 19:25, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim and Ivanvector: I partially agree. As I commented previously: "the article should be redirected to LMC or Latur, with appropriate content with RS there. At the least, lack of content might attract anon users to add some content which can we later verify." I think we should make a passing reference. The fact that original creator made contributions after the AfD notice was delievered to him, and yet did not comment here; makes me even more doubtful. —usernamekiran(talk) 19:35, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Usernamekiran: Is there any WP:RS? After all the research we did, I am not aware of any. If you believe there is,. can you provide the link(s)? --David Tornheim (talk) 20:32, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@David Tornheim: nope. Never found any. —usernamekiran(talk) 20:37, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Neutral Keep per Preserver and notability. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 18:31, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@L3X1: per the last two comments immediately above, Usernamekiran and I have spent hours looking for WP:RS establishing the existence of the subject and we have found nothing. Can you provide WP:RS for even one site? Note: that everything we found mentioning it was copied from Wikipedia. Without any independent WP:RS, I just don't see how we can keep the article or even justify a redirect or mention in another article, much less establish notability. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:46, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

David Tornheim Not a single sources that isn't plagiarising Wikipedia. I tried Google, Bing, JSTOr, all those nice link at the top, I varied my serach criteria, and came up blank. d.g. L3X1 (distant write) 01:12, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for your considaration, and inputs. Some of you spent few minutes, or an hour on this issue. Whereas Mr. Tornheim has put a lot of hours in that. I invested a lot more time than anybody here. When I first came around the article, as always, my priority was to improve it. I tried that. After realising that there arent sources available now, i tried to look for newspapers. No result. Then I proposed for deletion. When Mr. Tornheim got involved, we looked futher with no results. Because of Mr Tornheim's findings, L3X1 changed "delete" vote to "neutral". I request everybody who prviously particiapted in this AfD to cast their votes again, in the light of recent findings/discussion taken place here. @Smartyllama, Winged Blades of Godric, AusLondonder, and David Tornheim:

1. Delete with no redirect. I was the original proposer. If there is a breif passing reference to LMT on the article of Latur city, the lack of content might attract people from Latur to contribute to the article, later which we can improve. —usernamekiran(talk) 23:28, 11 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment--The nominator of the AfD had added a relist template prior to the expiry of a period of seven days from last relist.Since any corresponding log transclusion was absent--I have just removed the template.Winged Blades ^Godric 15:46, 14 May 2017 (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.