Mark Allen M wrote:
Just noticed this old thread. But agreed, why remove history from wiki?. Unless it’s proven to be bogus, leave the history there. Defunct or disbanded CAF units and squadrons important history.
A very fair point. A similar
discussion has come up in regards to warbirds that once existed, but were destroyed in crashes or scrapped. The consensus there was, more-or-less, that because the page included the word "surviving" in the title they should not be included. Furthermore, it was argued that they were no longer sufficiently notable and that
Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate list of things. (Personally, I like the way that F2G, BuNo 88463, was handled in that while it is not listed in the surviving aircraft sections, it *is* mentioned in a image caption. It seems like a good compromise.)
However, I understand the opposite position as well. As a contrasting example, I made a point of including closed museums in the
List of United States Air Force museums. Just because a thing no longer exists, doesn't mean it is no longer worth including.
Avnut wrote:
The units should not be removed from the Wiki page, but moved into a new section listing "former units". It is part of CAF history, why remove it. I'm not a history major, but a big buff of it and it can be hard to find things that once existed once they close outside of website that specialize in such things, i.e. Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields (
http://www.airfields-freeman.com/). That is why I say but it back.
For what it's worth, keeping track of the former units was part of the reason I created this thread. I completely understand the problem of "
unknown unknowns".
Ideally, if they were sufficiently notable, they could be mentioned in the history section. However, I doubt all of them would fit that criteria. Alternatively, as you mentioned, there could be a section for defunct units, but finding references to support their inclusion might be difficult.
However, I don't have a good answer myself, so I started a
request for comment on the talk page to try to establish some
consensus. While I have to be careful of
canvassing, if you would like to comment, please go ahead.
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