Wikipedia talk:Places of local interest

Proposal

From time to time, I've seen debates about masts, railway stations, schools (multiple times), malls, and similar objects go by, and they often have a lot of common themes to them. I thought I'd create a proposal that covers these common themes, so that this discussion doesn't have to occur dozens of times. Right now it's all my own work, so I'd appreciate others editing it (or at least commenting on it) so that it can better reflect community consensus. Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 14:51, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Good work on preparing this. One concern I have is that city articles already tend to accumulate too many lists. Consider Sudbury, Ontario, and the number of lists found in that article. Do we also want bullet points on each hospital, church, park, and major street? I am somewhat dubious of encouraging incorporating this information into the community page. - SimonP 02:23, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

There are several areas that it is logical for new articles to develop as the information fills in. These would include, sports, transportation, education and media. This should tend to keep the size of the main article manageable. Vegaswikian 04:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm not a big fan of a lot of lists either. However, I don't necessarily see this as introducing more lists for two reasons:

1. This proposal encourages spinning out new articles on each of the subsections as they fill in. Taking Sudbury, Ontario as an example, if someone were to add a list of schools to the "Education and culture" section, the section might be large enough to justify breaking it out into Education and culture in Sudbury. The summary that would be left in Sudbury, Ontario probably wouldn't include those bullet points.
2. There'll be more information about these places in the main article that sections can be written in prose. Taking Sudbury, Ontario as an example again, a lot of the bullet points are for things of local interest that are not discussed in the article. If we were to cover the TV/radio stations in the Sudbury article, (not that I'm saying we necessarily should, because there's already a lot of information in those articles) there is enough information about these stations to write in prose, not lists.

Maybe I'll update the proposal to mention prose a bit more as well. JYolkowski // talk 14:16, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Examples of Local Facilities

I have been looking at several examples to try and understand what might apply. I presume the guideline would apply to many types of public facilities not just the ones named. Here are four that I have found:

• Airport - Morristown Municipal Airport
• Cemetery/Memorials - Centennial Park Cemetery
• Hospital - Sudbury Regional Hospital
• School - Edgewater Elementary School
• Sports Facility - Pete Beiden Field

These are intended as examples for discussion, my hope is the guideline would be applicable in any cases like these. Wakemp 19:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

• My intent was that these guidelines would also apply to sites like these (as an aside, the list of sites in the intro was mainly based on articles that I'd seen previous discussions and/or a lot of AfDs on). I would think that the articles listed in the example above would all qualify as "places of local interest" based on the current content of their articles. JYolkowski // talk 20:00, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

"Avoid linking to these places of local importance until the articles are written. This makes it harder to create an article that will show up on AfD."

I strongly disagree with this. Too often I've seen an article that talks about a local landmark and doesn't link to it, because people are afraid of red links. This proposed practice causes problems when the articles are written. --SPUI (T - C) 06:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I think there are pluses and minuses to this point. On the plus side, it doesn't "encourage" new articles on topics with little potential for a nontrivial article. On the minus side, as you mentioned, it causes new articles not to be automatically linked to. The proposal does say "When making a new article, ensure that the appropriate article about the community contains a link to the place in question.", but realistically this isn't always going to happen.

I'm wondering if it would make more sense to change the statement to suggest that editors consider the potential of new articles, rather than just saying "avoid linking". Maybe something along the lines of "Before creating redlinks to places of local interest, consider the potential for a nontrivial article to be created about the topic". Comments? JYolkowski // talk 01:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

A variety of issues.

A few issues with this guideline:

1. Wikipedia is not a directory. Directory information should not be included anywhere, whether on a community article or on a specific article.
2. "Well-known former residents/employees/attendees/students/etc. of the place" This is a recipe for problems unless we insist that the people are not just "well-known" but notable.
3. In general, this does nothing to establish when such articles should even exist and seems to imply that a large number of things demmed non-encyclopedic/non-notable now would be included in the encyclopedia. This is not a good thing.
4. I like most of the last set of reccomendations, but they seem commonsensical to the point of redundancy. For example, if this became a guideline, of course one would want to point new users to it if there edits were not within the guideline.

JoshuaZ 01:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. In reply:

1. WP:NOT also states "Wikipedia also includes reference tables and tabular information for quick reference. Merged groups of small articles based on a core topic are certainly permitted", so IMHO I don't think that what this proposal is suggesting is significantly in violation of this policy. Nonetheless, I removed the explicit suggestion to put the information in the parent article and removed some bits of information that are discouraged in WP:NOT. Also, "directory" might not be the word I'm looking for here either in this proposal; if someone can suggest another word that would be cool too.
2. I've edited this point to state that it's referring to people along the lines of those that have their own article. Does that make more sense?
3. Not sure whether this has really been spelled out in the proposal, but the threshold that I had intended was when there was enough verifiable information to create a "sufficiently large" article. Exactly what "sufficiently large" is hasn't been spelled out, but it could be (e.g. non-stub). My experience is that, on AfD, even articles about very insignificant topics often get kept if they are sufficiently verifiable and long. This point is probably a very interesting one that may need further discussion.
4. I agree with this one to a certain extent. What would you suggest?

Thanks again, JYolkowski // talk 02:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Further to yesterday's response, the response to #3 wasn't all that great; I meant to have put a greater emphasis on article quality. If an article about a place of local interest is of sufficient quality, I think it should be kept as its own article. We already have lots of low-quality articles about such places; this proposal suggests merging the low-quality ones and keeping the high-quality ones in their own articles. JYolkowski // talk 01:41, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Tagging this as an essay

Having thought about this one a bit, I don't think that there's enough support for this to be a guideline in terms of editors either practising this behaviour or editing/discussing this page. So, I've tagged this as an essay (I noticed that {{descriptive}}, which seems to fit better, also puts pages in Category:Wikipedia essays, so I used that one instead) and if support grows for these ideas later we can look at turning this into a guideline then. JYolkowski // talk 01:28, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Including applicable Wikiprojects in policy

Given the proliferation of geographically-based WikiProjects, I believe that they should have a role to play in determining what is notable in their respective regions. Community standards may vary. --AlexWCovington (talk) 19:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Villages

Do villages -- that is, small, unincorporated communities -- fall under this proposed guideline? Especially villages in Latin America, Africa, & Asia? I've been thinking about this problem, & can see arguments for & against including them. -- llywrch 16:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

My answer would be "maybe". My idea behind this guideline is to encourage higher overall article quality by encouraging people to not create stubs and to merge them into location articles. So, in cases where there really isn't a lot to say about the communities, it probably makes sense to merge them into a parent article. On the other hand, if there is a fair bit to say and these villages contain places of local interest of their own, then it probably makes sense that they stand on their own, and can be used as a merge target for those places of local interest. This could probably also apply to subdivisions in North America and Europe as well. JYolkowski // talk 23:47, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

• That makes sense. I would add that we have quite a bit of precedent in creating articles on each individual village, but not each individual item within said village. >Radiant< 11:06, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

So, what do you think? (-:

For the past two months, the text of this proposal has been fairly static and there haven't been any serious problems raised here. I'd previously assumed that that was because no-one really cared one way or another about the proposal. (-: Lately, however, I've noticed multiple people citing it in guideline or AFD discussions or otherwise applying it. So, maybe it's useful after all. With that in mind, I'd like to get a feeling for what other people are feeling about the proposal. Should it be a guideline? Should any changes be made? Are there any serious problems? TIA, JYolkowski // talk 21:55, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• It is time for a straw poll to see if there is consensus. Vegaswikian 22:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

• • Let's not do that, guidelines aren't created by polls on them. I think the intent of this (proposed) guideline is useful, and it certainly appears to be referenced by people in discussion. I'll add a link on the village pump for some more feedback. If there are no objections to the content of this page, it qualifies (and of course details can always be changed later). >Radiant< 09:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• I agree that a poll is inappropriate. I also like the underlining thinking of the proposal (roughly, please don't create an article about a place of local interest unless there is something interesting you can say about it). My only worry is that the proposal tends to presume, albeit does not mandate, a certain succession of steps in the creation of the article. I fear that some AfD particpiants will interpret these steps to be mandatory, and strike any place of local interest that has not been spun off of the article for its parent community.-- danntm ^T _C 13:09, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

• • I've attempted to word the proposal so that the recommended succession is not depicted as the only valid one ("consider the following", "should be added", etc.). I've also attempted to emphasise merging over deletion, so that if the information isn't lost permanently and the article can be unredirected later if there's agreement to do so. Having said that, the proposal may not be worded in the best manner. Do you have any suggestions for anything that you would change to alleviate your concerns? Thanks, JYolkowski // talk 02:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

• • • Please pardon the delay in my reply. After reading the propal carefully, I may suggest a line that any article about a place of local interest that meets the later requirements (e.g. references, pictures, etc.), is keepable even if it did not follow the suggested development track. That would make it explicit that article need not follow the recommended development path, although they ideally should, but do need certain content to be worth having around.-- danntm ^T _C 13:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• • • • Good idea, I've added a paragraph in the problem articles section to mention that articles that are "good enough" (not my exact words) can generally stand on their own. Typically, most editors don't feel the need to cleanup, merge, or delete sufficiently long and well-referenced articles about such subjects right now, so I think that this addition makes sense. JYolkowski // talk 22:14, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

"Places"

Some time ago - and I'm quite unsure of where I did so - I commented on the use of the word "place" in Wikipedia. There are a great many articles with the title something like "Places in xxxxx" which then go on to list cities, towns and villages: see, for example List of places in Herefordshire. To my geographical understanding, they should be much better called settlements. The article on Place shows how broad it can be: and somewhat too vague a term. Now there is this suggestion, which actually brings in the lower end of the spectrum of the word "place". It might cause some confusion, though, given that the previous usage is as I have pointed out. Peter Shearan 06:29, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I've intentionally used the word "place" to be vague—the intention is that this guideline could apply not only to unincorporated settlements but to things found in them like airports, railway stations, schools, and things like that. If you can think of another word that might better describe this entire class of things, feel free to suggest it. JYolkowski // talk 02:18, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Neighborhoods

Good policy - perhaps this should apply to neighborhoods as well? Take, for example, East Calhoun, Minneapolis -- a stub about a neighborhood that shows little notability. Underneath, we see the Neighborhoods of Minneapolis box. Shouldn't all neighborhoods simply be included in a "Neighborhoods of (Metro Area)..." article and only be broken out if there's substantial notability to warrant a separate article for that neighborhood (e.g. Chinatown, Hyde Park, or Buckhead)? I would imagine that distinct communities (i.e. a distinct city government) will always warrant an article, but neighborhoods should be the exception, not the rule. So I would propose this: a) neighborhoods should be listed within the main city's article; b) if there are a substantial number of neighborhoods and/or content about these neighborhoods, this information would split to a "Neighborhoods of (City)" article; c) if, and only if, a neighborhood has notability on its own merits (e.g. historical events, major identifiable regional / national name recognition, etc.), then it would warrant its own article. Thoughts? SkerHawx 18:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree; I think that it makes sense for neighbourhoods to be treated as you mentioned above, and since this is similar to the strategy described in this proposal I think it makes sense for these to be covered by this guideline. Since I see a fair bit of neighbourhood articles I've added that to the list of "places" in the intro. JYolkowski // talk 21:56, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I likewise agree. >Radiant< 09:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Seems okay to me. Maybe major sections of cities, but we don't need an article for every single neighborhood (especially because the boundaries and names of neighborhoods are not always clear).-- danntm ^T _C 13:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Subdivisions

One other thought ... While surfing random articles, I've also run across subdivision articles ("subdivision" as used in the U.S. and Canada to identify a group of homes with a common homeowner's association and often the same builder. (See some examples ... Encantada_Subdivision, Confederation Heights, Thorold...) I'd like to include a proposed addition to this policy that subdivisions are (by default) not notable. Again, if an article's editors can establish notability through events that occurred within the subdivision, so be it. But generally even if notability can be established, such notability probably belongs to the city, not the subdivision. Thoughts? SkerHawx 12:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• I think this a good idea, although I would suggest any such guideline be limited. Certain subdivisions may be historically significant because of there backstory (see Levittown, Pennsylvania and Levittown, New York). I also think that these guidlines are not so much a hard and fast binary notable-nonnotable guideline, but instead helping editors create and write articles wisely. Perhaps something along the lines, and I'm thinking aloud here, of "avoid creating articles about subdivisions (definition of subdivision) unless there are verifiable sources about the subdivision." Well, that's my thoughts for now.-- danntm ^T _C 13:20, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

  I think that makes perfect sense and is a good clarification of this point. SkerHawx 15:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

  I've added a paragraph to the proposal mentioning to consider how much information about the topic is available before creating the article, and gave an example of "unremarkable subdivisions". JYolkowski // talk 22:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Guideline

Since no-one's mentioned that they disagree with this in principle, and since it is being used, I've tagged this as a guideline. Certainly a bit of rewording might still be useful in places, so feel free to continue tweaking the wording if there's the need. JYolkowski // talk 20:43, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree on making it a guideline. And thanks to those involved in writing it, as I agree that this was very much needed, so it's good to have guidance on what to do with these kinds of articles.  :) One suggestion I would have though, has to do with streamlining the way that they're handled. For example, I routinely scan about a thousand articles at a time, looking for places where I can add {{uncat}} or {{wikify}} tags, plus I'll do alot of speedy-deletion recommendations per {{db-spam}}, {{db-bio}}, {{db-music}}, etc. Once I'm "on a roll", I really don't have time to also handle merges, which can take several minutes per article to figure out what needs to be merged, and where it needs to be merged to. In terms of these "local" articles, could we perhaps create a {{local}} template that I could use? It could put a banner at the top of the page advising the editor about WP:LOCAL, and also add the article to a category like, "Local articles needing merging" or something. That way if I see an article about a fountain or local park, I could quickly flag it as needing attention, but not have to come to a screeching halt in terms of scanning other new articles. Then someone else (or maybe me, on a second pass) could go through later to be more specific about where it needed to be merged. --Elonka 00:13, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd kind of been thinking about that too. So, I've created {{local}}. Feel free to tweak the wording and let me know if you have any comments. Cheers, JYolkowski // talk 02:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Great job! I'm populating the category now. BTW, what's the current feeling on individual railway station stops? Are we leaving them be, or should I tag those as well? --Elonka 03:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say that they can be tagged as well if they don't appear to be particularly special. We had a fair bit of discussion about this previously on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains, and this essay, which I based a little bit of this guideline on, was the result. JYolkowski // talk 23:16, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Please don't. No article on an individual railway station has been deleted since at least 2003 - there was a strong consensus to keep them long before even schools became an issue. I will revert any such taggings accordingly; if you want these deleted or merged, get an actual consensus to do it. Rebecca 00:13, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

There's agreement at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains that merging such things is okay. That's good enough for me. Besides, no-one's suggesting we delete anything here. JYolkowski // talk 00:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I see no such agreement there, let alone any discussion with more than a couplke of people. I will vehemently object to and revert any unilateral merging of any train station articles that attempts to override the long-standing consensus that such topics are notable. Rebecca 00:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify something, I didn't state that there was a consensus, just that several people felt that these articles didn't need to stand on their own. Having said that, as you're well aware from being around here for a few years, one of our main principles is to be bold and just do things. If you feel that a group of articles should be merged, you can just do it, you don't need to reach consensus about everything before you do it. One corollary is that you can boldly revert too. Once that happens, the next natural step is to discuss and try to reach agreement. If you are genuinely interested in how to improve the quality of such articles and the encyclopedia in general, then I'd be glad to discuss this with you. On the other hand, if you just want to unilaterally revert because you have a rollback button, well, so do I. JYolkowski // talk 02:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

You don't get to delete or merge things unilaterally. If it is contested, you get a consensus to do it. I am simply saying that, as there has been a long-standing precedent that all railway stations are notable, I will object in each and every case, and I'd be surprised if you could get a consensus to do anything other than keep the status quo in any such case. Rebecca 03:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

One more thing... this guideline makes no judgements about whether a topic is "notable" or not. It only attempts to make judgements as to how to best represent information. JYolkowski // talk 03:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

A suburb page is for general information on that suburb - the sort of information which a good railway station page should have (history, architecture, workings, etc.) would be completely out of place on that page. I also absolutely no benefit in merging station pages into line pages. When there has been a long-standing precedent that stations are notable enough for articles, and we've been able to write quite a number of good articles on them, I'm see little reason to change the status quo. Rebecca 03:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you please provide a link to a discussion or guideline which confirms this consensus? --Elonka 01:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

There has been a long-standing precedent that all railway stations are notable, with every single case of a railway station being nominated for deletion being kept (I can't even recall a no-consensus-keep result) since at least 2003. Precedents hammered out over years of practice and agreement among many, many editors are worth a heck of a lot more than obscure guidelines written up by four people. Rebecca 03:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, no. There is a long-standing lack of consensus about how stations articles should be written, or even if they should be written. One can see this in the discussion here and in preliminary discussion here. As the instigator of both discussions, I observe that the situation hasn't improved: train station articles are still largely cluttery accumulations of railfan-cruft without respect to good organization or for that matter the communities in which they reside, and many of them are simply timetable entries heavily padded by hypertext apparatus.

Nothing has been "hammered out" about train stations. What we have is paralysis, which in my opinion has its genesis in the investment made in the numerous articles on some rail systems, and also (again, this is only my opinion) in a lot of anti-American attitude. The larger problem is that passenger service is treated in these articles as a lot of trees without any forest; it has always seemed to me that it made more sense to talk about the lines/routes for the most part, and that therefore most stations would only be discussed in that context. What we have instead is long catalogs of stations (and often enough non-existent stations) with little or no overall discussion. And since the exceptions to this have tended to be American, defense of the effort it took to create these has historically been coupled to a condescension about the relative paucity of American service. Mangoe 19:13, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

See my comment above. JYolkowski // talk 03:18, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

1. To toss in by two cents, You can be bold and try to merge in railway station articles, but I must state a few caveats. This is a guideline on the path of article creation, not article elimination or merging. Further, merging articles that other editors care about may cause much unpleasantness. It may be prudent to try to yet the trains project work out their strategy. Also, I recommend against putting any such article on AfD, less it open up another can of worms.-- danntm ^T _C 04:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion Criteria

This guideline discusses how to break off an article into subarticles, but doesn't provide clear guidance on when a neighborhood, street, or building, etc. is or is not encyclopedic. Suggest providing clearer guidance. Should every neighborhood get an article? Best, --Shirahadasha 04:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a difference between "encyclopedic" and "should get its own article". Individual streets, buildings, neighbourhoods, etc. are encyclopedic if they meet our core content policies WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV. Even if they do meet these criteria, they likely don't need their own article; however, the solution is not to delete the content, but to merge it into the parent community's article. The purpose of this guideline is more to help editors create quality articles, and not so much to define specific inclusion criteria. So, the criterion used in this guideline is if "enough verifiable information is available" for its own article. So, if you can create a high-quality article about a neighbourhood (e.g. longer than a stub, contains useful, verifiable information, etc.), go ahead. If not, add the information to the community article instead of creating a new one. JYolkowski // talk 00:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

In many cases, adding information to an existing article and then breaking it out when it grows seems to avoid many problems. You are less likely to create a stub, and the fact that the material has existed makes it easier to defend as being notable. In the worst case, the AfD should be to merge it back to the article it was in to begin with, not a big problem. The only problem I recall having in doing this was an editor who felt that the material should have remained in the main article, it was about 32K in size. This approach also allows an editor to see several items of a like nature that may not justify an article on their own, but if combined could justify another article. Again it is a subjective decision and editors have to use their judgement as to what is 'right'. Vegaswikian 00:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with Vegaswikian and JYolkowski. What is recommended is a prudent way to write about places of local interest, including neighborhoods. Unfortunately, there is no magical dividing line on when neighborhood, or an school, or almost any other local interest item, for that matter, deserves its own article.-- danntm ^T _C 02:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I concur that this should be intended more as a recommendation than a list of criteria. Accordingly, I've changed the guideline template (it still says it's a guideline, but does not mention notability criteria). --Nehwyn 16:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Shopping malls

I went through tagging several shopping malls with {{local}}, and promptly had my changes reverted, even though the articles had no references aside from the malls' own websites. So I thought I'd start this discussion here to get more comment, or to ask if anyone could point me to previous discussions about the notability of these establishments? --Elonka 05:02, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• On AfD, some malls survive and some get deleted. If the article is simply based on the mall's web site, then AfD might be the best choice if it appears to be not notable. {{local}} is an attempt to avoid AfD. But if that's what other editors desire and if the article is not notable, then it may be the better choice. Was any reason for thd reverts provided? Vegaswikian 05:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) Please see: User talk:Elonka#Shopping centres and Talk:The Westfield Group#Too many articles. --Elonka 05:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

This action is extremely biased. the Mall of America is allowed to have it's own article without complaint, why not others? Because it's more famous? Well, elonka is tagging malls that are in foreign countries, which for all she knows may be just as well known in their respective locations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.7.198.245 (talk • contribs) 23:32, October 30, 2006 (UTC)

The Mall of America is a major mall and tourist attraction. If as you say, those other malls 'may be just as well known in their respective locations' then the {{local}} template would be appropiate. The Mall of America is not just know locally, but is a popular attraction and well know in several countries. Vegaswikian 05:50, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• FYI, I selected one of those articles and put it on AfD to see if it would get support. So far that support has not shown up. So I think you have support to add the {{local}} template back in or nominate the articles for deltion where they will likely be deleted. Vegaswikian 03:00, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with Elonka's placement of the {{local}} tag on most of those shopping centre articles - I think it's quite appropriate as a cleanup alert for notability and references, and better than deleting them - and I don't think Rebecca should have mass-removed them the way she did. That said, there's a bit of a double-standard at play here when the Mall of America article (which is being frequently cited as "obviously" notable and famous), has only one reference, yet we seem to be requiring Australian shopping centres to have multiple non-trivial references (despite Australian user support), which even when added still aren't good enough for some editors (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Centro Roselands). --Canley 04:15, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The mass-application of the {{local}} tag was done indiscriminately, without regard to whether the articles needed cleanup, or whether they already made a strong claim to notability, as several articles which were fine, and several which made clear why they were notable, were also hit. I don't have any objection on principle to their use in a more sensible manner, but it's kind of useless - do you actually think that whacking a tag on the page is going to achieve anything apart from making the page look even worse than it did? Rebecca 04:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I guess the application of the tag was indiscriminate, fair point. Where I agree with you Rebecca is that these kind of "campaigns" against certain types of articles (shopping malls, biscuits, etc.) can really miss the point, particularly where the editor's location or background give them no perspective into the subject's notability, or insight into researching for improvement; and their rush to tag or delete a huge number of articles can cause them to miss notability assertion, references and edit history. This is particularly the case with new, untested or contentious tags, criteria and policies such as {{local}} and the G11 speedy criterion. My point is that I'd much rather see a cleanup tag ugly up a page (as I use them a lot to fix up articles) than an article with potential be deleted or even speedy deleted, and you could have applied the same diligence in removing the tags that Elonka should have applied when adding them. --Canley 04:46, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Fair point - I'll endeavour to do that if this happens again. Rebecca 04:51, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Rebecca seems to have a tendency to mis-represent my actions. I strongly protest any claim that I placed the {{local}} tag "indiscriminately," as that is absolutely untrue. What I did, was to look at the dozens of articles that were recently created by Tuddy (talk · contribs). Most of the articles were in appalling shape anyway, needing cleanup and with no categories (which is why my attention was drawn to them in the first place). On each one, I looked to see if it had any references beyond the store's own website. If it did not, then I tagged it. If there were verifiable references proving notability, I did not tag it. Further, Rebecca never contacted me even once to express concerns about the tags, she just immediately launched into a mass revert, and then when I noticed this on my watchlist and questioned her about it, she responded with bad faith accusations and incivility.[1][2][3] If we're talking about "indicriminate" reverts, how about these by Rebecca, where she reverted me placing a {{prod2}} tag [4], or reverting my addition of {{primarysources}} tags to articles which clearly deserved them, as there were no references aside from their own commercial websites [5][6]. --Elonka 18:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Consensus

This proposal didn't seem to get much publicity the first time it went around. I therefore suggest we note it on the village pump and one or two other places and maybe have a straw poll to double-check the consensus behind it (and yes, as some may already guess, I'm not in favor of certain aspects of this). JoshuaZ 21:55, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Is anyone paying attention here? I'm just wondering because looking at what actually happens at AfDs, this guideline seems to be almost completely ignored. JoshuaZ 18:07, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Is this happening after an editor points out that the article meets or does not meet this guideline? Are the articles in question being kept because they are notable for something not mentioned in this guideline? Is the vote being taken over by those in the local community so that a broad consensus is not being represented in the vote? Vegaswikian 19:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, the latter option seems to be a common occurrence. We should probably mention it somehow in the guideline. Also, a stronger mention of Wikitravel as a suggested possible alternative venue for locally relevant information is definitely in order. --Nehwyn 19:23, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Alternatively, maybe it's just that people who actually know what the thing proposed for deletion is and how notable it is are better judges of notability than some dude on the other side of the world who picked it out at random and decided it didn't interest him. Rebecca 01:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

That's precisely my point. The notability of a given article shouldn't be assessed by those who have a local interest in it, or indeed by any single user. Guidelines and notability criteria are what we need, and this guideline may be of help in that direction. --Nehwyn 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Consensus..when? How many people voted? Was it advertised? Sorry I'm late to the party.--Ling.Nut 23:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Nope, he was suggesting we vote to reach consensus. =) --Nehwyn 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

• And the voting is not such a good idea. Rather I'm interested in the arguments mentioned above by Vegas and Nehwyn. If this guideline does not match what actually happens, we should reword it, e.g. adding a clause on Wikitravel, or by putting more emphasis on merging articles about places into e.g. the article on the town they're in. >Radiant< 13:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I just brought up a straw poll as a possibility. I'm really not sure this at all reflects current consensus More movement to wikitravel would be a good thing. JoshuaZ 18:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

"It is not the purpose of this guideline to create new methods of handling concerns about these articles, nor to define additional criteria for inclusion or deletion of these articles." So your observation that this guideline is ignored at AFD is probably not very surprising -- it has no particular bearing on deletion. The main point of this proposal is to make explicit a long-standing agreement about how to organize information. See also WP:SUMMARY, which similarly finds little application on AFD. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:40, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the guideline not being used, whatlinkshere indicates that around 50 AfD debates link here. Probably half of them are me commenting (-: , but that still leaves several other people using it as an argument. Sure, this isn't a huge number of people, but enough to indicate that it has some acceptance. As well, I think that it does reflect consensus in a few other small ways (examples available upon request). Based on the comments above, it might be rather instructive to make a study of what goes on at AfD. This might be something that I'll be looking into shortly. JYolkowski // talk 22:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Large cities

I like this proposal but I noticed one problem, what should we do if the local road, shopping center, etc is in a large city. Right now most articles on large cities has no place to put that infomation, and it's mostly unneeded. For example Foo creates an article on a small, non historic local church in Miami, Florida. There is no point in merging that info to the article so what happens now. We should add some info about using this proposal in large cities as this guideline currently looks like it's only good for those types of articles that are in small communities or towns. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 02:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully the article has been written in Wikipedia:Summary style as suggested in WP:LOCAL#Adding information about places of local interest (but just common sense anyway even if it wasn't suggested there). In that case, a Religion in Miami or Churches in Miami or something like that's probably been created, which would make a good merge target. If not (which appears to be the case here (-: ) well, that sort of makes things hard. Of course, if editors have created a whole bunch of tiny Miami church articles, you could merge all of those together into a meaningful article. JYolkowski // talk 03:16, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd create a "List of churches in Miami", put an "incomplete" tag on it, and merge it there. --Nehwyn 06:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Notability?

Prompted by recent comments I've received, I wanted to clarify something, as I'm not sure a consensus has been reached. It was pointed out in a couple of discussions above that this guideline contains no inclusion criteria and indeed does not deal with notability or is used in deletion debates as notability guidelines often are, but is rather intended as a guide or reccommendation on how to deal with places of local interests, and how best to present information about them. Now just to make sure:

• Would you rather this guideline continued in the current direction, or

• Would you rather this guideline discussed notability explicitly and list inclusion criteria instead? --Nehwyn 12:18, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• This page clearly is used in deletion debates. Note that most other notability guidelines do not deal strictly with deletion, but exactly with "recommendations on how to deal with their subject, and how best to present information". I fail to see the difference you imply. (Radiant) 12:39, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

The presence or absence of inclusion criteria, for one, is quite an easy difference to spot. --Nehwyn 12:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but WP:FICT (one of our oldest notability guidelines) doesn't have them either. (Radiant) 13:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• I believe Radiant! has a point. While WP:LOCAL lacks clear cut criteria--which is probably impossible considering the diverse variety of entities includes as items of local interest--on a full reading, the guideline does indicate when a article is not in a state to be a standalone article (e.g. a couple of lines of directory like information, article created without regard to the community article).-- danntm ^T _C 14:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

"Notable" and "deserves its own article" are not the same thing. The guideline only deals with the latter problem; there is no mention of the former. --Nehwyn 18:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

• But they are related; you are referring to a dichotomy that does not in fact exist. Apart from its weak wording, this page is substantially similar to other notability guidelines. (Radiant) 10:43, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Where do we draw the line?

Let's use a practical, real-life example of local notability discussion, and see if we can establish a consensus. A service station. (Works the same with "a pub", "a chemist's", or any given type of public venue, really.) Based on position, where would you draw the notability line:

1. the first service station in the nation
2. the first service station in a region of that nation
3. the first service station in a city
4. the first service station on a given road

--Nehwyn 18:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of what the claim is, I'd still want to see third-party confirmation of notability. Even if an article says that a gas station was "the first in Montana", and even if I personally agreed that "first gas station in Montana" was notable, if we don't have a secondary reference proving this claim, then there shouldn't be a separate article on that gas station. --Elonka 18:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability is not the point here... so let's assume "verifiably the first" in the examples above. (It's notability I want to discuss.) --Nehwyn 19:14, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so like if there were a peer-reviewed book that listed every gas station in the United States, by date, so it could easily be determined which gas station was "the first" in any particular venue... In that case, I would want third-party verification of notability, meaning newspaper articles or something else showing that a gas station was genuinely notable for its "first" status, outside of its local area. In other words, if Joe's Station, in Whistle Stop, Kansas was written up in the Whistle Stop newsletter, that wouldn't be enough for me, but if the station were mentioned in Kansas travel guides as worth a visit (meaning that it had at least one full paragraph in more than one travel guide), then I think that that might be enough for a "Weak Keep" from me. --Elonka 19:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Uhm, I agree, but I probably didn't quite explain myself. Assume the claims above are all verified and referenced. Which of those claim would you think is enough to warrant a separate article instead of a merge as per WP:LOCAL? --Nehwyn 20:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

As per Elonka the notability would be determined by a reference in an outside source to it being notable. The first something is not necessarily notable in itself. Your list above would not necessarily give rise on any count to a separate article - even first in the nation could be merged into some other article if there is nothing more to say on the subject than that fact.--Golden Wattle ^talk 20:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Now that's what I meant this discussion to be about. So you'd draw the line above them, i.e. none of those claims is sufficient. --Nehwyn 06:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, none of the claims is sufficient by themselves. If I think about my own neck of the woods, I cannot image the first petrol station in Australia would be notable if that was the only claim to notability. It would need some context and some other points of interest, else merge into a history of motoring in Australia or whatever, or the locality article. There are many nations, perhaps we could have an article about or list of the first petrol stations in all nations - could be interesting :-)--Golden Wattle ^talk 09:53, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• Regardless of the "first" gas station and such, it has been established on AFD that local instances of a global concern aren't notable (e.g. the MacDonalds in any random city) and such things as shoppnig malls or churches have a tendency of ending up deleted unless there's something extraordinary about them. (Radiant) 10:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm continuing to see a steady stream of shopping mall articles flow in. I'm tagging them with {{local}}, but on many of them, my gut says it would be better to use {{db-spam}}. See Category:Places of local interest needing cleanup for the current list. In any case, since there's a lot of talk about AfD precedent on this page, perhaps we should create a list of precedents, and maybe even a "local-area-related deletions" page, as a centralized collection point for these things? --Elonka 06:48, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
    • Thanks for the reminder to start watching your contributions again. You can deliberately misrepresent the spam deletion criterion all you want, but thankfully you're not an admin, so any taggings you do can be easily reverted. Rebecca 09:21, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Calling the mall articles "spam" is questionable. However, their origin and content are also questionable. Information about the current state of any mall come under the heading of Wikipedia is not a travel guide, which is specifically stated in WP:NOT. This goes back to one of my complaints about train station articles: that they tend to repeat information from the system timetables, but that information is better obtained officially rather than here. Likewise, information about any mall now is better obtained from their own website-- and if they don't have one, it's going to be very hard to argue that they are notable, much less to avoid a routine accusation of original research. Which brings us to the historical information. Except for genuinely notable mallswhose greater historical importance is unquestionable, this is inevitably also original research by Wikipedia standards. I personally see these articles, like the vast majority of the train station articles, as things that are written because they can be, not because there is the slightest need to have them written. In any case they are yet another source of wikiclutter. Mangoe 12:12, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
• Likewise, I have seen several articles on a road that had no information beyond what would be found on a map - and where the author had not realized that such information is in fact better presented as a map. WP:NOT the yellow pages either. (Radiant) 14:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a (admittedly blurry) line that can be drawn between places of local interest, and places of no real interest whatsoever. One rough rule of thumb would be to consider whether the place would merit a mention in the article on the place itself (or other summary style articles about the place). You most likely wouldn't mention, say, the local McDonald's or gas station in an article about a town unless there was something to say about it (e.g. it's well-known for some reason), so they wouldn't fall under the scope of this guideline (they may fall under the scope of other guidelines though). Malls, for example, are generally better-known within a community and are the sort of things that could fall under the scope of this guideline. JYolkowski // talk 19:37, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• I think JYolkowski is onto something. Merge an article about a run of the mill item (e.g. Traffic lights, McDonalds, a Gas Station), would clutter up the town's article with things most people care little about. But subjects that carry some import in town, like the local mall, certainly are worthy of a mention in their locality's article, with the possibility of spinning off when the material on the entity is adequately developed, sourced, etc.-- danntm ^T _C 23:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Gladys the Swiss Dairy Cow

A case study in LOCAL... now on its 2nd AfD. we have a lot to learn from this and other debacles. - crz crztalk 23:29, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Consensus?

Rebecca (talk · contribs) said in her edit summary, "Five people do not get to create Wikipedia policy on their own, then try to force it on others. This is still an essay until it has an actual consensus." As such, I've put back the {{proposed}} for now, and would like to hear what the objections are to this page. (Radiant) 16:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the guidelines are good, but a short summary should be provided: "If a subject is not verifiably of interest outside its own locality, but is verifiably of interest within it, it should be mentioned within the locality article and merged to it if need be. If the subject is verifiably notable outside its locality, and all policies such as verifiability and no original research can be met, it merits its own article. Seraphimblade 16:29, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure summary adequately captures to whole spirit of WP:LOCAL. I wish to note that, in my mind, the simple fact that a subject is not of interest outside of interest to its local community is not necessarily fatal to the subject having a separate article, but in such instances the article must have substantial non-directory content on the subject, otherwise the content should be merged into an article on the locality. Under all circumstances, information about subjects of local interest must conform to all content policies, including verifiability, no original research, and neutral point of view. Anyway, that's my thoughts.-- danntm ^T _C 22:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point-perhaps more like this? "If enough reliable source material exists with which to write a full and complete article on a subject, the subject should have its own article. If some verifiable information exists on a subject of local notability, but would not be enough for a full and comprehensive article, the subject should instead be covered as part of its parent locality." Would that address that adequately? Seraphimblade 00:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that a summary similar to this might be useful, although I'm not picky about the wording. I think the specific objection mentioned above is unfounded. It's not five people that are referencing this in AfD discussions; it's quite a lot of people. Second of all, the purpose of this guideline is to avoid deleting things where reasonable, although that might need to be spelled out better as above. JYolkowski // talk 00:58, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I generally agree with JYolkowski. Ideally, WP:LOCAL should discourage the creation of insubstantial stand alone articles about places of local interest, but instead encourage either adding content to the locality's article or creating those article with substantive, more thorough, content. The objection to the limited number of people participating in the development of this guideline is of limited effect, as I know of other guidelines that are shepherded by a few users. I doubt it should be a concern, because WP:LOCAL has been well advertised, with other editors free to join in and voice their opinion. Anyway, the proof of the acceptance of WP:LOCAL ultimately will be how it is applied in practice, both in article creation and in AfD outcomes.-- danntm ^T _C 02:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The problem with Seraphimblade's definition, however, lies in proving that something that something is "verifably of interest outside its own locality". The way we always determined these things until a couple of people came along recently was to ask people outside the locality, rather than engaging in increasingly arbitrary tests that have no bearing on whether something is actually notable. Rebecca 04:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree entirely. I put a draft summary into the main page, please let me know if you think that would be workable. Seraphimblade 05:08, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

(Sorry, been away for a few weeks) Since no-one's disagreed with the current rewording, I've moved this rewording up, removed the mention of AfD in the lead paragraph, and tagged this as a notability criteria guideline. Anyway, feel free to discuss further here. JYolkowski // talk 00:23, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Concern

Following this editor "A" writes an article on a significant building they decide that the street may warrant an article. They follow this guide and create a paragraph to cover the information they need without causing fluff or irrelevant information on that article. They use a single reference for that.

Along comes editor "B" comes along and writes about another place on the same street and comes to the same conclusion but this editor decides that the street might be worthy of a seperate article. They instead create a two paragraph stub from the reference they know about.

Editor "C" is doing some stub sort or ficking through random articles and come across the stub, contact edior B shows them this guideline. Editor B then expands his original article with information from the stub, then contacts editor "C" who deletes the stub.

Multiply this across another ten subjects with everybody adding a litle bit of information to individual articles, instead of editor "A" creating a stub, and everbody else linking in and add their little piece of information. What we end up with is a dozen articles with the same/similar information and nothing linking them altogether. The consider roads like Great Eastern Highway thats 550km long but within local areas only small section of 1-2km may be referred to any one article, 50 times over.

Editors being people will also follow this format for other things like plants, animals, people, places where only a passing mention is warranted. Editor "B" may have a significant piece of information or image on the article that editor "A" wrote but because they haven't linked via another article editor "B"s information never gets into that article. Gnangarra 05:18, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

• Couldn't this problem be solved by creating a bunch of sensible redirects? (Radiant) 12:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

  what are sensible redirects, redirects only point to an article they cant point to subsections, though you could create a soft redirect or Dab, but currently you'd get massacred at FA for not linking directly. This guideline doesnt say use redirects is says if you have only a small amount of information dont create a stub just include it into your article until theres enough accumulated information to create a daughter article. What I'm saying is that if red links and stub arent created then information doesnt get shared across all potential articles editor B may never know that they have information that could benefit editor A article. Even more specifically Dale is geographic feature such one person writing an article on Beverley, Western Australia may just consider the name of the Dale River (Western Australia) to have been because of that feature existed where it was first discovered and miss the connection to a significant explorer/exploration period of Westren Australia. Gnangarra 13:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Redirects to sections do work. This and several other related bugs with redirects were fixed a while ago. You can also use a category on a redrirect which exposes the redirect to more editors which improves the chance that it will be expanded. Vegaswikian 17:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Actually, I think this can be readily handled. The proposal/guideline specifies that information not deserving its own article should go into an article specific to the locality, not an article on a specific structure within the locality. Thus, information in road can go into "Anytown, Anystate" or, if the amount of information about road in the locality gets to long, "Streets in Anytown, Anystate". Anyway, major (numbered) highways often can and do have there own articles, which can be linked from locality and place of local interest articles. Thus, A's article may read, "The Foo Building is located on Old York Road."-- danntm ^T _C 18:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Churches and Malls

I do not see in this guideline much help in determining whether to keep or delete a particular mall, church, library, post office, mast, hotel, train station, bus stop, or other local instance of a ubiquitous phenomenon. People love to cut and paste from some big book or database and make hundreds of articles, just like people love to do crosswords or create row after row of knitting. But all we wind up with is a slew of stubby articles just informing us that thus and such entity is located at thus and such location. Then the source database changes, and we are left with stale and incorrect information. The person seeking a post office, train station, library, or church would be better served Googling for same in the geographic are of interest and getting their information from the source. I have seen above indignant handwaving assertions that "It is a well established precedent that all X's are deserving of an article," without any real source cited to affirm the claim. I like to see more specific guidelines which try to distinguish between the malls (WP:MALL), the churches (WP:CHURCH) etc which should have articles from the greater number which are so ordinary and non-notable that they should not, just as there are such guidelines as WP:SCHOOL and WP:PROF. Editors have shown their happiness in deleting articles about local institutions even if the articles are lengthy and well referenced, claiming that the newspaper stories are "a directory of local events," "only make a passing reference," or "are in the nature of press releases" or "only mention it briefly" in a national publication. Citing an established guideline can be a help in keeping an article in such a debate, as well as a tool for winnowing out entries no one is likely to seek out, or which are just there as advertising and to put out the link to the organization's own website. Edison 20:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

It is not, however, if - as is so often the case - only one side of the debate (and usually only a couple of people) writes the guideline, and then tries to use it to bludgeon AfD voters into voting according to their particular view. Rebecca 01:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Churches are so often more notable than just their local communities. I think churches and shopping centres should have their own guidelines for notability. JROBBO 04:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The purpose of this guideline isn't to decide whether to keep or delete a specific article, it's to suggest where information about a specific topic is best located. So, suggestions on whether to keep or delete a specific church are outside this guideline's scope. JYolkowski // talk 00:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

This has been cited by some of its authors in deletion discussions, so I don't think that's necessarily true. Moreover, when a so-called merge involves cutting out most of an article's content (as an actual article on a church wouldn't fit well merged straight into a town article, they tend to get cut down a couple of sentences), it is in effect a would-be deletion criterion. Rebecca 02:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:SCHOOLS/3 isn't a deletion guideline either but people seem to use it as such. I think I'll start picking on people who use these at AfD to better explain their "vote". Feel free to do so as well. JYolkowski // talk 18:04, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'll add a link to the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (local churches and other religious congregations), since that proposed guideline has been merged into this article. MisfitToys 01:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Railway Stations

Can we please remove railway stations from this policy? Consensus here has been at least for the last couple of years to keep all railway stations, and it's not right that suddenly we introduce them into this criterion, only to have people in favour of deleting articles everwhere to start excluding them on the basis of someone's policy here - they need their own discussion if we are going to start excluding railway station articles from Wikipedia. JROBBO 08:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Seems to me that most railway station articles (absent multiple independent instances of non-trivial coverage in reliable sources) are excellent candidates for merging, per this policy guideline. No reason for deleting them, of course, but no reason for supporting the current "forest of permastubs" either. Side note: It's odd that railway stations have gotten a relatively free pass, while schools -- which play a far more significant role in most communities -- have been hounded by calls for deletion. Visviva 09:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Definitely agree there-I think this would be an excellent way to handle them, though I don't think railway stations should get an automatic "pass" to notability any more then anything. Effectively, the "consensus" is being challenged-why shouldn't railway stations be subject to the requirement of secondary and nontrivial coverage? Seraphimblade 09:09, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Because the "guideline" is arbitrary as all hell, and railway station articles have repeatedly been found to be notable and interesting to many over the space of many years. I'm so fed up with this attitude - seemingly only developed in the last three months of "oh, it doesn't interest me, therefore I want it deleted, and I'm going to use the excuse of their lack of references, despite the fact that nearly the whole encyclopedia lacks references, to single out this particular topic for deletion". Rebecca 11:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Curious-do you believe the lack of references is not a problem, or that if it is it shouldn't be worked on? Also, I'm curious how the notability guideline is arbitrary-it seems to me a pretty logical application of WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:CITE. Those say if part of an article is unverifiable it doesn't belong, seems a pretty reasonable extension to say that if the whole article can't be reliably sourced it doesn't belong. I don't believe this is a question of interest (it certainly isn't for me, and I've in fact !voted keep in AfD subjects which don't interest me a bit because they're sourced and delete in those which do, due to the existence and use of or lack of sources respectively), it's about sourcing. Seraphimblade 11:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

This isn't about sourcing, and it isn't about the material being unverifiable. No one is seriously suggesting that just about any of these articles have any information that is factually incorrect, nor is anyone suggesting that the material in these articles can't be referenced. The vast majority of the encyclopedia is unsourced at present, including topics - particularly biographies of living persons, controversial topics, and academic and technical content - where sources are very badly (and urgently) needed to avoid negative real-world ramifications. These are the topics where any genuine reference effort would be aimed, but they're not. Rather, the excuse of referencing is being used to attempt to subvert long-standing notability consensuses and try and get topics which a couple of very concerted editors aren't interested in and have decided must be deleted as a result. This is wasting valuable time that could be spent on much more important projects in the hope of furthering deletion games, which is frankly pathetic. Rebecca 11:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Believe me, that attitude is much older than three months. See WP:OSTRICH, WP:ILIKEIT, et cetera. But please note that this guideline does not advocate deletion, except for articles which appear to be both unsourced and unsourceable. Instead, it advocates merging (or adding information to existing articles). This is an important distinction; unfortunately there are a lot of AfD regulars who prefer to vote "delete" even when a merge is obviously what's called for. -- Visviva 11:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It isn't a case whatsoever of these articles being unsourceable. It is a means of taking advantage of the fact that these articles - like the rest of the encyclopedia - are unsourced, to get them deleted. This is because sourcing takes time. For many of these articles, this may require an editor with access to one of a handful of libraries to take time out of their schedule to go and research books and other sources, which is in many cases not going to happen in whatever week someone arbitrarily decides to nominate an article for deletion in. I'm positive you'd find the same if you targeted any other series of articles on Wikipedia. This is why it is a question of deletion, and has bugger all to do with getting articles sourced. If you want it sourced, tag it with an unsourced tag, or even better, track down an editor interested in that topic and ask them personally to do it; if you want the article deleted, nominate it for deletion.

And please don't give me nonsense about merging being some sort of compromise alternative - merging is deletion under another name, does not usually involve any consensus (unlike deletion), often involves losing much of the content, and has the downside (unlike even deletion) in that it salts the earth (at least for anyone who isn't fairly familiar with the MediaWiki software) for an article ever being created on that topic again. Rebecca 11:46, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I've seen many articles here which are indeed sourced. I would also call attention to this part of WP:V, which is longstanding, established policy:

"The obligation to provide a reliable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it."

Let's say an article were deleted through AfD, or merged, while an editor were searching for sources. A month later, (s)he runs across some sourcing which establishes verifiability and notability. Great! Article gets recreated-inclusionists are happy. Article is properly sourced, notability is established-deletionists are happy. The only way to solve the lack-of-sourcing problem is to change the culture of "Eh, I'm sure what I know is right, it'll probably get sourced sometime. If I'm wrong someone will correct it." I've got my full support behind the 14-day deletion criteria for unsourced articles-though if I had my way, "completely unsourced" would be a 100% genuine "shoot-on-sight" speedy deletion reason. I realize, however, that this would never achieve consensus. I think that guidelines such as this one and the 14-day proposal are good compromises-they provide some time, but at the same time they don't give a "wink and nod" to unsourced information. The verifiability guideline summation is pretty clear, though-if you want to keep the information in, the sourcing burden is on you, not on someone who doesn't know your subject from a hole in the ground and has no way to know if you're right or wrong. Seraphimblade 12:04, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It is *not* a matter of "I'm sure what I know is right, it'll probably get sourced sometime". It is a matter that what is there is right, that no one is actually questioning or calling into the slightest question the veracity of the content, but people are trying to use the lack of sources to circumvent notability consensuses. As I said, if you want an article sourced, put on an unsourced tag, or ask a knowledgeable editor - if you want an article deleted, nominate it for deletion. If you don't write articles much, you may not realise this, but research that isn't via Google takes time. If you actually dispute or question material in any of these articles, I will happily do my best to find a source urgently. That's what the guideline above is for. As you noted, there is no consensus to have a 14-day deletion criteria for deletion of unsourced articles, yet this is what you're trying to apply here. Nice try, but no cigar. (For the record, I'm in favour of something similar, because I do want to see Wikipedia as a whole get sourced, but I'm sick and tired of it arbitrarily only being applied to tiny subsets which particular groups want deleted, not sourced). Rebecca 22:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

<--- moving left for space

One thing I find disconcerting is that nobody has taken the time to list this discussion at WP:TRAINS, yet once a consensus is advocated to have been reached many articles that are the result of editors who are editing solely within this particular area will find Merge/AFD/PROD/Speedy delete tags appearing on articles of interest claiming that consensus was reached to delete these articles. Given that most railway(train) station articles have the {{TrainsWikiProject}} banner on the discussion pages, such a courtesy would create a more reflective consensus. Gnangarra 14:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The only one of those tags that would even possibly be justified by this guideline, as currently written, is {{merge}}. Does seem like a good idea, though; and perhaps not just trains, but other WikiProjects that focus on items of strongly local interest. -- Visviva 15:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I think I'd have to agree with distinguishing railway stations from this guideline and maintaining the current precedent of keeping such article. Most train stations tend to be not only of local concern, but of regional or even national relevance because they serve railroad lines. As for merging, merging is viable on when the article to be merged from has minimal directy-like information. When the article is more detailed, it is not well suited to being condensed into another article. Although the underlying message of this policy is still pertinent: it is best practice to develop non-directory information, with sourcing, in article on train stations. However, it has never been our practice to delete or merge away the articles train stations of simply because the article could be more then they are, and I see no reason to change that practice.-- danntm ^T _C 17:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

I've removed mention of railway stations here (except in the "see also"; if anyone wants to remove that go ahead). Not that tiny ones couldn't necessarily be merged if people wanted to, but if it doesn't really reflect actual practice then they probably don't need to specifically be mentioned here. JYolkowski // talk 20:15, 26 December 2006 (UTC)