Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:21, 19 November 2006

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. Misplaced Pages 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 "Misplaced Pages 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:Misplaced Pages 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 _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 _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 Misplaced Pages. 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 _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 _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 Misplaced Pages 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 Misplaced Pages 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 _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 _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 (Misplaced Pages: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. If we're talking about "indicriminate" reverts, how about these by Rebecca, where she reverted me placing a {{prod2}} tag , or reverting my addition of {{primarysources}} tags to articles which clearly deserved them, as there were no references aside from their own commercial websites . --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 02:39, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully the article has been written in Misplaced Pages: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 _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 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 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)