Wikipedia talk:Places of local interest/Archive 2

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: Consensus..when? How many people voted? Was it advertised? Sorry I'm late to the party.--Ling.Nut 23:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, he was suggesting we vote to reach consensus.   =)   --Nehwyn 05:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

text: *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)
replies: text:  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)

text: "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)
thread_title:  Consensus 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Large cities 

message: 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)
replies: text: The presence or absence of inclusion criteria, for one, is quite an easy difference to spot.   --Nehwyn 12:43, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, but WP:FICT (one of our oldest notability guidelines) doesn't have them either. (Radiant) 13:50, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "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)

text: *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)
thread_title: Notability?

message: 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:
# the first service station in the nation
# the first service station in a region of that nation
# the first service station in a city
# the first service station on a given road
--Nehwyn 18:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Where do we draw the line?

message: 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)
thread_title:  [[Gladys the Swiss Dairy Cow]] 

message: 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  for now, and would like to hear what the objections are to this page. (Radiant) 16:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text:  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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: (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)
replies: text: Not quite agreement here: I have not taken part in this discussion before, but anyway I think this policy can be improved.  I think this policy should be clearly written as 1) primarily advice to make local articles better 2) secondarily advice that local articles will probably be deleted (and should be) if they are only a stub since the primary advice is to start them as  part of the community page 3) to mention that this is not an exception to the primary notability criteria. I believe we all want more GOOD articles on things of local notability.  But we dont want this policy to become a reason to keep stubs on every local mast.  I think we need to be clear on how this policy should be used in AFD debates - as it stands now it is un clear - at least to simple ole me. The only way - to me- this should be used in an AFD debate is if it can be shown that the article emerged from a community article.  If it is a "fresh" article then only the primary and other notability criteria should apply. Obina 22:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to agree-and even then, merge (if there is sourced information but not enough for an article) and redirection right back to the community article would likely be more appropriate then outright deletion. Unsourced information, however, should not be merged or remain-if the unreferenced/poorly referenced information is not gotten rid of until and unless sourced, this guideline would be pointless. Seraphimblade 00:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Consensus? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Concern 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: WP:LOCAL is effectively a guide for deleting most of the content about something such as a mall or church and giving it a brief mention in an article on the town. This will have a big effect on the length of many articles, if all churches are even given a mention by name. Many towns have lots and lots of churches. I picked several small to medium sized towns around the country to see how long the articles are without including the churches, and how much longer the articles would be if each church in the town were even mentioned by name. For 6 small to medium towns the average was a church for every 200 or so population, with a huge range.  Mesick, Michigan, a town of 447 population had a 374 word article and 9 churches. When I simply listed the churches in the town I found by Googling it added 38 words, or 10% to the article. I was going to include links to the churches' websites, but in this town none of them had their own websites. Other little towns where I did not actually add the churches would have a 450 word article expand 48% to include a listing of its 47 churches. A larger town of 70,000 would have its 2200 word article expand 18% to even mention its 100 churches. If each church had to include  cites to "multiple independent verifiable and reliable sources" to get even mention in an article on the town, fewer churches would be included, but the section of the article would probably remain about the same length because more would likely be said about each such church. I expect that editors who edit the town articles and watchlist them might want to delete the newly added church info from the article on the town for about the same reasons expressed in AfDs about the stand-alone articles for the churches, that each is just another nonnotable church and that they find the church info boring.   Edison 23:52, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 1.  As I understand it this guideline is designed to help prevent such verifiable information from being deleted.  2.  In cases such as you describe with churches, it might make the most sense to create a subarticle such as "Religion in Fooville" or "List of churches in Fooville."  Creating substubs with no potential for expansion is a recipe for deletion; survey articles of manageable scope are highly unlikely to be deleted; of course, the criteria for inclusion/exclusion must still be agreed.  -- Visviva 00:54, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Churches and Malls