Talk:List of towns in Malta

Article to delete

• the article does not have a single source, totally break Wikipedia:Verifiability
• 100% of article is Wikipedia:original research + even name of article is clear OR. The article lists all areas, historical settlements, housing estates and even the modern administrative divisions and all of this are called as towns.
• there is more corrected article of List of localities in Malta about this topic.

I insert to article relevant templates +Prod. This article breaks 2 of the three main Wikipedia rules (see: Wikipedia:Core content policies) and is a duplicate. Such an article should be removed from Wikipedia as soon as possible because it brings shame to the entire project. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 08:43, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

@Subtropical-man: Sorry, I told you I was typing up a rather long and complex statement and it would take me a while. We wound up edit conflicting. See below. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:17, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Reverted prod

Subtropical-man proposed this article for deletion on 9 July 2022 on grounds of its being a hoax and redundant to List of localities in Malta. I removed the prod because it's not a hoax, although it may rest on a translation problem, and what is to happen requires careful consideration.

This article has a long history. It was created on 4 May 2008 by Seanjmarshall74. Its original form had the heraldic emblems of the places, rather like the table at Local councils of Malta. On 25 July 2010, it was redirected by Kinginformation to List of towns in Malta and Gozo. Kinginformation had created that article 10 days previously, on 15 July 2010. On 27 November 2017, Subtropical-man (the same editor who just proposed deletion of the article as a hoax), switched which one redirected to which, with edit summaries stating correctly that this article had been the first of the two to be created. However, instead of reverting the redirect as he stated in his edit summary here, he appears to have copied here the text that had been at List of towns in Malta and Gozo (including the unexplained Italian nicknames(?) that an IP had added on 13 March 2013 and that also appear, with correct letter à, at Local councils of Malta). No matter what happens with this article—and the current redirect, List of towns in Malta and Gozo, which appears to be more accurately titled insofar as this article also includes Gozo—tehre is an attribution problem there. If this article winds up being redirected, that needs to be remedied with a note on the talk page of the target article.

Local councils of Malta is even older; it was created on 14 December 2002 by Zoe. List of localities in Malta was created by Tsum60 on 7 June 2007, so it, too, predates this article. Oddly enough, it was created with an unreferenced tag dated November 2006, so possibly there is also a deleted article that was recreated? Or perhaps Tsum60 was just copying the format of another article?

Anyway, we have three articles and history of a fourth, and that is at least two too many. I suggest redirecting this article, but I'm not sure whether it should be merged to Local councils of Malta or to List of localities in Malta. I personally think both this article and List of localities in Malta should be merged to Local councils of Malta, since it's both the oldest and reflects the organisation of the country (Subtropical-man's stated concern), but there may be information about smaller settlements that needs to be merged into it, and "localities" may be an equally valid article; I really don't know enough about Malta to know whether we should have both articles. I'm going to also ping Squared.Circle.Boxing, because they noted the existence of this article at AN/I and may have some input. I suggest someone also notify the 3 WikiProjects listed above. Yngvadottir (talk) 09:17, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir:, reading the above post I have the impression that the only rational reason for removing Prod is... the history of changes. I want to clarify a few issues for people who do not know Malta. First: Malta officially has no cities, towns etc, Malta is officially divided olny into 68 administrative units known as "local councils". This division functions in both the law and the constitution. There should be a separate article about it, and it does exist: Local councils of Malta. This article should not be integrated with any other article like List of localities in Malta. In Malta, there are many (historical) settlements that are part of these 68 administrative units. There should be a separate article about it, and it does exist: List of localities in Malta... and that's it. Nothing else is needed. These are two correct articles, with correct names - one describes the official administrative division, the other one describes historical settlements and residential areas.

As for the name List of towns in Malta and Gozo (now as redirect), it is logically wrong. Malta is counrtry, Gozo is one of the islands of this country. If anyone wants to try to make this type of name, the name should be: "List of towns in the islands: Malta and Gozo" or "List of towns in Malta and Gozo islands". However, the names of the settlements in the islands are not used in Wikipedia as standard, but in the states - in standard. So, The correct name is List of localities in Malta (which cover the whole country), no/without Gozo name in the article title. Naame with "Gozo" sounds exactly the same as "List of localities in the United States and Alaska". Strange and illogical name.

Third point: this article (List of towns in Malta) does not have even a single source, totally break Wikipedia:Verifiability, also 100% of article is Wikipedia:original research + even name of article is clear OR. The article lists all areas, historical settlements, housing estates and even the modern administrative divisions and all of this are called as towns. If you create a completely wrong article that does not comply with Wikipedia rules, the history of changes does not matter, the article should be deleted. I understand that you want to save the history of changes, but that doesn't make sense because this is the history of changes of the wrong article. I, too, once created some skyscrapers articles that did not meet Wikipedia requirements and they were removed by deleting the revision history of my contribution. And rightly so: the article does not meet the requirements and breaks Wikipedia rules - it must be deleted along with the history of changes, which is deleted automatically. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 09:52, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

I came back here to clarify that what I'm proposing is redirecting one or more articles, not merging the histories; I should have used "redirect" rather than "merge" except for the concern that there might be small settlements not mentioned at the Local councils of Malta article. I understand you prefer to delete this article (and, presumably, List of towns in Malta and Gozo, but I see no need for that. Neither article is completely wrong; they use terminology that Malta does not officially use for its settlements. Both articles were created in good faith and edited by many editors (including you, in 2017). And for people outside Malta, "towns" is a plausible search term.

You say both the local councils and the localities articles are needed; but couldn't the smaller localities be covered by listing them within the local councils that govern them? Yngvadottir (talk) 10:10, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir: Yes, I think is best option is delete the article - however, if you care so much about redirecting it to List of localities in Malta, I agree. The fact is, the article can't stay on Wikipedia because it violates 100% of the two most important Wikipedia rules: Wikipedia:Core content policies.

I quote: "You say both the local councils and the localities articles are needed; but couldn't the smaller localities be covered by listing them within the local councils that govern them? " - no. The article is about the administrative division of the whole country, inserting 200 settlements and housing estates into the main article may result in poor readability of the article. Of course, if you want, you can discuss your idea in another discussion thread. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 10:22, 10 July 2022 (UTC)