Talk:Remsen Village, Brooklyn

Notability tag

I have placed a {{notability}} tag on this page because it doesn't really seem like a standalone neighborhood.

• The lead begins with Although Remsen Village has been described as a "subsection of the larger East Flatbush neighborhood," with an estimated 60,000 residents. it has it own identity as "the Remsen Village neighborhood of Brooklyn" and also as "Rugby-Remsen Village. Is this an article about Remsen Village or a List of reasons why Remsen Village is a separate neighborhood?
• Most of the sources seem to be real estate listings, which aren't necessarily reliable sources for the name of a neighborhood. E.g NY Times listings or City-Data (both are real estate aggregators)
• Many of the other mentions to Remsen Village are "crime" articles.
• Source #17 is the only source for "Other recognition". But it's a blog, which are not necessarily reliable sources. And definitely not for the fact that a neighborhood exists.
• Likewise, There also is a "Remsen Village" (with a 2012 population of 650 people) in Oneida County, New York; the village is part of the town of Remsen. is irrelevant.
• There are really spurious data to back up the existence of "Remsen Village" as a standalone neighborhood. For instance, the relevant text from source #18 is used to back up the naming of Remsen Avenue. But the sentence about the avenue is a coatrack of this article, as the road isn't exclusive to this neighborhood specifically.
• I'm pretty sure source #21, used to back up the fact that One real-estate source referred to Flatbush having "eleven neighborhoods" "many no larger than a few square blocks;" Remsen Village is much larger. is actually an opinion piece. It's part of a piece called "8 “Official” Brooklyn Neighborhoods We Refuse to Recognize" and is categorized under a headline titled "No Fuckin' Way".

I get that Remsen Village is a large enough subsection to warrant its own census tract. That's not why the article has a notability tag. I put the tag there because the sources are at best spurious and at worst unreliable. As I see it, this article is basically quoting sources that say Remsen Village is a separate neighborhood - and in doing so, fails to explain why this is a standalone neighborhood. epicgenius (talk) 12:45, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

In response to putting a Notability tag "because it doesn't really seem like a standalone neighborhood" I thank you for giving me the answer to why the tag should be removed:

"Most of the sources seem to be real estate listings, which aren't necessarily reliable sources for the name of a neighborhood."

Much money is behind the marketing of real estate, and even more money is spent/invested by buyers, whether to

• live in the home purchased
• rent it out
• flip it.

Surveys, which in turn are cited, are helpful in understanding what is done, but the money talks answer seems like a rebuttal to much of what you've written.

Perhaps the notability issue can be resolved by answering the question

what features in Remsen Village make it important to the surrounding area?

1: Kings County Hospital - one may locate a big-box store a few miles away to save on real estate, but that is not a good idea if the cost is lives. LOCATION, the Real Estate strongpoint, works here too.

2: Downstate Medical Center - reinforces #1, and adds "Brooklyn’s only medical school" with a bonus point: "serve East Flatbush’s residents."

NYC has closed and tried to close hospitals in many locations. An example is Coney Island Hospital. One strong point that kept it open was service to surrounding areas.

The article may need more work to better highlight these points, but the notability tag

is not needed except to perhaps push for better sourcing of these points. Pi314m (talk) 20:11, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Pi314m, Thanks for explaining why we need a tag. (Not sarcastic - I do appreciate your answer but I think that we need a tag of some sort.) Real estate listings are exactly the reason why there is such a big issue for this article. There is a reasoning behind this - which is to sell/rent as many houses as possible. And how do they make the listing unique? - it's by dividing a decent sized neighborhood into ten smaller neighborhoods.

Also, the hospitals you mention aren't unique to Remsen Village in particular. In fact they are more associated with East Flatbush. epicgenius (talk) 20:27, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

I see what you're saying re "we need a tag of some sort" and while "More footnotes" (which is orange) may not be the best one in the template arsenal of HatNotes, for now I'm doing the "has a hammer, so the woodscrew gets hammered."

As for "decent sized neighborhood into ten smaller neighborhoods" there's more of knock down 2 fully detached/land around each & squish three or even five into the same space, which in turn may lead to less neighborliness.

As for the hospital matter, what come to mind are Caledonian (Brooklyn, closed 2003) and Cabrini (Manhattan, closed 2008) - there were protests about closing, but in the end they did close, whereas the Remsen Village facilities were/are also serving East Flatbush. Pi314m (talk) 03:10, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Pi314m, All right, fair point about the hospitals. I still have concerns about the reliability of the sources, however. For example, you cited Wikipedia as a source ... this very page, in fact. That's not allowed per WP:BLOGS, as it's a self-generated source and kind of refers on this page's existence to be included. Also, real estate listings like this and this don't provide any information about Remsen Village, just that there is a home being sold in the area and that real estate agents are using the label.

On the other hand, if you want to have a source like the Neighborhoods of Brooklyn (which is considered pretty reliable) or a NY Times article that makes more than a passing mention of Remsen Village, I would not have a problem with that. My main issue is that these sources are used to demonstrate only one thing: people refer to Remsen Village sometimes. There's no way of telling if they actually think it's a separate neighborhood, or just an alternate name for East Flatbush, as this person thinks. epicgenius (talk) 00:49, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Also pinging Elmidae since they have also edited this article recently. epicgenius (talk) 00:50, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

I did a NPP once-over (basically, does this seem likely to survive an AfD) and reviewed on that basis. You guys are way deeper into specific source issues already, and outside my bailiwick. I probably won't have much productive to add at this point. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 01:59, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

What about the "Remsen Village Community Council" (as of 1975 had been functioning for eight years)? Pi314m (talk) 08:47, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

(+) The "an alternate name..." noted above is a letter to the editor that says "has had a name change." That seems to acknowledge Remsen Village, and even says "has been given the name of..."

Unreliable seems a bit harsh. Per my agreement (above) with your "I think that we need a tag of some sort" - why not for now have something between an "Unreliable" HatNote and Elmidae's DeTag/no HatNote, namely ""More footnotes" Pi314m (talk) 06:40, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

This article def. does seem out of place and agree with @epicgenius on pretty much all of their points. | MK17b | (talk) 21:09, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I have now redirected the page again. The article, unfortunately, seems to suffer from a great deal of WP:SYNTH or WP:OR, even after I trimmed down the fluff. As of this revision, most of the sources provided only mention Remsen Village in passing and were used to justify the page's existence, rather than providing encyclopedic context. Furthermore, I'm afraid many of the references don't actually support the content that they purport to verify. I picked three random examples of the article, and all of them failed verification.

• Use of the name Remsen Village by residents and local organizations began before the 1970s - The source is an advertisement in a newspaper. The fact that an advertisement is used as a source for such a sweeping claim, as opposed to WP:ABOUTSELF info, is bad enough. But the advertisement is for the Remsen Village Community Council. Not once does the advertisement refer to an actual neighborhood - that is just the name for an organization. It's like using a New York Times advertisement to support the claim that there are places called New York.
• The name is used as a geographic unit in Brooklyn encompassing a 2+ mile distance - The source is literally a news article on a crime. It says Last night, Mr. Berryman's relatives crowded into his mother and stepfather's home on East 58th Street in Remsen Village. This is not only not WP:SIGCOV but also utterly fails to verify the info about the distance.
• Brooklyn has a Remsen Street in one neighborhood (Brooklyn Heights), and a Remsen Avenue in another (Canarsie); both are named after a Dutch family "that was among the early settlers of" - The source mentions that there was a family surnamed Remsen. This source does verify the cited content: Remsen Village is a subsection of East New York that takes its name from Remsen Avenue, which cuts through the ’hood like a vertex through a triangle. (The Remsens were a family of Dutch settlers whose New Amsterdam roots go back to the 17th century; they also lend their name to Remsen Street in Brooklyn Heights.). However, the existence of two streets named after the Remsens is a non-sequitur; it would suffice to say that Remsen Village is named for Remsen Avenue. In addition, the source says that Remsen Avenue runs through the neighborhood, which is yet another case of failed verification.

Moreover, there is currently very little info in the article about the neighborhood itself; even the history section is very bare-bones. The population and "geographic recognition" sections, combined, contain barely two lines of actual information. Other articles with this type of thin sourcing have been sent to WP:AFD and deleted. The article will have to be completely rewritten before it can be split again. – Epicgenius (talk) 12:58, 23 March 2023 (UTC)