Wikipedia talk:Places of local interest/Archive 2

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)

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)

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)

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)
  • Categories help a lot too. One can ofen find two articles that should be connected - or even two articles that are the same topic with differnt names - when things are put in categories.Obina 21:42, 7 January 2007 (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)

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)

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)

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)

Actualy this section Wikipedia:Places_of_local_interest#Dealing_with_problem_articles states all of those tags, Gnangarra 00:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

But only for cases where the article has remained without any form of verification, despite requests, for an extended period. Surely that isn't controversial? -- Visviva 01:13, 28 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 directory-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)

Thanks danntm, that reflects my concerns completely. Thank you also, JYolkowski, for removing the stations part from this criteria. I think this set of criteria is far more suited to articles on local shops, parks, streets, etc. that have purely local notability and need to be judged completely on their local value. JROBBO 22:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to JROBBO for the compliment, and I want to thank JYolkowski for being open to adapting the guideline.-- danntm ^T _C 02:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I guess I've misunderstood slightly. Regular long-distance train stations are frequently, perhaps usually, notable (much like schools), and a careful search will almost always turn up some good sources. As such, this guideline doesn't apply to them any more than to any other well-documented local features. But in my experience, the majority of station articles on Wikipedia are subway stations; it's far less clear that most of these can be anything but list entries. The arguments that apply to most train stations don't seem to apply to most subway stations. For instance, here is an interesting recent debate from my own back yard, which was closed as delete (but actually redirected): Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yeouinaru Station. -- Visviva 01:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC) Side note: The fact that I had no way of finding out about this debate reminds me why I started Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting. Maybe I should give that another try...

It's important to note that the nominator of that AfD tried to nominate 11 more stations on that same Korean subway system - collectively at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Singil Station - using the Yeouinaru Station AfD as "precendent", but the consensus all 11 stations was decidedly Keep. --Oakshade 01:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That's an intriguing point. Looking at the deletion debate specified, many of the !votes were for keep, and the closing admin focused not on notability but on sourcing. Thus, I am not source how useful that would be as a precedent. However, I do know that merging subway station articles to the locality's article would not be feasible (can you imagine the content of 53 subway station in Philadelphia). Nonetheless, the underlying theme of WP:LOCAL remains pertinent, that it is prudent to develop articles on train stations and mass transit stations as much as feasible.-- danntm ^T _C 03:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Re Philadelphia: True, but it is much easier to imagine them being merged into a more appropriate target such as Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. It's even easier to imagine them being merged into a specific line article like Market-Frankford Line, which in fact seems to contain most of the encyclopedic information about its stations. Likewise Yeouinaru Station was redirected to Seoul Subway Line 5, not to Seoul. By the way, there is an effort to use that decision as precedent, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Singil Station. -- Visviva 11:40, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see why it would be a problem to merge a group of short articles into a more comprehensive treatise on e.g. the railway line. >Radiant< 12:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

• Expect to be very rapidly reverted if you do. Rebecca 13:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Why? >Radiant< 13:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Because those of us who have spent lots of time expanding these into decent articles over the years do not appreciate you salting the earth for anyone new to get involved for, well, no reason apart from you getting up this morning and feeling like it. Rebecca 23:49, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
      • Where did anyone encourage salting??? I would even be against that, but I can't find a single reference to that-strawman, perhaps? I imagine Radiant's proposal is to merge as standard-merge the article into its parent and leave a redirect from the merged article. I don't see any proposal that even involves deleting the old content, much less salting. As to which should be merged, I see no reason to merge decent articles. The main issue here is a load of unreferenced stubs/substubs, in which there really isn't enough referenced information to expand the article to stand on its own. Why not merge it, leave it as a redirect, and then recreate later if more source material comes available? Seraphimblade 23:55, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
        • As I've pointed out repeatedly, your attempts to claim that because no one has expanded the article thusfar and you couldn't find anything in a thirty-second Google search, there is nothing to say, is nonsense. Every state and territory, to my knowledge, has multiple books on rail history - from my experience with writing articles about Melbourne, you could find interesting material about basically any station on the network. Merging the articles has the effect of salting the earth with regards to their expansion; if you merge these articles, there is virtually no possibility of getting new interested editors in (which is how the Melbourne and London projects were successful), since the articles they might have expanded don't exist anymore, lengthy work about individual stations looks silly in line articles, and crucially, new editors are not going to know how to unmerge articles. Unless an experienced editor happens to be the one who takes an interest, merging is a death sentence for any prospect of a decent article on that topic. Rebecca 08:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

• (dedent) I find these statements very strange. Merging has nothing to do with either death sentences or salting. It's simply that a good list article is better and more comprehensive than a dozen permastubs (we have featured lists for a reason). We are writing for our readers, and not for the convenience of our editors. >Radiant< 09:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I explained why merging is a death sentence for any prospect of getting a good article on that subject in the future, though I'm not surprised you ignored it. A good list article doesn't tell people much at all, and really isn't much use for people who, unlike yourself, are actually interested in articles about train stations. What is actually of use are decent, informative articles, such as we have for the entire London Metro, and have been slowly getting for numerous systems around the world - Melbourne has quite a few good ones, as does Hong Kong, and they've been slowly developing in other cities too. We are writing for our readers, but if you prevent good content from being written in the first place, it won't be there for them to read at all. Rebecca 09:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Are you seriously suggesting that these articles don't tell people much at all? >Radiant< 10:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
      • If I am interested in train stations, a list that informs me that "X station is on X line", with a couple of checkboxes about station facilities, is utterly pointless. An article that informs me about that station's history and architecture is likely to be far more useful for such a reader. Remember, we're writing this encyclopedia for the readers. Yet merging these articles virtually salts the earth for any possibility of that ever being written on any station article which doesn't have it already (and thus are ablehold off being merged), except in the event that an experienced editor happens to be the one to take an interest in expansion and undoes the merges at a later date. It is also pertinent to note that virtually every featured list that I've ever seen has had wikilinks to articles on all topics in that list, which would not be able to occur if you had merged all the articles out of existence. Rebecca 10:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
        • I'm not talking about a simple list of "X station is on X line", I'm talking about a list with more information, like this one. That doesn't salt anything, and lengthy sections can be and have been broken out. Not every station has enough history and uniqueness to it to create an encyclopedic article on the topic, leading to stubs like this one. By the way it's far from true that featured lists link to a group of articles, e.g. this one doesn't, and neither does this. >Radiant< 11:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Rebecca on this point. There are several good reasons for keeping stations in their own articles. First of all, individual stations are independent geographic and historical concepts. They may have substantially different history from each other, or different architecture. To take Pittsburgh's light rail network, you can have stations which are a newly-built part of the "T" and stations which exist from the old Castle Shannon railroad days. Lumping them into one list seems counter-productive (for one thing, you'll have a hell of a long list). Splitting stations into separate articles also allows one to create a sense of geographic expression, through the use of succession boxes (from this station to that station). Speaking from experience, it is tricky to properly express the idea of a junction in the kind of list being proposed. Stations may also belong to one or more lines, which might not even be operated by the same transit company. In that case, we either duplicate the information on multiple lists (yay, forking!), or we place it all in one station article. Furthermore, any station that still exists is an obvious candidate for the creation of free images. Finally, once we start splitting out some stations, it makes sense to split them all out for consistency. Mackensen (talk) 14:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

What you're saying sounds great stylistically! However, the thing is that style should never trump substance, and consistency should never trump sourcing. If enough well-sourced material can be gotten together about each individual station for an article, that's great! In principle. The issue here is that it's not happening in practice-and in haste to "complete the line" or maintain "consistency", sometimes people forget there are some issues with these articles. If the article absolutely must be created "at once", have it redirect to the article on the main line until enough sourced material is gotten together-I'm not sure about this "salting" bit Rebecca brings up, redirects have their full edit history preserved to be brought back anytime. But there's really no need for massive farms of "ABC station is a station on XYZ railroad line in Podunk, Somewhere." Rebecca claims the railroad writers are being "picked on" somehow unfairly here, but for me, at least, that's not my intent-it's time to change every editor's culture against creating unreferenced stubs/substubs, the railroad articles just happen to be one of the worst offenders in that particular area. If anything, it would be blatantly unfair to say "Don't create unreferenced substubs unless it has to do with railroads." And in some cases, it may be possible to source some of a group of things (railroad stations, CD's a band's released, whatever) enough for an article, and not others. I'm not sure what the phobia is there-some would be handled by listing in the parent (band/railroad line/etc.) article, others handled in their own articles. The real "consistency" should be that only subjects that have enough source material to write a full article, get a full article, and that others are handled appropriately-case by case, not "notability by association". Seraphimblade 15:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Look, I'm as keen on getting articles referenced as you are, and I was fighting the battle against substubs long before you came to Wikipedia. It is pretty clear, IMO, that enough sourced material exists to write articles on most, if not all of these topics, and actually having *something* there has, as much as I initially fought against it, had the definite effect of having new users to go and expand the articles.

As for the "salting", you're missing my point altogether. I know you and I can undo the redirect should we want to expand the article, but many new users don't know that this is possible, or even if they do, don't know how to do it. The effect is that, for anyone other than an experienced Wikipedian, you are salting the earth as to actually having them expand the articles. As many of the less developed projects need to get new people involved to make serious progress, you are, in effect, by merging them, salting the earth on getting good articles at all. Moreover, as Mackensen rightly points out, trying to merge them into a list doesn't make any organisational sense either.

These articles are all verifiable by reliable sources should people take the time, but I'm sick of users taking advantage of the fact that no one has (like most of the other articles on this project) bothered to do so to get them deleted, realising that, although they can't win an argument about notability, they can simply lie and claim that "no sources exist" when no one has the opportunity to produce them in the five days of an AfD. For gods sake, give them time. There is no compelling reason to single out railway stations for being unreferenced when there are utter myriads of living person articles that remain unreferenced, many with controversial statements uncited. Rebecca 15:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If we went about and deleted every unreferenced article we would lose about three-quarters of the encyclopedia and most of our contributors. Your position is a non-starter. The question is whether an article can be verified or not. We delete articles that are unverifiable, in the sense that sources do not exist and cannot be found. Sources can be found for these articles. In addition, some information, such as location, routes of service and other such statistics, do not require specific sourcing as that information is known generally. I don't need a footnote to prove that a railway station is at a specific place. It's right there. I'm not asking for special treatment; quite the opposite. I'm telling you why there's nothing wrong with an article on a railway station, and why a merge would be counter-productive. Each station in the line provides the bare bones for a great article. Mackensen (talk) 15:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

(In response to Rebecca) I think we probably agree more than most looking on would imagine. As to what you're saying-all I'm asking is that people go to the trouble. If someone wants to do "ABC station is a train station on XYZ line", cite the transit authority website while the book comes in on library loan. No big deal-and I'd be entirely against AfD'ing/merging it in that type of case! (At least immediately-I'm more than willing to "give it some time" if someone's looking for sources, but there comes a point at which we have to say "Look, if you haven't found one in three months, there's not much on this thing, and WP:NOT a directory. Merge it back.) My main problem is with the "Eh, who cares?" attitude toward sourcing, seen in the comment right below yours, which I'll respond to now...

(In response to Mackensen) Quick, without looking-what is the location of every train station in the US? I'm guessing you don't know? "Common knowledge" refers to things like "The United States is a country on the continent of North America", that is effectively indisputable and so trivial to source that it's effectively unnecessary. And if someone does challenge that, it's easy to slap a couple sources in. Why? Because the knowledge is common! It's not meant to get out of sourcing things that it'd be hard to-that means the knowledge isn't common at all! I have no idea if some railway station in Japan exists where someone says it does. For that matter, I don't know where all of them are in Seattle. And I would venture a guess that isn't information most people know off the top of their head. Therefore, it's not common knowledge, and must be sourced. (Of course, many such things could be sourced easily off of the transit authority's website, I imagine most such would provide a map with such basic details on stations). Even so, though, while that makes a decent start to an article, it doesn't make a very good finish. If some train station article (or, for that matter, any article) has been languishing at substub status for months, it should be deleted or merged back in (as appropriate), and recreated if people find better source material further down the line (no pun intended!).

So, to finish up-as tautological as it sounds, the way we establish that sourcing is required is by insisting that sourcing is required. Even for something we personally know is "right there". This will also begin to address the very valid BLP issues that Rebecca brings up-if we're in the habit of absolutely requiring sources for information, the addition of unsourced negative information (about anyone or anything) will be a much more distinctive red flag and be more likely to be noticed and questioned. But in order to do such a culture shift, it has to be across the board. And sometimes that will mean some hiccups (such as the stylistic ones Mackensen brings up, and the "salting" issue Rebecca brings up), sometimes that will get in the way of someone's idea of the ideal style for an article or series of them. I do get the "salting" bit you mean now-although to some degree that's good, it would mean a brand-new user would be more likely to say "HEY! I want to create an article about XYZ Train Station, but when I type that in it sends me to ABC Rail Line! There's a bug!!!" A more experienced contributor is then able to say "Well hey! That's no bug, and you can create your article, but before you do, what kind of source material do you have?" Joe Newuser-"Source whosawhatsit?" Jack Experience-"Well, see here's the thing, you have to source new content...". An idealized situation, perhaps, but if we're really serious about getting the sourcing problem changed, it's a necessary one. Seraphimblade 16:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This is all very nice and I generally agree in principle, but it doesn't explain the decision to start with railway stations, one of the least controversial and least disputed areas on the entire project. The merges wouldn't make stylistic sense and would badly inhibit the development of the area, so it seems like a pretty illogical place to try and start a crusade, when there's swathes of living persons articles that badly need sources right now.

As for the sourcing issues, people have multiple projects. I'm probably capable, if I dedicated, say, the next three months, of sourcing and expanding all railway stations in Australia, but railway stations are not my favourite topic at the moment. The fact that someone hasn't sourced the article in three months says absolutely nothing about the amount of material on the subject - it just means that someone hasn't gotten around to it, and hardly serves a justification for salting the earth on anyone expanding it in future. I am passionate about getting the project sources, but starting with these particular articles, and taking a "get me sources right now or lose the article" attitude is unhelpful to say the least - it's either going to annoy the living hell of contributors who probably weren't responsible for writing the substubs in the first place, by dictating how they spend their Wikipedia time, or it's going to (and more likely) lead to the completely unnecessary deletion of articles that could have been expanded into quite interesting ones had they been given time. Rebecca 23:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

As an editor who has created and populated (and forgotten to beef up a few) railway station articles - seeing the amount of energy expended here - the effort here could have populated all of the stopping place/railway stations on the transcontintental railway on the nullabor! I am very much against deletion or amalgamation. I havent read the above closely (how is it people spend there lives in these debates and not editing?) but anyone who is proposing a blaneket policy on this better not go into some parts of wikipedia - you might find the hidden stubs and when you start removing/amalgamating their items - well - it boggles the imagination what concerted passionate misguided missions can do to others work! SatuSuro 23:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I personally believe that railway stations are a different situation to most, and agree with Rebecca on most points. A shopping mall, for example, may be built for spurious commercial reasons, while a railway station, not usually generating the income needed to pay for its construction, is usually built for a purpose out of an allocated budget. In Western Australia, for instance, where I come from, you can't get away from railways, even closed ones, as the engine of growth (pardon the bad pun) in country areas. It's not simply public transport, although does indeed form the backbone of public transport in many areas, but is key to industry and indeed the survival of entire parts of the country. Government information is available, but often requires searching in State libraries and the like, which are located in capital cities and not easily accessible to a lot of people. And yes, there are some bizarre little corners in Wikipedia - did you know a boyband of short duration, if it manages to crack No.2 and get a gold single, regardless of time and place, is deemed notable? I'd be looking at places like that. Orderinchaos78 00:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

This was discussed in December and the result of consensus then was to exclude Rail stations from this policy. Re-invigourating this discussion in this obscure location, "place of local interest" is poor policy making and could be considered bad faith, if there are new issues with the number articles about train stations then the discussion should be held where those that are interested in train/railways are able to participate ie at WP:TRAINS, otherwise the previous consensus should stand. Gnangarra 14:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

To reply to some points raised previously-firstly, that train stations are constructued out of an allocated budget and may not pay for themselves, is irrelevant. Stoplights are constructed out of an allocated budget and do nothing whatsoever to pay for themselves. That doesn't mean the stoplight on the corner near my house here is notable, nor is it even a mark in favor. Secondly, that the discussion is being held in the wrong place-this is a page on which a policy/guideline proposal is being discussed. This, not a Wikiproject which thinks it overrides such things, is the proper place to discuss any "special exemptions". If there's a previous consensus (by the way, where was that discussed?), that's fine, and that's why no action has been taken against such a consensus yet. But consensus can change, and certainly, just discussing the merits of changing consensus is not an action against such a consensus! Thirdly, I frankly find Satusuro's attitude insulting-many editors participate in policy discussions, and while that's not to everyone's taste, those contributions are necessary. As to the crappy boy bands-I would very much be in favor of tightening WP:BAND quite a bit, and getting it back toward "Must be nontrivial secondary source coverage regardless of any of these other things." I would also be altogether in favor of getting rid of the "If the band is notable all their albums and members automatically are"-that isn't even mostly true, except for the biggest ones. But that's another discussion for another time. As to Orderinchaos78's assertion that the research is hard-perhaps it is! There's a big Wikiproject devoted just to this, ask if there's anyone that can get source material from X library on Y station. But have it together before creating the article. No one else gets a free pass on "placeholders"-just put a redirect to the main line there, develop it in the main line, and when it's well-sourced enough for its own article, spin it right off! Seraphimblade 21:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

With the budget point, I was highlighting the contrast to a shopping centre, rather than a general point. Clearly, other things are constructed out of budgets, but a railway station costs a lot to build and operate, and tends to leave a paperwork trail in its wake, and tends to indicate a pre-existing community or industry need, or a desire to open up an area. With the ones in my area, for example, there was considerable political controversy in their construction which repeatedly made the front pages and hence fulfils notability requirements. Looking back at 1930s newspapers I see the same is true for others. Re stubs - I personally agree they should remain, as pointers to further research - most of the articles I've got to B-class status or higher were stubs when I started on them and most likely I would not have known to develop them had they not existed. Similarly I've created a few one line stubs here and there to fill redlinks in a project and as a pointer for people with more knowledge in that area to fill them out (they tend to get posted in new article repositories so are seen) As for the band in question - the one I'm thinking of (which recently survived an AfD) - ALL of its members (five) had articles, but they basically are duplicates of each other with the same questionable non-Manual of Style prose. Crazy stuff. Orderinchaos78 00:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If indeed you indeed find my comments insulting, you have my unreserved apologies about that - my problem is that I have a very distinct aversion to policy discussions where it appears just one user appears to be doggedly trying to change a policy. If indeed I am wrong - my apologies to the other proponents to whom I cannot see in this discussion! If I saw a larger number of supporters for the proponent or even participants from WP Trains invited in and involved- then I honestly think this discussion would have had a different flavour! . If you are unaware of the earlier conversation on this project - as Gnangarra says - in this particular discussion area - perhaps you should find it. I would strongly suggest good policy discussion is where proponents of a change realise that maybe there are rooms for negotation or recognition of others points of view being as valid as ones own. Also perhaps the use of in this thread of free pass is redundant and discriminatory term against the importance and notability of a form of transportation and the community superstructure it has in some places has passed - while in others can be intrinsic in understanding the culture itself? This whole thread smacks of a source in a community where rail as a form of transport has been superseded by other forms. There are large areas of this planet where railway stations are sufficiently notable, credibly important in the community to have a history and context which is sufficiently sustaining of separate articles, that do not have to be subsumed or amalgamated for some higher good SatuSuro 23:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If you thought I was against rail articles in general, you have my apologies as well-many railway station articles are excellently done, well-sourced, and at least one of them I know of even made FA. There are others which have been unreferenced substubs for months or even years. All I'm asking to do is to judge each article on its individual merits-"It's notable because sources A, B, and C cover it in pretty good depth" rather than "It's notable because it's a (insert railway station, album, whatever somebody's pet project may be here)." If railway stations are more notable (better covered by sources) in some countries than others, then we'll just have more material on some countries' stations! My big problems that seem to crop up all the time are "notability by category" and "notability by association"-went over the infuriating bit earlier, that "Well a garage band just barely scrapes by WP:BAND, even though they've got no real source coverage, and so now all their members and albums get to have crappy substubs too!" Sometimes it's the same issue here-"Sorry, it's a railway station, the information doesn't have to be sourced." (If you'll read farther up, that was actually evident here-"I don't need to source that the station is there, it just is!") Eliminating these types of "automatic immunities" result in better quality across the board. Oh, and read up farther-the discussion's been going on a while, and I've had several agreements. I just don't happen to mind taking on subjects I know are a bit touchy, and this is one of 'em. Seraphimblade 00:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Good point any article on any subject that claims immunity from sourcing should be out anyways :) However in some countries - there has been pushes for afd of railway station articles because of less than stub status with no sources has occurred - there are some tricky aspects to this where either the sources are difficult to access or in obscure languages SatuSuro 00:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

In which there may be a point regarding systemic bias, of course... Orderinchaos78 00:46, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Seraphimblabe has a valid point that station articles most should have citations to, at the very least prove there existence. See WP:V, WP:HOAX. However, as noted by SatuSuro, sourcing can troubling for stations, because railways rarely publish, or otherwise make available to the public, detailed information on there stations. Thus, it is difficult to obtain properly sourced non-directory information on train stations to develop the articles beyond stubs. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Danntm (talk • contribs) 02:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC).

Railway networks usually publish information about their stations, so proving that they exist is a piece of cake. It is not, however, difficult to obtain "properly sourced non-directory information" - it just requires that people do actual research (like, actually read books), which generally takes time - it isn't something that you can whip up on Google in an hour. Rebecca 03:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Rebecca is correct to a point - I as an english speaker blessed with the curse of monolingualism (well almost) would feel quite concerned that somewhere, there have been railway station articles from certain countries have been put up for afd -

perhaps my research ability in korean is limited - and I would for a start never expect google to have the info - but the turn around time to recover info might just be a little difficult against any afd process... SatuSuro 05:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If one can prove they exist, I'd think that would be enough to start with. If an article includes at least one decent source, I don't generally tend to AfD it right away unless it's clearly non-notable or the source is pretty evidently bogus. I'm also hoping to work on a proposal to make fact-checking easier. If anyone would like to look at the backlog in Category:Articles with unsourced statements and Category:All articles lacking sources...well, it's about enough to knock you out of your seat! I'm hoping that some of these can be sorted, much as stubs currently are-first, perhaps, into general categories (to use our example here, railroads), and then into more refined categories (again, to use the example here, trains, lines, stops/stations, and then perhaps sorted geographically). While I certainly stay by the fact that there does come a period of time after which someone has to say "If it's not been sourced in months, it's not going to be anytime soon", I think some time should be given-probably more than the 5 days for an AfD, but less than the unlimited amount some seem to advocate. Of course, there's quite a bit of room in between the two. Seraphimblade 06:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't have a great problem with this if there was a decent time period (say, a couple of months), so that it would give people time to actually get their hands on the sources and not have to drop everything to do so, and if this were actually applied universally, rather than just to stations, malls, and other things deletionists want to get rid of. Rebecca 06:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd go for that. (By the way, not all deletionists are cut out of the same block. :) ) Seraphimblade 06:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I should have stressed that this should be a time period that people are actually notified about for a specific article, not a "this random article has been sitting unreferenced for two months so I can kill it now." Rebecca 09:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that would be workable. Are you proposing tagging as unref or some other type of notification method? (I've currently got a suggestion in at WP:FACT to sort unreferenced articles much as stubs are currently sorted, if that got going that would make things far easier.) Seraphimblade 09:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

What I want, ideally, is a bot that would tag, say, a certain number of thousand unreferenced articles each month from across the entire project. Those tags could not be removed until they're completely referenced; those that are not referenced die after two months. This would allow people to actually source stuff before getting deleted, would be a fair system (as it would pick articles at random), and would most probably limit the number of articles in any one person's field up for deletion at the same time, so as not to overwhelm their time and energy. I realise, however, that there is no consensus for anything this drastic at present. The problem with trying to use the unreferenced tags for this purpose is that targeting specifically railway station articles is completely arbitrary, and as you would be effectively putting every unreferenced railway station article up at the same time, this would be a completely impossible task in two months. Really, just as with the rest of the project, if we're to get all of our existing content sourced with our current editor pool, we'll need at least two years in total (and that's with the pressure of constantly having to reference a number of tagged articles in order to avoid deleton). Anything short of that will result in a lot of good work getting deleted and a lot of very pissed off editors. Rebecca 09:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I'd be behind the idea 100%, I'd happily write the bot too. Though at this point you're probably right that it would be a waste of code, since in a lot of cases people would slap a single reference that supports one statement and remove the tag. I think you misunderstood me a bit here-we seem to be pretty well in agreement. I'm not up for singling out railway articles (or any articles for that matter), and I rarely tag one as unreferenced. I've just gotten into the habit of putting {{unreferenced}} on any article I run across that's unsourced, and putting {{fact}} on any questionable statements, as I happen to run across them, and to also make sure and use them liberally while doing newpage patrol (at least on the pages that are viable and aren't "Ben is the coolest guy at Somewhere Elementary haha" or "The Mindless are a band that will be doing their demo tape next year", those earn a speedy tag instead.) I wish there were some way to get everyone into that habit-if you run across an unsourced article, at least flag it, to bring to people's attention that a problem exists. In some cases, I've seen an article's creator cite several sources within ten minutes of that tag going on, and tell me "Oh, I didn't know you're supposed to do that!" But we sure need some way to drive that point home to more people-most everyone knows you're not supposed to lose your temper and swear at someone, but very few seem to know it's also a core policy to source. I think the main difference is enforcement-if you tell someone to #*(*$ off, several people will quickly tell you to cut it out or get blocked, and if you keep it up you will get blocked. WP:V, by comparison, is rather toothless-sure, it says you're welcome to remove unsourced statements, but try doing that sometime, even if you explain why. You tend to catch hell. That's why I'd like to see some sort of streamlined procedure, be it WP:CSDUA or any other, that gets across the point that "Hey, on the bit about sourcing it, yeah, we really do mean that too." Unilateral removal of text is just a discomfort for a lot of people (those who do it and those who observe it)-it's closely associated with vandals. Deletion, on the other hand, especially when it's done according to policy, tends to be seen as a legitimate if not always liked administrative action. Seraphimblade 10:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I for one appreciate this current drift in this particular thread - as the truly orphan/untouched are indeed that after 4 or 5 months - but to have demands on an article of 5 days is totaly unreasonable on those of us who (a) actually have a number of threads on our watchlists (b) limited access to materials within a three-to-four week turn around time frame. SatuSuro 06:56, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

This is really making sense for me too. An article that has remained a) wholly unsourced or b) substub for weeks or months is less likely to ever be developed, and it is probably time to redirect or merge it to a better place, or even delete it outright. However, this allows plenty of time for article development.-- danntm ^T _C 14:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry but I haven't read even the above discussion about railway stations fully. I just wanted to say, that in Australia at least, often railway stations are the reason a town is where it is. Barmedman and Ariah Park (both in New South Wales) were moved, when the railway line was built. Blacktown was named for Black's Town Railway Station. Suburbs between Blacktown and Richmond, New South Wales developed because there was a railway station there. Railway stations - in the pre-car era - defined, where civilisation would grow. For this, if for no other reason, railway stations which have lead to the formation of a settlement, belong in this encyclopedia. Shepherds Siding, New South Wales doesn't exist either as a village, nor an article because the railway station was built a bit up the track.

Hope I haven't repeated anyone else's arguement contribution to the discussion. Garrie 03:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

• I'm agreeing to disagree here. It appears the debate is starting to go in circles. >Radiant< 10:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How? Someone has suggested that railway stations that are stubs or short on info or notability should be either afd or amalgamated into other articles - as there are quite a few around - and there are those of us who either have created some railway station articles or who watch them have suggested that the railway station articles maintain immunity re what the earlier vote that had already established this - but there seem to be some relatively short of even knowing about the earlier vote or even the train project are maintaining a position of the afd or amalgamation - and so some are diving in to try to see a compromise for railway station articles where they are not automatically in afd lists - due to a number of issues - and that where stubs are found that they are given a grace period. To me that is a processs that is moving - not necessarily a circularity where I am watching it from. SatuSuro 11:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

(in reply to Radiant) Hey, Rebecca and I actually agreed on something, so it must be moving to some degree. :) In all seriousness though, it's actually coming to a compromise solution-railway stubs will get a longer "immunity", around a couple of months, due to the difficulties in research and the likelihood that sources can be found, but that immunity will be for a couple of months rather than indefinite as it is now. I think that's progress. Seraphimblade 21:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy for the immunity not to be indefinite, but a two-month immunity cannot possibly apply to all articles simultaneously. It could well work if it were, say, ten station articles from around the world in that period (about the amount I'd imagine would get hit in a random sweep), as there would probably be the opportunity to get them sourced, but I'm very reluctant to endorse an arbitrarily singling out of railway stations. If they are to be sourced under threat of gunpoint, so should the rest of the encyclopedia. Rebecca 23:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This amounts to using AfD as a cleanup tool, which really isn't the right idea (although it does work some of the time). Rather, I'd argue that good faith should be assumed towards railway stations: they're probably notable and verifiable unless there is good reason to think otherwise. The same is extended towards national politicians, regardless of actual accomplishment. Mackensen (talk) 23:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

So, railway stations should be presumed notable (and perhaps presumed verified), unless shown otherwise. This approach may be more workable then starting a countdown to delete unsourced articles.-- danntm ^T _C 01:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I think Rebecca's proposal is a good one-perhaps two months after a lack of sourcing is identified and the article tagged? I think if sources can't be found after two months with people aware of the problem, that would be a pretty strong step toward "shown otherwise". Seraphimblade 01:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I would only support this, however, were it not arbitrarily applied solely to railway stations - I will object vehemently if this is used to try and further single them out. The approach needs to be a global one, and there simply isn't the consensus for that at present. In the meantime, I think the approach of Mackensen and DannTM is more sensible. Rebecca 02:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Before I wade in on the subject of railway stations, may I just comment that it was refreshing to find that some progress has been made on the general question of notability in relation to places. On the subject of verifiability generally, I think Rebecca's position on timing is very well made. Likewise the point that sources for statements about living people should have a far higher priority than any geographical or historical article, so long as the article is tagged as being deficient, protecting the reader. As I understand WP:V &c, tagging articles as {{not verified}}, or statements with {{fact}}, does not constitute a "challenge" and does not place the "burden of evidence" on those who do not believe providing sources is their priority. Removing a statement or article does constitute a "challenge", and the official policy places the "burden of evidence" on "the editor who adds or restores material". How long an editor waits between tagging (if at all) and deleting can be a matter of judgment. But since the point of tagging is to avoid the direct "challenge" of deletion, it seems probable that any response (as opposed to no response) will be treated sympathetically.

I agree that no class of article should be singled out, positively or negatively, except as a matter of explicit official policy. I trust that any class of articles where there are insufficient editors to supply sources at the rate demanded by other editors will be tolerated by the wider community, so long as some progress is being made. If the difficulty becomes acute, perhaps the "support" of a WikiProject might provide a focus for collaboration, or lend weight to the argument that progress is being made and patience is appropriate. But, unless we change the policy, we surely have to support the policy. Perhaps it is remiss of me, but I have never deleted anything for lacking a source, and I don't intend to start now... I promise, as long as the current policy stands, that I shall not revert any deletes without providing adequate sources. Can we all make this promise, and agree that railway stations are no exception?--ARAJ 21:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)