Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jumbo Lake

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Lack of sources to show notability per WP:GEOLAND. RL0919 (talk) 20:30, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jumbo Lake[edit]

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This topic is non-notable, there is no information available about this lake besides the fact of its existence and location (which implies elevation, too), plus the fact of when it was registered in a geographic names database. Wikipedia is not a Gazetteer about lakes, in part because there are too many of them (more than 500,000 in Quebec alone) and there is nothing substantial to say about most of them. Here, the article is all padding, with stuff about the region incorporated. The creator asserts at its Talk page that "I do not think notability is a key concern with a lake." A fact that they think is remarkable (that the region includes a lake named Jumbo, a river named Ronald, and a river named McDonald) might possibly be mentioned in an article about the region, instead. (However I personally don't "get" that supposed coincidence; the 2008 Jumbo (film), say, involves an elephant character named Jumbo, but does not involve a Ronald McDonald character, AFAICT. Also in Google map of the area I do not see rivers named Ronald or McDonald, but assuming they do exist, there are thousands of lakes in the vicinity, and it seems unnecessary to create thousands of articles to assert the coincidence in each one.) There is no substantial content here, and wp:BEFORE finds nothing available. Doncram (talk) 19:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to information merged into MacDonald River (Quebec), as discussed on the article's talk page. Aymatth2 (talk) 19:51, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 19:58, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything worth merging, myself, but could you share what statement or passage you think should be included there? --Doncram (talk) 20:42, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see that Aymatth2 is adding stuff purportedly about Jumbo Lake to the MacDonald River article. I may possibly object to every single element they add there, in which case it would not be reasonable to include stuff there or to redirect Jumbo Lake to there. The additions there are obviously being manufactured to "save" this topic as at least a redirect.

Okay, to start about one item, the claim there now that "Lac Jumbo was officially named on 3 October 1972." I believe that is possibly false, or at least that it is giving outrageous salience to a non-notable bureaucratic action, and is trivial beyond a degree acceptable to mentioned in an encyclopedia. Yes, The Commission de Toponymie source about Lac Jumbo does include "Date d'officialisation: 1972-10-03". But I do not believe at all that the lake was named in 1972. I think that was when the Toponymie commission added an entry into their database. This is similar to how WikiProject SHIPS editors believed for a long time that a date entered into the DANFS database (i think) was the christening date for a ship, when it could be shown by news reports sometimes that the launching of a ship and its christening happened on a different, earlier date. It turned out the DANFS database date was the date that a government unit got around to entering it into their database, only. Here, I disbelieve that this was the first official recognition of the name of this lake, and it is not worth mentioning that this was the date that one bureaucratic unit "recognized" it. I will share about myself that I have some personal familiarity with some lakes in Quebec. For example, I visited "Sixteen Island Lake" in Quebec several times, many years before the "officialisation" date in 1996 reported in Commission de Toponymie source about Lac-des-Seize-Îles (maybe that is just for the post office?). There is no way in hell that this lake was not officially recognized in many ways, previously, before then, and before the 1968 date given in this other Commission de Toponymie source about Lac-des-Seize-Îles. For any Quebec lake which is obviously legitimate to be covered in Wikipedia, I doubt that any one of their articles mentions their corresponding "toponymie" database entry date. For 16 Island Lake, the article mentions instead that its name was in use by 1898 for the post office. User:Aymatth2, would you please concede this point and delete that out of what you've added there? --Doncram (talk) 21:47, 7 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 00:23, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

User:Aymatth2, would you please respond to direct question above? I see that they have stripped down the article during this AFD, perhaps towards redirecting it. I guess that suggests they are not supporting "Keep". Not that they agreed before this AFD to redirect at the Talk page, which they imply they had, above. Anyhow the community can/should judge on whether a redirect is appropriate or not. In some previous interactions, Aymatth2 did a lot of rearranging of articles they had created and were at AFD, undermining community discussion. IMHO this community discussion should be continued, and the proposal is for the item to be deleted (probably along with removal of coverage that has been shifted to the MacDonald River article), not redirected. --Doncram (talk) 05:48, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have put the article back as it was when nominated, and would be o.k. with keeping it, but still think a redirect is more suitable. There is not yet much information available online, but an entry in the MacDonald River (Quebec) article seems warranted. The assertion above that the Commission de toponymie du Québec does not know when they made this rather odd name official is daft. Government websites may have mistakes, but we generally treat them as reliable sources. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:48, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for responding to the direct question. But name-calling: "daft"??? I would believe the government source as reliably enough recording when it made the entry, which is what "date d'officialization" or whatever almost certainly means. I do not believe your assertion in the article that this date was the first "official" naming of this lake. Do you assert that for Sixteen Islands Lake, where there was a Canadian post office named "Sixteen Islands Lake" in 1899, that the lake was not named until the 1960s? That it was not recorded in any official list, did not appear on any official map? I think it is obvious enough that the source is not valid for the purpose used here. There is a venue for discussing what are reliable sources in Wikipedia (wp:RSN i think). Do you seriously want to go there to discuss whether this source is valid in saying what you want it to say? It seems to me that would be wasting time of a number of editors unnecessarily, but I suppose if you cannot see this (or cannot agree to see this), then maybe that is necessary or useful somehow. --Doncram (talk) 23:35, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Given the strength of Aymatth2's statement, and maybe some antagonism here, I suppose it is useful to get more editors to give them feedback on this point. Please see/participate in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#Commission de Toponymie for statement about earliest official naming. --Doncram (talk) 23:57, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I don't really care if it stays as a redirect or not, but it's blatantly obvious that this fails WP:GEOLAND, with no sources of any substance describing the lake itself, only a database entry with its name and coordinates. Precisely zero of the information previously making up the article was about the Lake, rather the general geography of that region of Quebec, making this a textbook example of a WP:REFBOMB, exaggerating content and references on tangential information that do not actually support the notability of the subject – or even provide any information about it, unlike the countless Billy Hathorn biographies. Reywas92^Talk 07:38, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete No known information other than statistics and co-ordinates. A redirect from this title is not appropriate because Jumbo Lake in Saskatchewan province appears notable and doesn't have an article.----Pontificalibus 07:46, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There is another Jumbo Lake redlinked in List of lakes in Lincoln County, Montana, so perhaps this one should be converted into a Set index article, giving coordinates etc of all three Jumbos. Aymatth2 (talk) 12:48, 8 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep. If compared to innumerable 1-line stubs about other lakes, it is obvious that this article is developed far enough along beyond mere statistics. I really don't understand why this one is nominated... -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 13:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Because if you actually examine the article and investigate the sources, you'd see that virtually all of the material in the article (except the location and elevation statistics) is as actually not about the lake itself and that the sources do not actually refer to the lake itself. The content that discusses the lake is the same amount as in the 1-line stubs, the rest is ref bomb fluff! Reywas92^Talk 18:44, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. Just because there are other bad articles does not justify this bad article.Rockphed (talk) 12:43, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I knew it! Just a matter of time before someone throws the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS at me without really understanding the principle of it... That page also says: "When used correctly, these comparisons are important as the encyclopedia should be consistent in the content that it provides or excludes." And that is the point: a comparison shows that this is not a bad article.

Regarding the comment by User:Reywas92, that has more validity. Certainly the info about the Ronald and MacDonald Rivers is totally irrelevant. But info about the surrounding or adjacent area is pretty standard for all lake articles − obviously no lake article is limited to discussing only the water portion. I'm normally a deletionist, but I still think this one is acceptable. -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 12:53, 13 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete If there were a staff review of this lake on a travel site, I would consider keeping it. Or a fishing site. Or if some poor schlub had been murdered and interred in the lake for 50 years. But there is no information about this lake to base an article on. We might as well try to transcribe the entire 1900 US census since we would have as much information about people described therein as we do about this lake. We would probably have more. Rockphed (talk) 12:43, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Rockphed: I don't see your point. See the similar Lake Cacaoui. There was a boating accident there last year where two men drowned, which made some noise in the papers, but that does not seem particularly relevant. WP:GNG does not apply here. An encyclopedia article about a lake should treat it primarily as a geographical entity. Information about the environment is relevant and useful to our readers. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:55, 12 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - WP:GEOLAND says lakes may be notable provided there is enough information beyond statistics and coordinates - the article references merely establish that the lake exists, not that it is notable - all the article provides is how it was named, the location and the climate, nothing to show that the lake itself is notable - it's a run of the mill lake WP:MILL - we need something to show that the lake is unique to distinguish it from 500,000 other lakes - Epinoia (talk) 03:17, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.