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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 keep. Consensus is to improve the article and maintain a better inclusion criteria. Jujutacular (talk) 19:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

List of locations in the United States with an English name[edit]

List of locations in the United States with an English name (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)
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This has turned into an indiscriminate "US places with English-sounding names" list, and is full of inaccuracies. (Lincoln, Nebraska? No, that wasn't named after a place in England, it was named after the president.)

I propose we either (1) redefine the inclusion criteria for the article, and require a citation for every entry, or (2) delete/projectify the article per this discussion. JaGatalk 23:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - I agree with the previous poster, The list requires a clean up, not deletion. Sionk (talk) 00:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as a mass of original research, It seems unlikely that an inclusion criterion based on a reliable source stating that the place was named for the corresponding English entity could be established. Is "Lincoln" named for a place in England or for a dead US President? Lincoln County, Arkansas is included, even though the Wikipedia article says the county is named for the President rather than the English place. Claiming that Abe might have been named for a place in England before the town was named for him is not enough. Similar dubious inclusions are endemic, and are likely to remain so. Edison (talk) 02:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Are you claiming there are no locations in the United States that can be verified as having been named after a place in England? Or just that it's too hard to keep incorrect entries out so we should just give up? I seriously doubt the former, and have no sympathy for the latter. postdlf (talk) 22:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Are you volunteering to do the cleanup work, then? --JaGatalk 02:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • We all are, aren't we? That's what this project is about. I just fixed three in five minutes (sourcing one, removing two incorrect ones) with nothing but a quick Google search.[1],[2],[3] Luckily we do not delete what can be cleaned up and have no WP:DEADLINE, such that those who want to help don't have to feel like they have to do it all in a week to save it from those who don't want to help. I swear there is often the greatest amnesia at AFD regarding the fact that Wikipedia is a work in progress. postdlf (talk) 03:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • The point is, it isn't useful to say we must keep but offer no solutions. The article isn't just a work in progress; we know that it is filled with inaccurate information. Surely we have a zero-tolerance policy towards proven false information in article space; I was hoping to get consensus on how to deal with it. --JaGatalk 03:58, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • Consensus is we fix it. When we confirm that an entry is incorrect, we remove it. When we confirm that an entry is correct, we add a source. postdlf (talk) 04:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • Postdlf and myself have chopped quite a bit out. There seems to have been some sort of response to JaGa's comments on the Discussion page(s). It's probably a work in progress, like many other things on WP. Well, it's ridiculous o'clock here in the UK, I'm finished! Sionk (talk) 04:33, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as an indiscriminate, non-encyclopedic list. I don't see any more need for this than "List of locations in the United States with eight letters in the name" or "List of locations in Venezuela named after monarchs." Matchups 02:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Placename origins are something that plenty of reliable sources cover (unlike the number of letters in a placename), and a shared origin for a placename is discriminate, whether or not you see the need for it. postdlf (talk) 03:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • The list is not arbitrary, but its current contents may be. However, this seems like an WP:IDL argument. A412 (Talk * C) 03:50, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per my comments above, primarily that AFD is WP:NOTCLEANUP. I think we need a sea change in deletion-related culture on Wikipedia: people need to start taking WP:BEFORE and WP:ATD more seriously. postdlf (talk) 04:57, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Weak Keep Although a nice thought, even CORRECT, don't hold your breath waiting for that "... change in deletion-related culture ...". MANY use & edit Wiki regularly, but do maybe just 10% of actual content improvement. 90% is plain & simply deletions of OTHER editors content .... no spelling corrections, no adding references, no inserting more verifiable info on articles NEEDING additional info (such as stubs) .... they just delete, hiding behind a "fixing vandalism" excuse. Years ago I was a somewhat active "content-add'er". My modus operandi was exactly opposite, 90%+/- of my edits were ADDING content, always verifiable. The remaining 10%+/- was split between fixing simple grammar/spelling mistakes, & deleting obvious vandalism. Most all the latter were articles being worked on, or had previously, NEVER ones I looked for on purpose, simply to check, change, revert, or delete stuff. I rather those more knowledgeable in some specific catagory/article do improvements & moving stuff around on those. But surprisingly ... or maybe not ... within a year or so, I saw Wiki has a healthy percentage of ones living the mantra of "I don't understand this subject as well as the guy who earlier added a bunch of stuff to this article, and so now the article is largely different than it was yesterday, and since I don't understand it enough to verify his references as correct, I'll just delete/revert it back like it use to be." After several months of this crap from the "Professional Wiki-Deleters", I grew tired of their games & just completely quit trying to help out. So even your observation being 100% accurate, about delete/revert options being mis-used & needing fixed ..... personal experience convinced me the guilty parties will NEVER be brought under control. So I vote "Weak Keep" .... in that the page is a complete mess, with no real use as far as I'm concerned. However, somebody somewhere somewhy saw reasons to begin the article, so I'm sure there's at least a small hand-full of people interested enough to fix, improve,& maintain it, for use by another small hand-full of people who want/need/are interested in the info it contains.
  • Keep AFD is not cleanup. If you see errors on a list, you remove those errors, you don't try to destroy the entire list. Dream Focus 22:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment That list is almost entirely errors. I've been working on it, and with hours of effort I've gotten up to, let's see, Kentucky. I'm surprised at the cavalier attitude towards knowingly hosting false information. If it were a copyvio, we would have zero tolerance; if it were a BLP, we would have zero tolerance; but when it comes to simple accuracy, we're like hey, no worries, it'll get there some day! What we really need is a sea change in our tolerance of poor article quality; some project to hold the worst of the worst for processing until they're ready for showtime. --JaGatalk 04:52, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • If we deleted poor articles rather than fixing them, we wouldn't have much content because few pop up perfect or fully correct in the first go-round. We're in the process of addressing quality by tightening its inclusion criteria. I think many of the entries that we are removing were added with the good faith belief that this list should be about all places in the U.S. that had names in common with or originating from places in England, however steps removed. We are now narrowing that to only places that were directly and intentionally named after places in England, of which there are many, the list has many, and many that are now sourced. Deleting it would remove the "errors" as well as the valid entries indiscriminately. The list as it was, with all of the "errors" included (again, "errors" meaning entries added in good faith based on looser criteria than we are implementing now), brought together a lot of possible "valid" entries for us to investigate (again, "valid" meaning entries that now satisfy our new tighter criteria) that we would not have been able to easily compile if we were to start from scratch. postdlf (talk) 23:18, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as an indiscriminate collection of information. Very few of these locations are notable specifically for having been named after English locations. For instance, Stratford, Connecticut (near where I live) isn't known for being named after an English town, nor is Dallas, Texas, or Boston, Massachusetts. There's nothing about being named after an English town/city that gives these places any sort of notability, so it runs afoul of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:47, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    • What makes you think we restrict lists to "that for which a subject is notable?" Most lists and categories are not based on such facts (to the extent we can determine "why" something is notable anyway), not even the location of a town is why it is notable. It's also a non sequitur to conclude that it's WP:INDISCRIMINATE because no place is notable for having an English town; the two issues have nothing to do with one another. postdlf (talk) 18:15, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • That argument would also justify having something like "List of towns that have the letter B in them". We put things in lists when a group of something is notable for the same thing (e.g. List of heavy metal bass guitarists, because the people on that list are all notable at least in part for being heavy metal bass guitarists), not when they're a bunch of things that happen to share a random fact. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • I see this kind of fallacious reasoning a lot: "unless we adopt the strict standard I like, there will be no standard." So somehow by criticizing your standard and noting that it is contrary to practice, I have made an argument for completely arbitrary lists? Hardly. Far short of "lists only for why things might be notable" are "encyclopedic lists based on significant facts". And the easily observable practice is that we put things in lists for far more reasons than their members being notable for the same thing; otherwise, goodbye to such basic things as Category:Lists of people by city. Fact is, placename origins are referenced and studied in the real world, they are always included in a place's article if known, and it makes sense to list common origins together; your straw man of what letter a placename has in it, not so much. postdlf (talk) 13:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • This argument is similar to the other deletion argument from Matchups. Please avoid WP:IDL. (see my comment below)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Bryce (talk | contribs) 07:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep It is our policy to improve articles rather than deleting them. The topic is notable, being documented in sources such as American place-names: a concise and selective dictionary for the continental United States of America, which details their origin. Warden (talk) 10:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep A perfect opportunity to encourage "new" and "occasional" editors to research and, if available, add references. Some references will be found in the existing articles about the listed places. I have made a small start on the Australian list. Downsize43 (talk) 11:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The title is seriously misleading and perhaps the biggest problem. Since English is widely spoken in the USA, all US place names are English names, including Santa Fe, New Mexico, Versailles, Indiana, and Bagdad, Kentucky. This is apparently a list of US places named after places in the UK. This is going to get a bit more complicated, especially since many English family names come from place names, and it's going to be difficult to tell apart places named for English locations versus places named for founders. - Smerdis of Tlön - killing the human spirit since 2003! 16:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Non-notable hairball of a list. Nwlaw63 (talk) 20:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Way too broad a criterion to be manageable. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:08, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Which criterion is? Because most of the comments in this AFD (as well as the post-AFD edits to the list) have been about tightening its inclusion, so without some elaboration we can't tell what you're talking about. postdlf (talk) 06:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • People seem to be making up reasons for deletion, don't they?! The criteria is specific, not broad (but the above suggestion to rename the list is a sensible one). Because the USA is a country created by 500 years of immigration it's only expected that people will be interested in the roots of placenames - there are already existing lists of placenames of Scottish and Welsh derivation. Sionk (talk) 10:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • That is not a rationale for deletion. WP:Wikipedia is not paper. This means that it needs to be managed, not deleted. A412 (Talk * C) 03:50, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but rename to List of places in the United States named after places in England or something similar. The current title is highly ambiguous. What exactly is an "English name"? -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep with possible move. Those editors voting "delete", please remember that AFD is not cleanup, WP:Wikipedia is not paper, WP:BEFORE, and WP:ATD. There is nothing wrong with the list, but with its content. That is a rationale for cleanup, not deletion. However, the concern that the inclusion criterion and article name are misleading or incorrect is valid, and it should be moved to List of places in the United States named after places in England. The inclusion criteria should also be fixed. (per nom, Dream Focus, postdlf) A412 (Talk * C) 03:50, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I took a quick glance at the List of the most common U.S. place names and spotted that they included Oxford, Manchester, Dover, Winchester, Milford, and Kingston. That's over 100 candidate US places possibly/probably named after just 6 English places. Plus 17 Newports that could either be named after the ones in England, Scotland or Wales, or just because they happened to be a new port, and 19 Miltons that could be named after a person or a place. You might want to double check the 24 Washingtons just in case too! Surely if the article is to survive some minimum threshold for notable "locations" needs to be agreed on to make it less inclined to be ludicrously long. Either way, the List of places named after places in the United States stub list linked at the bottom of the AfD is far worse... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dtellett (talk • contribs) 00:20, 25 January 2012 (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.
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