Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of towns in Malta

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 redirect to Local councils of Malta. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

List of towns in Malta[edit]

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Moving to AfD to get consensus on keep/move/delete/redirect. Kazamzam (talk) 19:39, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Malta-related deletion discussions. Kazamzam (talk) 19:39, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. 1234qwer 1234qwer 4 20:15, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, obviously. The article does not have a single source, totally break Wikipedia:Verifiability. Also, 100% of article is Wikipedia:original research + even name of article is clear original research because Malta officially has no cities, towns etc, Malta is officially divided only into 68 administrative units known as "local councils". This division functions in both the law and the constitution. The article lists all areas, historical settlements, housing estates and even the modern administrative divisions and all of this are called as towns. This is absurdal hoax (Wikipedia:Hoax), to speedy delete. Also, there is correct article of List of localities in Malta about this topic, so - this article is wrong duplicate. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 21:40, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, there are over 140,000 articles currently tagged as unreferenced (see WikiProject Unreferenced articles) and we are not about to delete them all. Unreferenced material *can* be deleted but it is not an immediate if-then action. Kazamzam (talk) 23:54, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"unreferenced" is just one of several problems. The bigger problem is clear original research and that this article is just a wrong duplicate with the wrong name. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 17:48, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Local councils of Malta. The template at the bottom shows there is a list like this for every nation in Europe. Wikipedia has a list article showing that as well at Lists of cities in Europe. We also have Category:Towns in Malta. Some of the articles linked to call it a village, town, or city, so if that's a mistake it needs to be changed. This list should exist, just with the proper article name. Dream Focus 22:32, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a huge mess with localities in Malta, even in categories. There will be a lot of cleanup to be done. We have to get rid of those hoaxes and the original research from Wikipedia, especially since most of these changes were made by two users. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 22:48, 10 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect per WP:PRESERVE and retention of plausible search terms, to either Local councils of Malta or List of localities in Malta, noting that the present text of this article derives from the independently created List of towns in Malta and Gozo, which would require an attribution statement when any redirecting is made; see my post at Talk:List of towns in Malta#Reverted prod. The early history of this article, until 25 July 2010, has a different text. Lists are not subject to the same expectation of sourcing as non-list articles; most of the burden of verifiability is borne by the blue-linked articles included. However, they are expected to satisfy notability and verifiability criteria for the items listed as a class, and we have three articles with significant overlap. Depending on what the actual governmental nomenclature is in Malta and how places are normally referred to in reliable sources in English (WP:COMMONNAME) (I see no reason whatsoever to consider this article a hoax, and note that in 2017 Subtropical-man himself restored it from redirect, apparently copying and pasting the text from List of towns in Malta and Gozo), I am uncertain whether we need even two articles. My tentative preference, since I have no expertise in the area, would be to redirect this article to Local councils of Malta and to also redirect List of localities in Malta there, on the same basis, but there is material in both that would need to be merged; and if only this article gets redirected, the title List of localities in Malta seems like a more obvious redirect target. Subtropical-man has asserted that some of that material is erroneous—housing estates and otherwise non-discrete locations—but even if there are errors, that doesn't mean everything in the article, or in List of localities in Malta, is an error. (I'd also like to note that all four of these are quite old articles: Local councils of Malta was created by Zoe in December 2002, List of localities in Malta by Tsum60, a Maltese editor, in June 2007, and the other two date back to 2008 (this article, by Seanjmarshall74) and 2010 (the one with Gozo in the title, by Kinginformation). So Subtropical-man's generalization about 2 users is an overstatement.) Yngvadottir (talk) 02:31, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If more users prefer redirect, although I prefer deletion, I agree with redirect option. Subtropical-man (✉ | en-2) 19:42, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star Mississippi 17:34, 19 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 20:47, 19 July 2022 (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.