Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Place names considered unusual (3rd nomination)

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. This list is well-sourced and notable. The subject is not inherently POV; perhaps the page could be modified to make it NPOV, but that is an editing issue and is outside the scope of AfD. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Place names considered unusual[edit]

Relisted per Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 April 17.</admin><editor> I personally feel that this list violates WP:NPOV and introduces systemic bias. What constitutes "unusual" is inherently not neutral. Aervanath (talk) 04:19, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I agree with nominator, plain and simple. Drmies (talk) 04:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - violates WP:OR and WP:NPOV as what is "unusual" in one country or even region is usual or the norm in another. The "centralized discussion" is unpersuasive that consensus has supposedly changed for these subjective "unusual" lists, as many of the comments there boil down to "generally I think these are not a great idea but there's one I do like." Otto4711 (talk) 05:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The list is thoroughly backed by reliable and verifiable sources to support the claim of notability. This is the English Wikipedia, and the definition of unusual is based on the speakers of this language as documented by reliable and verifiable sources, all of which conclusively rebuts claims of WP:NPOV or WP:OR. Alansohn (talk) 05:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for the reasons stated by Alansohn. Krakatoa (talk) 06:24, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete, what is an "unusual" name? Deciding what to include will be inherently subjective and therefore POV. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 07:49, 23 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]
Nope. It's verifiable, and not editor POV in this case. The references make that rather clear. - jc37 07:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So who decides what's unusual? If someone decides that "New York" is a strange name for a place, and publishes that on their personal website, does that mean we should include it? Note that many of the sources presented here appear to be little more than personal homepages. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 07:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]
You mean like this one which list another book as reference here? Looks to me more like a situation where perhaps some cleanup might be needed.

Are you suggesting that there are no sources anywhere for this topic, and thus the topic is unverifiable?

Anyway, to answer your question, if a reliable source does. - jc37 08:10, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm talking more like this one. And you've sort of dodged my question - what standard of inclusion do we have? Are "Medicine Hat" or "Wooloomooloo" unusual names, for example? And does the place name have to be listed as unusual? Would an article entitled "Slightly odd place names in Mongolia" qualify an article? What about a place name in English that sounds plain to a native speaker, but sounds like profanity in a foreign language? There are plenty of places were inclusion could get contentious, and I'm not really convinced that enough serious study has been done on this topic for "reliable sources" to actually exist. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC).[reply]
I wasn't dodging your question. It's what I said: reliable sources. Neither you or I get to decide what's "unusual".

The closest we might get is we could make a determination like: Since this is the English language Wikipedia, we perhaps should restrict this list to such places in which the places generally have English language place names.

But honestly, I'm wary and hesitant of even that. - jc37 08:25, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - referenced, and therefore, in this case, verifiable. It's not OR, and NPOV is followed, since "unusual" in this case is according to the sources. - jc37 07:51, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Whether something is unusual is determined by the sources (not individual editors) and they need to be reliable as always. (So personal websites don't count). It's easy enough to restrict it to the English language since we're an English-language publication. - Mgm|^(talk) 10:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, there is nothing OR about such a list when the criterium is that such places are covered by sources because their name supposedly is unusual. We just combine information from multiple sources, which is what we do all over wikipedia. --Reinoutr (talk) 11:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Alansohn and Reinoutr. Owen× ☎ 11:54, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep and overhaul. As we've seen with list of unusual personal names this information can be presented encyclopedicly and can be an interesting, if somewhat frivolous, read. Explaining some of the reasons why different groups see the place names as unusual and perhaps turning this into the lede for a list of notable places with names considered unusual may be a way to go. These are fixable problems. -- Banjeboi 13:35, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as inherently POV and a magnet for nonsense. Stifle (talk) 15:08, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The general principle behind this article and similar ones was discussed recently(ish) at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/lists of unusual things and the consensus of that discussion was that there is nothing in the policies cited above by those supporting deletion that states that "lists of unusual things" in themselves are deletion-worthy. To summarise the argument, it is that "unusual" is simply shorthand for "has been regarded by at least one reliable source as being unusual" and is a necessary shorthand for an article title - this was supported by a good majority of the contributors to the discussion. If there are other reasons why this particular article is deletion-worthy, let's discuss them. A discussion on issue which have already been resolved in the centralised discussion is not going to move us forward. SP-KP (talk) 17:02, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep there are multiple sources explaining why certain names are considered unusual from various perspectives. DGG (talk) 18:36, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unusual to whom, in what time period and at what location? What happens when things once considered "unusual" become usual? The attempt to define "unusualness" in this article is particularly lame. Let's break it down 1. "Names with unorthodox spelling or sound." Well, that's oddly discursive because, of course, "unorthodox" spelling and sound is in the eye of the beholder -- is in fact, a stand-in for "unusual" in this case. 2." Names which are extremely short (e.g., one-letter names) or extremely long." Extremely long, eh? Extremely short, eh? Well, where? Lots of shortish names in lots of countries that are bog-standard in those places. 3. "Names that describe something that is commonly not a geographical location." Let me translate that sentence -- "names that are not usually used to describe a geographical location are in fact considered unusual." Discursive again, with the added problem of defining what "things" are not "commonly geographical locations." 4. "Calendar related names." This one is just odd -- if there is a January, Texas, why is that any more usual or unusual than Paris, Texas or anything else? That's just an assertion. Finally, there are no examples of any of these supposedly unusual place names here (though i'm personally delighted there aren't). So what is the point of this article again? All it seems to say (in a fashion all dressed up to go to the prom) is the following: "By some standards used by some people in some places names, some place names are considered to be unusual. Which names are considered unusual vary by location and point in history." How is that an encyclopedic topic? By all mean redirect to Toponymy after deletion.Bali ultimate (talk) 19:58, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I don't see much in the way of information here, nor much potential for improvement. Anything useful can be merged into Toponymy. Dlabtot (talk) 00:17, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Substantial coverage in reliable independent sources. ChildofMidnight (talk) 04:55, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment "Substantial coverage in reliable independent sources" doesn't actually hold much water here: I can find an infinite number of reliable sources naming people as terrorists, but yet no one would ever countenance a List of terrorists, because it's inherently NPOV. Just because something has been labeled by an outside source doesn't mean the label is NPOV, it just means we're reflecting the POV of the outside sources, which is not what we should be doing.--Aervanath (talk) 05:39, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you equating the word unusual with the loaded worded terrorist? I see your point to some extent, but we have lists of political prisoners. We use sources (presumably) to determine which ones are political prisoners. In the country of imprisonment most are probably charged with crimes. Are we being POV? But this isn't really a political issue so much as an issue of "I don't like it" for many Wikipedians and some legitimate concerns about synthesis. My conclusion is that as long as we stick to reliable sources, there's not a big problem with synthesis. Sadly, as a side note, a helpful list of subjects related to Obama was just deleted. So in that case Wikipedia and POV politics clearly played a large role. ChildofMidnight (talk) 06:36, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I'm not equating "unusual" with "terrorism". What I'm saying is: just because one outside source has a POV that something is unusual, that doesn't mean that we need to list it. For a less emotionally-charged label, lets take Comic strips considered stupid. I could probably find a whole rash of outside, reliable sources that were of the opinion that various comic strips were dumb, but that doesn't mean we need to reflect that POV.--Aervanath (talk) 16:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Talk is cheap. Here's a stack of books about unusual place names that I found in a minute of searching. You won't find your comic strip idea so easy to source.

Keep Evidently notable. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:49, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep With the examples now added it's clearly not such a bad article that it should be deleted. I agree that it's notable. Besides, there are 12 keeps and only six deletes and one comment leaning towards delete. --Skyler (talk) 19:57, 25 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and Expand Referenced and seems like a good addition to Wikipedia. Quistisffviii (talk) 04:16, 29 April 2009 (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.