Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saba'ad

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. Although the points about systematic bias have merit, we do need reliable sources confirming that the subject actually exists if we are going to have an article on it. I'm happy to userfy this if someone wants to work on it. Hut 8.5 22:21, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Saba'ad

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The parade of questionable Somali placenames continues, in this case with an article name which Geonames doesn't recognize at all and a name within the article which Geonames claims are some hills. The latter might be true, but there's no town at the coordinates given. Mangoe (talk) 03:49, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Somalia-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:58, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 03:59, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom. No sources at all pop up when searching for it. Jdcomix (talk) 13:57, 19 February 2018 (UTC)±[reply]
Keep. The rationale for deletion seems at least to be a strawman fallacy and when taken as a whole with other comments, possibly an adhominem fallacy. Furthermore, in these areas Somalis are known for being nomadic, hence no fixed population figures are going to exist. Also, periods of drought occur which could also cause population displacement. Furthermore, dispersion is also very likely because of militia groups which do operate in these areas. Another reason why it is difficult to find sources for this locality is because of the lack of a standardised Somali. This is not the fault of the local community. It is the fault of the weakness of the Somali government. Most of these places are transliterated in a myriad of ways, hence will not be useful when doing a google search. 92.9.152.17 (talk) 21:30, 19 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Nomadic people by definition do not have cities, so an article about a city for a nomadic tribe is a clear mistake. And Geonames, which is normally happy to list every unverified site of a tent as a populated place, doesn't even list it! Prince of Thieves (talk) 22:15, 20 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. This is the kind of AfD where nobody seems to have been acting entirely sensibly. For a start, while one purpose of Wikipedia (among others) is to act as a gazetteer and while notability standards may be slightly relaxed to let Wikipedia achieve this, we still need to have at least basic verifiability and a reasonable certainty that sources are reliable not just for their original purpose but also for providing currently correct information to Wikipedia records (which does not mean that outdated information can not be used - but does mean that it needs to be clearly indicated as historic). The creator(s) of this and other Somalian substubs do not seem to have taken account of this - at least some of the sources used were not only up to several decades old but also their top priority seems to have been to achieve a geographically comprehensive set of places, even if this meant using historical or (as a very last resort) made-up names. (We would like to be geographically comprehensive, but verifiability has to come first.) In this case, the creator's carelessness seems to have caught the nominator out twice - first, by using the Arabic version of the name (which, in Somalia, was fairly common among 20th-century colonial powers) for the article title rather than a Somali version (as has been fairly universal for at least the past 30 years), and secondly, by using the coordinates of some hills given on maps by the Somali name rather than the place of the same name ten miles to the north-east. However, while geographical articles need not be about permanently populated places but can also be about natural features or (particularly in areas without a settled population) intermittently populated ones, this does not completely vindicate the Keep !voter's arguments against the nomination. Neither do the variety of competing (if similar) Somali orthographic standards (though the nominator and other contributors should probably be taking a bit more account of this than they seem to be doing). We still need some assurance that the subject is correctly described (as a hill if it's a hill, as a regularly reused campsite if it a campsite, and as a city if it is a city), and that it is something important enough to its area that even outside visitors should be expected to be aware of it - and currently we don't have that assurance. If there are some current or historic details that would give that assurance, we need to know of them. PWilkinson (talk) 23:30, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For most of these the first step as been to get the feature ID out of the reference and then plug it back into geonames to get the current listing and coords; then I go to the aerials. It's not terribly uncommon that the current names in geonames don't match what's in the articles now: if I can find the place and it is consistent with the description, I have on occasion moved the article to the current verified name. If I can find references to the place in news/etc., I have as a rule not nominated the name.

I'm certainly open to consideration of hills as notable, though personally my standards for these things tend to be on the higher end. But everything seems to say that the current text of the article is incorrect. Mangoe (talk) 04:06, 25 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, MBisanz ^talk 02:23, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@PWilkinson: very thorough assessment, but does by using the coordinates of some hills given on maps by the Somali name rather than the place of the same name ten miles to the north-east mean that there is a real village close by that this article could be changed to refer to? Prince of Thieves (talk) 14:27, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

At least part of the problem in this is that either there has been a substantial change in the geonames data since these articles were created, or the person who created them was extremely sloppy. Almost all of them claim that the name in question is a town, but it's looking as though at least a third of them are now tagged in geonames as "localities", with a few "hills" and "water wells" and even a couple of "areas". There are also consistent typographical problems: for one thing, a lot of the names are made up of multiple words, but the article names usually leave the spaces out. At the very least, the articles need to stop saying that these are "towns". I'm not willing to care about the difference between a town and a village, but I have to say that "localities" aren't notable without some textual usage that gives some context. Hills and wells, we can discuss them: in this case if we are good with hills, the article can be moved and rewritten. Mangoe (talk) 14:56, 27 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Draftify until someone is willing to rewrite it. It is serving no good in mainspace as it stands. J04n(talk page) 14:33, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That someone would probably have to be you. The original author is long gone. I'm willing, if people are set on the notability of hills, to rewrite it in place to match what geonames says, but I don't see how putting it off to the side as a draft is a good solution. Mangoe (talk) 14:55, 7 March 2018 (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.