Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/FIPS place code

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 of the debate was keep top page; delete sub pages. Kilo-Lima|^(talk) 13:49, 16 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FIPS place code and its subpages[edit]

This is just the tip of the iceberg: I look at New Pages, and was startled to see entries like "FIPS place code/Minnesota (390,351 bytes)" and "FIPS place code/Arkansas (311,887 bytes). These are HUGE subpages of lists of geographic codes. The creator is stacking 'em up, one by one. Wikipedia is NOT a primary source, and it's NOT a bunch of lists. Calton | Talk 07:33, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a primary source. These are taken from the USGS files, simply cut down to be more useful than the raw data. The primary source is the USGS files and the exact same information can be found there. Paul Robinson 20:17, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good. Then leave them there. --Calton | Talk 21:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Wow, I really don't know what ot say. T K E 08:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Keep It's a government report, relevant information, hell I paid for it. T K E 08:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment How about: the top FIPS place code article is good info and the subpages are deletable as not an indiscriminate collector of information. Weregerbil 08:16, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: It's sad to see so much effort go to waste, but it's right in FIPS place code that the original list can be downloaded from an official (presumably up-to-date) source. An article about FIPS place codes, maybe keeping a manageable amount of place codes as examples, would be an excellent idea. Peter Grey
- If there was an automated way the place codes could be added to the article for each corresponding location, that really be neat. Peter Grey 08:26, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm sure RamBot could do it alongside all his census info. Night Gyr 17:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The top-level info (i.e. that on FIPS place code, rather than its subpages) can added into the InfoBoxes for the various state/territory. The insanely long complete list is not encyclopedic (primary source) and can be covered with an external link to the USGS branch that hands these things out. -- GWO
Delete. I'm likewise impressed at how much work went into this, but what is here that's not on the gov't link? RGTraynor 16:35, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Wikisource is the place for primary sources, so if you want to put this on a wiki, put it up there and link it from here. Night Gyr 17:04, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep an article on the FIPS place code system as such, if it is a notable reference system. Delete the codes themselves, which do not belong in an encyclopedia. — Haeleth Talk 17:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Transwiki to Wikisource ⇒ SWATJester ^Ready Aim _Fire! 18:13, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: we add no value to the world by copying such an immense amount of numeric data; what we do is create a reference which will become out-of-date and therefore misleading. A reference to the primary source is the way to do this. Keep the top-level article. — Johan the Ghost _seance 18:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep top-level article, remove tables from its, delete subpages. FIPS place codes are important in the geographic and demographic industries (such as the Census Bureau, and Claritas where I work), and not otherwise noteworthy. A good two-paragraph article would be appropriate here; the raw tables are not. WP is not for primary sources, excess level of detail, etc. Barno 21:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Keep top-level article, remove tables from its, delete subpages. Per Barno and Johan the Ghost. —Ruud 13:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm with that. A bot for this would be nice, I didn't even know about government produced rankings. T K E 19:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Argument in favor by the author: As I am the person who has created this, I would like to make the case why it should stay as is.
It is a cut-down version of the complete list, it only includes cities and major unincorporated areas. As is, it just becomes useful as opposed to the complete list which contains practically every location in the U.S. bigger than a hot dog stand.
Where do you draw the line? If you want to set some population figure, say, 50, 100,000 or whatever, fine. But what is the criterion.
There is the possibility of cutting it by county (borough/census area in Alaska, parish in Louisiana) but I for one am not up to the task of creating circa 3500 separate pages. Now, if you only create separate sub pages if there is several items in a county, but you're still going to have large pages.
Most of the bloat comes from having to code them for HTML. I think I could try changing them to flat text and they would be a lot smaller. Actually I wish I had thought of that. I'll see if there isn't a way to have both.
I think this is exactly appropriate for an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia should provide, well, encyclopedic content, which I would think means it should provide very broad coverage of a subject or an issue. This also includes providing substantial reference material.

Paul Robinson 20:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am looking at reformatting the pages. I use a program to create them. I think if I use a wiki table format instead of HTML I can cut the page sizes by about 1/2. But the data within them is still substantial; take a look at a test version I have reformatted for Minnesota and it went from 380K down to 140K. I can see some places for improvement.
The creation of these tables was a start, and was subject to improvements later on as I - and others - had more experience in how to work with them.

Paul Robinson 21:00, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where do you draw the line? How about "none at all?" Seems simplest.
Most of the bloat comes from having to code them for HTML It doesn't matter whether it comes from too much starch in their diet or from not enough exercise: they are still a form of raw data that is NOT encyclopedic, IS a primary source of data best handled by an external link to the data supplier, and is grossly inappropriate here. --Calton | Talk 21:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Will someone please tell me WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? People are saying they think these sub pages are not appropriate to this encyclopedia, so I decided to mark them for deletion. Now I'm being told that what I'm doing constitutes vandalism and I'm going to be blocked! I had the impression nobody wants these pages because they're too long, they're not encyclopedia content and they constitute original material. I disagree with all of these but I decided not to fight the issue.

If the material doesn't belong here then it needs to be marked for deletion. I'm sorry I wasted the effort.

23:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

All right, you bastards, you win, I give up; it's not worth the fight. I wanted to make this encyclopedia better and improved its content, but you don't want the content. Fine; I now close the subject and the issue ends. I have deleted the links to the subsidiary pages. Whether you keep or delete the subsidiary pages doesn't matter. I'll null them since it's clear people don't want the fucking things and this will solve. It The original page is simply a table of state entries. Since my contribution is unwanted, I have removed the contribution so as to get rid of the problem.

You may now go about your business on whatever else you want to bother with. I have removed the "Request for Deletion" off the original page as the issue is now closed and the entries are now destroyed.

Paul Robinson 22:25, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, but Paul Robinson's contributions are appreciated. Stifle (talk) 00:13, 13 April 2006 (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.