Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Northern England

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The result was Keep The nomination has been withdrawn and there are no delete !votes. This is a non-admin closure based on clear consensus that the article is on a notable subject, and although it needs work, the work can be done. Dylanfromthenorth (talk) 19:31, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Northern England[edit]

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The Page is full of Synthesis and is not directly sourced reliably. Prime Examples are the use of HMRC advice areas and the Environment Agency catchment areas as sources to justify the "boundary" of the Northern England. None of the references refer directly to a "Northern England" they either refer to the North-West, North-East, or Yorkshire and the Humber English local administrative regions which do not constitute a "Northern England" under any of the references. The only part of the article which is adequately sourced is the "Flag of Northern England" this alone though does not warrant an entire article based mainly on synthesis to be created. Parts of the article can be hived off to where they belong in articles on the English administrative regions and the historic counties. This article is though not the place for them and is pure synthesis to create a fictional point of view based on perceptions and prejudices within English society. Wales and Scotland are definable due to historic and well defined boundaries; this article shown no such boundaries exists. Lucy-marie (talk) 14:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am also nominating the following article as they are related to the original article and suffer from the same irreversible problems which are found in the original article.

Note: Step 3 of the AfD process was not properly completed. It has been fixed. —KuyaBriBri^Talk 15:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. -- • Gene93k (talk) 01:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I'll admit the articles could use some serious improvement, but these are absolutely viable topics. And where did you get the idea that none of the references mention "Northern England"? The titles of two of them are Looking North: Northern England and the National Imagination and Thinking Northern: Textures of Identity in the North of England. the wub "?!" 12:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
comment - The sources do not refer to a specific geographic location for a "Northern England" as a specific geogrphic definiton does not exit. Simply stating "Northern England" in the source dosen't make the article reliably sourced as their definitons of "Northern England" could be and will be wildly diiferent.--Lucy-marie (talk) 14:53, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Just because an area for these topics cannot be precisely defined does not mean that they should be deleted. Bottom line is there are many many reliable sources about these topics, and as such they are notable. If you perceive problems with them then the solution is through editing, not deletion.

Keep. The articles are in a very ropey state, but I don't see how you can seriously doubt that they're legitimate topics. There are many, many geographic terms that are imprecise—nobody can even agree on what constitutes Europe, let alone the Deep South or the Anglosphere, but one can't seriously dispute that the north of England (and the south, and the midlands) have distinctive characteristics and are commonly used concepts, even if people mean different things by the terms. These articles are no less valid than North Africa, Central Europe or Southwestern United States. – iridescent 15:07, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - definitely exists as a concept - see this lecture series. PamD (talk) 16:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (edit conflict)- Iridescent has provided some good examples, especially as those articles also state that the areas are more or less informally defined. Those articles are however very well sourced. I'm sure that sources can be found for the three English articles - here's one for starters: HERE is one for starters. --Kudpung (talk) 16:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Speedy Keep I don't think this nomination stands any chance of success. I'd have speedily closed it already but the nominator, to their credit, did post on the article's talk page but didn't get a reply and so does merit a decent answer. The reason that we should keep this and the similar articles is that the topic is notable. Entire books have been written about it such as Looking north: northern England and the national imagination. The article's imperfections are no reason to delete as our editing policy states clearly that we welcome articles of all quality and should seek to improve them further. Colonel Warden (talk) 22:32, 29 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep And the concept that Scotland has "historical boundaries" as an argument makes little sense here - the Scottish boundaries were malleable depending on who won the last war <g>. Wales' boundaries were 'defined' only by conquest as well. Collect (talk) 10:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Each of these articles is based on an agglomeration of some of the standard regions. The Midlands consists of the East Midlands and West Midlands; the North is from there to the Scottish border. The precise location of the border was disputed in medieval times, but has been fixed for over 400 years, and approximately fixed for 300-400 more. Southern England is perhaps slightly more nebulous. The Northern England article needs a lot of work, but that is no reason to delete it. Peterkingiron (talk) 13:54, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I agree that 'the north' or 'the south' are somewhat vague terminology, but that does not matter because there are numerous reliable sources discussing it. Any vagueness could (and probably should) be discussed in the article. Quantpole (talk) 11:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Withdrawn - Please consider this nomination withdrawn as there is clearly a broad based concensus to improve this article and to justify the content.--Lucy-marie (talk) 15:22, 1 October 2010 (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.