Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Place names considered unusual (2nd nomination)

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2009 April 17.
For an explanation of the process, see Wikipedia:Deletion review.

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. Consensus to delete is clear. The existence of a similar list in Wikipedia space is irrelevent since NPOV is not an issue there. Eluchil404 (talk) 08:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Place names considered unusual[edit]

Seems like synthesis to me. What defines an unusual place name? Frankly, I think that this is original research and probably very hard to fix. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP)} 01:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete This is too vague of a criteria and can never be globalized. Considered unusual by Americans? Africans? Brits? Aussies? Yes, it is sourced (more sources than actual article) but that doesn't fix the premise. It has to be OR in the sense that the "by who" is in the eye of the beholder. Words mean different things to different people in different areas. As an example: In North Carolina, "shagging" is a type of dance they do to beach music. In the UK, well, it ain't dancing. We both speak English. DENNIS BROWN (T) (C) 01:43, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Classic example of what Wikipedia is not. Entirely based on a singular point of view which cannot be made neutral, factual, or objective. RayAYang (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete as per nom. A much more comprehensive listing is available at Wikipedia:Unusual_Articles#Places.Synchronism (talk) 05:47, 7 November 2008 (UTC)Synchronism (talk) 05:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article used to be much, much longer, but a couple of years ago the entire list section was deleted and this article has been a skeleton ever since. Why Wikipedia:Unusual_Articles#Places is allowed to exist but [1] has been through as many as five deletions depending on your count is beyond me. There was a ^{[citation needed]} problem with that old article, but linking to maps could have easily fixed it. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 02:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Delete as per WP:NOT, as said above, there is no way that this could ever be neutral objective and factual, since the basis of the entire article is a point of view. ~Pip 2 andahalf 06:19, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please see WP:NPOV: The neutral point of view policy is often misunderstood. The acronym NPOV does not mean "no points of view". The elimination of article content cannot be justified under this policy by simply labeling it "POV". Colonel Warden (talk) 23:57, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete, subjective from the get-go. Citing is no good in this case as the authority of the citations would also be subjective. WillOakland (talk) 08:49, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Unusual to...whom? Ecoleetage (talk) 13:33, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Can't we just ~~speedy~~SNOWBALL this? This by its nature is going to violate at least two of the Big Three, and while I suppose we can verify that someone, somewhere, thinks that there's something odd about a particular placename, it's still going to end up as an unmitigated WP:NPOV WP:NOR list of WP:LISTCRUFT. WP:NOT, I say. Mangoe (talk) 15:59, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- Which policy of WP:CSD are you saying it meets? Otherwise, you can't speedy it. Also, since this is the 2nd AFD, I don't think a speedy is a good idea anyway. DENNIS BROWN (T) (C) 17:28, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep. Well-written article with abundant (11 - count 'em) cited sources, and a further 10 external links - all of which confirm that the subject is verifiable, notable and a matter of recurring interest throughout the world. Perfectly ludicrous nomination. --Gene_poole (talk) 19:30, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Good point by the nominator that the criteria for inclusion seem quite odd; but as long as sources prove that certain names or places are found notable, there's no reason that we have to object to them. If the long list of See Alsos were gone, would we find this problematic? Nyttend (talk) 21:38, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. The topic itself is notable enough to have sources: it's not a random-collection/listcruft of notable things gathered by some arbitrary Wikipedians' ideas. DMacks (talk) 21:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
None of you three have addressed the points argued above. You've addressed notability and verifiability, and skipped over the point being addressed by the preceding editors: neutrality. How do you address that? Uncle G (talk) 21:56, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The nomination doesn't mention neutrality as an issue and the suggestion that there is a POV problem seems far-fetched as the article contains numerous sources which separately and independently confirm that we have a genuine topic. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The article is well-sourced and does not seem to be OR. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:51, 7 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Question What about the issue of neutrality, or the inability to ever globalize the article due to the vague and poorly named subject? That these issues weren't raised by the nom is meaningless, according to WP:AFD, as they were legitimately raised in the discussion. Sources alone don't fix neutrality, as it is easy to write a one sided article and source it quite well. DENNIS BROWN (T) (C) 00:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The neutrality of this article is a non-existent issue. The notability and verifiability of the subject have been established. Unless you're going to begin questioning the neutrality and/or reliability of the cited sources I can't see that there's really anything else left to discuss. We don't delete articles about political parties or world leaders because they cite biased party political sources - and this instance is one step further removed even than that, as none of the cited sources in this article are primary sources. --Gene_poole (talk) 04:29, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Have you looked at the sources? Most failed wp:rs, book sales sites, etc. The Amish Country News? (Amish publish websites?) And to establish "what is unusual", that is a globalization and nuetrality issue, as I have already explained way above. DENNIS BROWN (T) (C) 12:40, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As a matter of fact I have looked at the sources - which include the BBC, The University of Calgary Press and an official publication of the US Antarctic Program. The Amish Country News has been published quarterly for nearly 20 years and has an annual circulation of 500,000. Perhaps you should try looking at the sources a little more closely. --Gene_poole (talk) 15:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"What is unusual" is "what a cited RS says is unusual". It may be subjective, but WP's rules are about WP editors being subjective or making judgements or analysis (or selective quoting and similar "only part of the story" bias). WP:NPOV specifically does appear to promote inclusion of "X says Y about Z" or "Z is Y[cite X]" content. DMacks (talk) 06:11, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Reference to "reliable sources" as a justification is focusing entirely on the name of the publishers and not at all on the type of material. The BBC page is comments from the equivalent of a blog. The Irish page is from a travel site. The U. Calgary page is an ad for a (one presumes) reasonably scholarly book on name origins, but it is, after all, ad copy. The U. Kentucky one is at least entirely on the subject, but again, the work in question seems to be a piece for amusement. That's really the basic issue here: none of the works in question is trying to produce an authoritative list of such names, but most instead are presuming interest in the names and talking about why they got them. Maryland has its share of amusing placenames too: my favorite is Boring, Maryland, where I took a picture of my wife standing in front of the sign for the Boring United Methodist Church. Presumably I might be able to hunt around and find a book or webpage on that, and add Maryland to the list. And that's really the biggest problem: the article is using the existence of the books and pages as evidence for claims about the relative peculiarity of the names in different places. That's not only WP:OR, it's an invalid method. This article is trying to construct something out of a bunch of works which, it seems to me, consider themselves to be collections of trivia. Mangoe (talk) 11:19, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per above, plus a clear violation of WP:NPOV. Any place name can be considered unusual by some person or another, and just because an article is written on it in a newspaper doesn't mean a compilation of all these NPOV assertations merits an article. Themfromspace (talk) 09:52, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete not really notable gives only five examples which are probable not unusual to the residents or locals so really is opinion. MilborneOne (talk) 13:18, 9 November 2008 (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.