Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Populated place

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. -- Lear's Fool 01:15, 27 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Populated place[edit]

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This stub is nothing more than a definition used for the United States Geological Survey database purposes. It is most certainly not the only possible definition, is not notable by itself, and is a borderline dictdef. Re-writing this stub from scratch is not impossible, but in six years no one ever tried to, and it certainly isn't worth keeping in its present state.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 18:46 (UTC)

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Organizations-related deletion discussions. — I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 18:56, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of People-related deletion discussions. — I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 18:57, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Sorry if the DelSort categories seem weird. I really had no idea where to put this one. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 18:59, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Since the expression "populated place" is used on WP, including on a couple of categories on this article, having an article explaining what it is is probably useful. "Not a dictionary" is often ignored in cases like this. Steve Dufour (talk) 19:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Explanations of terminology Wikipedia uses do not belong in the article space, though. At the very least, this definition should be moved to WP space (which effectively means deletion), and even then consensus needs to be established that the USGN definition is the one Wikipedia standardizes on (which I am not so sure is the case). And what other cases where the "not a dictionary" guideline is intentionally ignored do you mean?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 19, 2011; 20:12 (UTC)
Comment I wish I could simply argue that the term is useful, since I use it in the articles I write about places, to contrast it with a "locale" which is pretty much just a name attached to a piece of nowhere, but it's not a good AfD argument. I did add a bit showing that the term is used generally in the field of cartography. I'm looking for more information about the various uses of the term, but much of what I found is in obscure GIS works and they're a bit too scholarly for my brain to handle today. I think there is more information out there, though if it still ends up being merely a dicdef then deletion might make sense. Some dicdefs, however, can actually address many aspects of a term beyond its definition. Note that six years of not being expanded is not usually considered a valid reason for deletion. Valfontis (talk) 20:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Heavily used in WP, see Category:Populated places and the article gives a nice overview about the contents of that category. Additionally the term is a feature class defined by the USGS a scientific agency. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 10:59, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Keep The term forms an important distinction in the areas of Cartography, GIS, Census, Planning, ..., and a whole bunch of other areas I can't even think of right now. Although its a bit limited at the moment to the American definitions of what constitute a populated place, it should be possible to broaden it to a world view fairly easily. Haruth (talk) 12:20, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
keep Used throughout this English language WP. Pointy deletion based dislike of the usage of the term regarding Russia. Result of special pleading to make Russia an exception. Hmains (talk) 02:26, 21 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I see good faith is just overflowing with this one!</sarcasm> Anyway, as Valfontis above rightfully pointed out, being useful is not a valid keep reason. If this article can be expanded to show notability of the term and properly sourced, fine. Otherwise, all we have is a stub about a field definition in a database used by a US government agency (and after the most recent expansion—a synthesized hodgepodge of barely related factoids). How's that a keep?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2011; 13:39 (UTC)
Background at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 July 19#Category:Set indices on Russian inhabited localities. Bogdan Nagachop (talk) 13:57, 22 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That's not really background; that's where I noticed that the "populated place" article is disturbingly substandard to the point of being a dictdef and asked why. If we only keep it around because it is "useful", that's wrong.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 22, 2011; 14:49 (UTC)
Keep, article is not so warm now but just does fog the mirror. If the term were not used authoritatively off-wiki, it should be a dead letter, but alas WP hasn't invented this term. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 03:09, 25 July 2011 (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.