Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Red Bank, California

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 no consensus‎. leaning Keep via WP:HEY due to improvements made to the article during this AFD discussion. I don't think prolonging this discussion will lead to any further resolution as opinion is pretty strongly divided. I do not recommend a quick trip back to AFD as I think it will have a similar closure or even a Keep.

This isn't the first heated AFD discussion I've closed that concerned GEOLAND guidelines and I think a well-worded RFC might help adjudicate these disputes. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:12, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Red Bank, California[edit]

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Another stub on a non-notable dot that once appeared on maps of California. PROD declined because of 3 references, but none of them establish notability or even that this was ever a populated place, thus failing WP:GEOLAND. Existence of a post office, as has been decided in several previous AfD's, does not count for notability. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and California. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's enough — barely, but enough – in the histories here to support an article. Uncle G (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - The question here is whether the article is appropriately sourced. It is not a GEOLAND pass as there is no evidence of legal recognition (simply positioning a post office there is not legal recognition of a populated place, as post offices can be located outside communities, as can schools, and more basically post offices are not automatically or presumed notable), so it needs to meet WP:GNG, especially, we need to be able to show significant coverage in multiple reliable, independent sources. The sources are as follows:
- Tehama County Place Names - This is a self-published work and thus unreliable per WP:SPS. The authors have no evidence of expertise on the topic. The researchers involved in creating it include local high-school students. This is not a reliable, independent source.
- LA POSTA: A JOURNAL OF AMERICAN POSTAL HISTORY - The sole coverage of the actual location here is two single-line entries in a list that read as follows:
  - - "Eby 4 23 Apr 1894 23 Jun 1904 Was Colyer; M. to Redbank"
  - "Redbank 3 23 Jun 1904 31 May 1918 M. to Red Bluff"
- This is the very essence of a trivial mention of the topic.
- The USPS register - Again, the sole coverage of the location is:
  - "Redbank, Tehama: Beall, Chas S, PM $117 Red"
- This is not significant coverage of the topic in any meaningful sense.
As such this article is a straight-forward failure of notability. FOARP (talk) 11:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Your analysis of the Hislop and Hughes source is fallacious, and I have already debunked it at length at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/El Camino, California. To précis: The authors are not high school students, and the sources that they cite, 9 pages of them, are not high school students either. Reading just one acknowledgement on the acknowledgements page and then claiming that that means that the thing was written by high school students is really quite a poor show. Uncle G (talk) 15:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Uncle G - Sorry, but you haven't actually addressed the substance of my point here: this is a self-published book by non-professionals based on information collected in part by high school students . It doesn't matter who it cites, the problem is, without fact-checking of the kind that an established and reputable publishing house gives, we do not know if the content we are trying to cite this self published work for is accurately sourced. Especially in this case, the authors tell us that some (all?) of the information about Red Bank comes from one Opal Thornton Mendenhall, apparently a local, - that was their source.
    If there is a more reliable source for this information, then cite that, not this source which, again, and underlined simply to stress this point, is self-published. FOARP (talk) 18:41, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - Nonsense. As I said, this wholly fallacious analysis is all debunked at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/El Camino, California, including your floundering around trying every which way, switching from mischaracterizing it as the work of high-school students, as you just did here again while falsely claiming that you aren't doing it, to how two professional historians are "non-professionals". This is a very poor show of not even actually bothering to read the author's names from the citation, even though I added them to it. Uncle G (talk) 08:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - So who published this book? Not the Tehama Department of Education. FOARP (talk) 14:52, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        This is yet another very poor show of not even bothering to read the top of the page that I pointed you to where it is published to this day, and not self-published. I have no evidence that Donald L. Hislop or Benjamin M. Hughes even have their own publishing houses or their own WWW sites to self-publish on. You want to claim that this is self-published? Point to Donald L. Hislop's or Benjamin M. Hughes's own publishing house or WWW site. This really is the most shameful try-anything-from-"kids"-to-"not historians"-in-the-hope-that-it-sticks-and-ignore-what's-staring-you-in-the-face repeated attempt to discredit a perfectly alright history by some historians. I suspect that the goal is driving the reasoning, not the evidence. Because having to explain to you four times over that the authors are on the title page, not the acknowledgements, and having to go into the very basics of what Hislop and Hughes publishing something themselves would look like, is ludicrous. Uncle G (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment in addition to the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce saying it existed, and the map I just added, and source saying it's essentially the area that used to be Rancho Barranca Colorado ("Red Bank Ranch"), there are 14,336 Matches · "Red Bank" from 1848 - 2020 in Tehama County, California in Newspapers.com. I'm about to dive in. jengod (talk) 00:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- "Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce saying it existed" - The quote describes it as a "center", not as anything else. Simple existence does not confer notability. Notably the other sources describe it as a "farm center", farms have to pass WP:NCORP.
- Similarly a one-room school house does not demonstrate a GEOLAND pass, schools are not given presumed notability per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. FOARP (talk) 20:29, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. reason is WP:GEOLAND. बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:07, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- @बिनोद थारू - GEOLAND requires 1) a legally-recognized 2) populated place. Neither has been demonstrated here. FOARP (talk) 20:22, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - Would you say a post office is a legal recognition बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - No, I would not. This is something that has been discussed many times at AFD: Post offices can be located inside stores, stations, farms, mines etc. and need not be located in an actual populated community. FOARP (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - The passage I believe to prove Geoland is:
        A 1909 guide to Tehama County published by the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce stated "Being strictly a rural county, there are not many towns of much size...Paskenta, Henleyville, Manton, Lyonsville, Kirkwood, Proberta and Red Bank are smaller centers in different parts of the county
      - This is from article itself and sourced. बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:50, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        It describes the Red Bank as a "center", nothing else. Notably another source calls this a "farming center" so I wouldn't assume it refers to a town. It is also worth looking at the original source to see the multi-page gap between the word "size" and the word "Paskenta" that are separated by "..." in this quote - whoever posted this is taking distinct liberties. Red Bank was not a town and this source does not say it was one. FOARP (talk) 20:58, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Grammatically, the sentence assigns the word town as well as the word center to Red Bank. बिनोद थारू (talk) 21:03, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Grammatically the original source does no such thing. The two phrases that have been misleadingly coupled with "..." are not in the same sentence. FOARP (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Hey @FOARP I hated the idea that I confused anybody by knitting those quotes together (it made sense in my head at the time!) so I just turned the advertorial of it into a image, cf File:Smaller centers of Tehama County.jpg|thumb|In 1909 a Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce brochure marketing Tehama County described Red Bank as one of the "smaller centers" of the county - Cheers jengod (talk) 00:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - I read the Wiki article and there is just too much separate sourcing that suggests this is a inhabited place to categorically deny the sources one-by-one as self-published or unreliable and at the end claim it's not inhabited. One or more source being self-published does not prove the place is not inhavited. In fact, there is a school named Red Bank, post office named Red Bank and one can verify (WP:V) today in street view that there is a Red Bank fire department at this exact site.
        I find the opinion that this is not a inhavited place very unconvincing overall. बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        
        The "post office" was the home of CS Bell, the "library" was also the home of CS Bell, the "school" was a one-room building which may also have been the home of CS Bell for all I know. Given the liberties taken with the sourcing I would check the original sources before coming to a conclusion - the self-published source was not published by the Tehama Dept. of Education but for some reason that was how it was posted, and the quote from the board of commerce is quite silly - the start of the quote isn't even on the same page or even the neighbouring page from the end of it.
        And let's remember: to pass GEOLAND legal recognition is required. No proof of such is provided here. FOARP (talk) 21:04, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        
        Even towns with one person or zero person population have their place on wikipedia (GEOLAND). बिनोद थारू (talk) 21:10, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Only if they have legal recognition, which there is no evidence at all of here. GEOLAND does not confer a presumption of notability on every inhabited place. FOARP (talk) 21:20, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        USPS register also proves legal recognition. बिनोद थारू (talk) 21:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        USPS lists Post Offices in mines, stores, farms etc. - are these legally recognised populated places? FOARP (talk) 04:28, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        USPS proves "legally recognized" only. The "populated" part is proven by other sources, like:
        She was born July 30, 1909 in Red Bank, a small ranching community outside Red Bluff. She was raised in Red Bluff area and was a 1926 graduate of Red Bluff High School (Indian Valley Record. Apr 10, 2002. pg 14)
        
        बिनोद थारू (talk) 15:35, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        "Legally recognised populated place" requires that the location is legally-recognised as a populated place. Simply having some government agency at a location does not do that. For that you're really talking about incorporation or another form of legal recognition. FOARP (talk) 15:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        This proves WP:GEOLAND legal recognition:
        
        A 1909 guide to Tehama County published by the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce stated "Being strictly a rural county, there are not many towns of much size...Paskenta, Henleyville, Manton, Lyonsville, Kirkwood, Proberta and Red Bank are smaller centers in different parts of the county
        
        Recognized as a community by Chamber of Commerce. बिनोद थारू (talk) 03:03, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        बिनोद थारू, in North America, a local Chamber of Commerce is just a business association. The members are local businesses; in a rural county most of them are very small. They are not government organizations. Nothing they do meets WP:GEOLAND
        
        --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 05:15, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        
        It's FOARP taking liberties with sources, here. Xe has taken the acknowledgements page, which thanks some schoolchildren, alongside the "staff of the Tehama County Assessor’s Office" and some others who make a far less convenient false narrative than "the great kids at Red Bluff Union High School and their teach Mr. Osbourne who I'm sure did a great job at their class-project for US history", and presented that again and again. When that's debunked, xe switches tack to how this isn't professional historians. But the names of the authors were the first thing in the citation and they are (or were, since one is dead) credentialled professional historians, with publication records going back to the 1970s in one case. Xe switches tack again to how Gilliam put the Tehama County Department of Education into the first version of the article five years ago, but doesn't bother to check, and doesn't discover the publication by the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society. Make no mistake, it is FOARP who hasn't got things even remotely right, here, and the taking of the acknowledgements as authorship is only one of the bunkum shifting and try-ing-every-which way attempts to discredit a perfectly alright historical work written by two local historians with advanced degrees (also on the title page, but again conveniently not read) in the field. Uncle G (talk) 08:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Was this book published by the Tehama Department of Education as was originally claimed? Was it published by the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society as you are claiming now? It wasn't published by either of them - they merely hosted it on their website: this is what I'm talking about when I say "liberties". And yes, the book credits school-children as contributors. FOARP (talk) 14:50, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        See above. It's put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is time. Point to the author's self-publishing WWW site or publishing house. The onus of proof is on you. Also, I didn't claim anything about the Tehama County Department of Education, at all, anywhere. You're shifting and squirming again. Uncle G (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Sorry, are you asking me to give you the publisher for something that had no publisher? It doesn't work like that. FOARP (talk) 21:09, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Additional mentions of Red Bank:
- She was born July 30, 1909 in Red Bank, a small ranching community outside Red Bluff. She was raised in Red Bluff area and was a 1926 graduate of Red Bluff High School (Indian Valley Record. Apr 10, 2002. pg 14). This proves that it was inhabited.

बिनोद थारू (talk) 21:11, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. It was certainly a place a lot of people thought they were from, including presumably these kids and their teacher at Red Bank School. Local newspapers ran little news briefs about residents under the headline Red Bank Notes from at least 1905 to 1930, there was a Red Bank Fire in 2019, this guy's family says he was born in Red Bank in 1914, it had a seasonal fire station in 2007. Etc. jengod (talk) 22:13, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Also, it hosted a game bird hunting club in 2006, in 1893 "the people of the neighborhood of the Red Bank district school" were thinking of starting a literary magazine they would call The Hornet, the Red Bank farm center had 46 members in 1927 and they were very excited, there was a lawsuit involving Jackson Eby and the Red Bank School District in 1888, and church trustees forbade tap dancing in 1936, and so forth. I mean it's just a countryside zone outside of Red Bluff in the thinly populated county of Tehama, but it's definitely a place! jengod (talk) 22:33, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I added a section for Red Bank Fire with a brief summary and a link to our article Red Bank Fire. jengod (talk) 23:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per WP:HEY. This is very much no longer a stub, and the purportedly self-published work seems to have received implicit recommendation by the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society (see: here), which contributes towards reliability in light of WP:UBO. I'm also able to find a ton of information on that Red Bank School closure (see [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6], etc.) as well as indications that there were indeed land transactions that made this something of a defined area ([7]). There's also coverage of the school district and its associated elections that take place throughout the 1890s and the first half of the 20th century ([8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]). At minimum, what we have here is a WP:GNG-passing-but-defunct school district, though it's also frankly quite clearly a historically populated place with a whole vibrant community that may well have had significant coverage by multiple independent reliable sources over the years. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:55, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Per WP:UBO - ”The more widespread and consistent this use is, the stronger the evidence.”. How does a local historical society hosting this self-published book on their website even nearly begin to get near to a UBO pass that requires “widespread and consistent” use to evidence strongly? FOARP (talk) 21:05, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  - Meh. The local historical societies tend to be quite good in these respects. And the plethora of additional news sources show that an article can be written about this, whether as merely a school district or as an unincorporated community. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:54, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    - But they're not actually using this source? The same site gives you links to a whole load of sources that we regard as non-reliable (Findagrave.com, rootsweb, Wikipedia) - are these reliable now because of their "implicit recommendation"?
      Piecing together an article out of primary-source, run-of-the-mill news stories (e.g., stories about land-transfers, school closures etc.), none of which is directly about this supposed town, is the essence of original research. We're supposed to summarize what secondary sources say on the topic, not do our own research.
      You've focused a lot on the school - do you think you can write an article about the school that would pass WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES? Particularly since this requires a pass of WP:ORG which means we'd have to have at least one source that isn't a local news paper? If not, then why does it suddenly become a different story when you just change "school" to "location with a school"? FOARP (talk) 10:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      - WP:NSCHOOL (the relevant part of WP:NORG) requires schools to pass the either general NORG guideline OR the general notability guideline, which doesn’t have that sort of non-local sourcing requirement. The use of or is of key importance, meaning that if it satisfies the GNG then it would be perfectly fine—there is nothing in the policies or guidelines that would require for to satisfy both GNG and (for example) the general requirements of WP:NGO. And, in that lens, yes I think that a reasonable article can be written on the since-defunct school/district given the newspaper sources. — Red-tailed sock _{(Red-tailed hawk's nest)} 15:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        Reliable sources may make synthesis of unreliable sources. For example a NYT article may cite a Tweet, but twitter is an unreliable source. बिनोद थारू (talk) 23:39, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- We already have five sources that aren't newspapers, and all of this is yet another distraction. The right thing is to point to a proper reading of Project:published and then ask the money-where-one's-mouth-is question: What is Donald L. Hislop's or Benjamin M. Hughes's own publishing house or WWW site that they have self-published with/on? Point to it! Of course, FOARP cannot because there isn't one. Uncle G (talk) 00:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per this Google Earth image. No town there.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 05:02, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. WP:GEOLAND presumes notability even for now-uninhabited areas:

Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history. [...] बिनोद थारू (talk) 23:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

बिनोद थारू, you're right except this place was never legally recognized. It never had a local government or any other form of American legal recognition. A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:56, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Everyone, please accept my apologies. I had no intention of starting a flame war when I nominated this article for deletion. Look, I sincerely appreciate the efforts of those who have added to the article since its nomination. It's much better now than it was a week ago. (I clearly need to work on my WP:BEFORE skills). Regardless, I don't want to withdraw my nomination because what we have now, though improved, is essentially a bunch of passing mentions taped together into an article-like shape, i.e. WP:SYNTH. Clearly this is/was a real place, but nobody has shown that this was a legally-recognized place (only that it had legally-recognized businesses, a school and post office), thus failing WP:GEOLAND. As for the Hislop and Hughes source, I think it's a distraction: even if it is RS, it's trivial, mostly just saying there was a school and post office there (and that it's a "District", which has no legal definition). The same goes for my other recent Tehama County nominations. But if this or those AfD's end up as keep, I won't be devastated...they are more informative than the ridiculous stubs they used to be. So can we all relax? This is approaching WP:LAME. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 02:28, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@WeirdNAnnoyed, you did nothing wrong. You are not responsible for others. You acted in good faith.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

WP:GNG बिनोद थारू (talk) 02:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Hey man im josh (talk) 21:57, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I would have swore this was a delete after my cursory research a week ago. But I have now circled back to see the research by Red-tailed hawk, Uncle G, Jengod and Cielquiparle. It seems an easy keep now after the article was tidied up. Lightburst (talk) 00:52, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per a classic WP:HEY. A few of the additions were less encyclopedic than others but help to prove the point that this is a reasonably notable subject at least worthy of inclusion on the project. ~ Pbritti (talk) 03:44, 10 November 2023 (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.