Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sage Hen, 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 delete. Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:02, 14 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sage Hen, California[edit]

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Yet another Medon-line/ex-NCORR station/siding, as Gudde agrees. This one has the slight novelty of a turning loop as well as the usual passing track, but there is no sign of a town and nobody claims there ever was one. Mangoe (talk) 03:23, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Who is Gudde? The article is supported by at least one rs, have you any sources that dispute that this is an unincorporated community? Obviously it looks like scrubland on satellite imagery but i can see at least one watering hole in the vicinity which may suggest a cow farmer lives nearby. *puts crystal ball away* Zindor (talk) 19:28, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Gudde" is the other "origin of California place names" source; Durham is the one the article author used for most of these. I cannot tell what Durham actually says about the place because I would need a text copy, which I do not have; GNIS is not a reliable source as to whether a place is a settlement (see WP:GNIS for the gory details of that).

The larger picture is that when the Nevada-California-Oregon Railway built a narrow gauge line up towards Oregon through this region, they had to put a station every so often for operational reasons, and all of those had to have names, again for operational reasons. Even it was only a passing siding, it still had to have a name. A few of these blossomed out into towns, but most did not, so sometimes there was a station building, and sometimes not; and eventually the line was abandoned and there was nothing at all except the scar of the old track ballast and very occasionally a foundation. But the USGS assiduously copied every railroad place name onto the topo maps, and the GNIS compilers equally assiduously collected them, but then categorized all of them as "populated places" without regard to whether there actually was anything other than a station or indeed whether there were any buildings at all. All of the authors on places in California cover all sorts of different places, so the mere mention of a name isn't sufficient to establish that the mentioned place was a town or the like, and as a rule we haven't considered railroad place names notable because they are so numerous and there is so little information about them other than the location. So a place like Sage Hen, with no apparent buildings and no direct testimony that it was a real town, doesn't pass WP:GEOLAND. Mangoe (talk) 20:54, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the detailed insight, i certainly wasn't aware about the GNIS situation. Zindor (talk) 23:15, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Given the limitations of the GNIS source as explained by the OP, and the illumination given by Gudde, it's evident that the article subject is not a populated place or significant structure and therefore fails notability criteria. Zindor (talk) 23:15, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 17:25, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 17:25, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Just another rail siding. "Unincorporated community" is unsourced; even the questionable GNIS listing has it as a "populated place". –dlthewave ☎ 03:08, 10 July 2020 (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.