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Do my articles pass notability guidelines?

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I have created numerous articles for Sri Lankan villages using a single source: an 1896 gazetter written by a local British judge:

The above are just a few. (Note that I actually didn't create the above articles, only revamped a bunch of old unsourced village stubs created in 2011 using this source, but I plan to nonetheless create new articles using the same template for the ones without articles.)

Do these articles pass notability guidelines with the one 1896 source? The opening of the book states "I confess to innumerable errors. Those who use the book will, I hope, pardon these errors on finding much that is accurate and interesting."

So I do not know how to go about this. What I have done and can do is state "according to such and such gazetter..." before any historical facts about each village. I don't think we need to assume the quote from the book applies to the population data, since this is obviously just taken from officially published government data. But if this is a real issue I can remove this demographic info if you deem this source unreliable.

I don't want to go ahead and create 300 of these articles only for them to be AFD'd. I would like an opinion on this. Thanks! —  Melofors  TC 09:45, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your work and for posting the question. I think that it reflects recognition that the there are millions of settlements that could pass wp:ngeo where I don't think that most wikipedians would figure is appropriate for our encyclopedia to have millions of new articles on. May I suggest creating a broader article on "municipalities of xxxx" and put the content of those potential article into substantial table entries or article sections which have basic info on them including general info and a small image) While current policy/guidelines do not give guidance towards this, IMO it is a route to handle these types of entries with the objective of being an encyclopedia of articles. . Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:33, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would second this approach- and also the other opinion that while 1896 gazetters are published government sources, I would hope there is a more modern source to back the continued existence of these villages up. I know I've definitely encountered wiki geostubs in Myanmar of villages that don't exist anymore legally or physically sourced from British maps/records. EmeraldRange (talk/contribs) 10:59, 27 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In the case of the articles you've listed above, they seem to be expansions of articles created by Dr. Blofeld that were based off what appears to be the Sri Lankan Census. Those are fine; they meet the threshold of legal recognition and they're populated, so they easily meet the first bullet in WP:GEOLAND. Continuing to expand those sorts of articles makes plenty of sense and improves the encyclopedia.
As for creating new articles that are solely based on the old work, I would advise trying to pair them up with at least some other source before making a standalone article. There's a good chance (if the village is still around) that the transcription/name may have changed in the past 125 years, and we want to try to avoid duplicate articles on the exact same subject. If the sole source is the colonial-era Gazetteer, it's not clear to me that the threshold of "legal recognition" would apply; the work appears to be a description of remote villages more than a document with legal authority, and you would need to meet GNG absent evidence of legal recognition even though it's a populated place. In that case, it may be better to add the villages with attribution to a relevant list article/article on a broader geographical area as North8000 has suggested above. If you can find other sources that talk about a particular village (such as censuses or other similar works), then we may well have a case for a standalone article while reducing the likelihood of accidentally duplicating an existing article. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 20:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry but they dont meet WP:GEOLAND. In the US, census data states if the settlement is recorded it has legal recognition. However as stated in the last RFC this rule is not the same for all census across the world. In fact looking at the Sri Lanka census rules it looks like the only legal recognition is for the district, not the settlement. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:30, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We need people to expand the existing stubs rather than create more!♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Horse Eye's Back: Firstly, apologies for the year-late reply. I would like to present the article for Dehianga. This article includes official 1911 and 1921 census records such as this 1911 source, which I believe presents legal recognition. Would using these sources present notability by the Sri Lankan government under WP:GEOLAND, and as such, if I create articles using the 1896 source, must they be paired with an official census record to satisfy its recognition? I unfortunately cannot find any modern source listing officially-recognized Sri Lankan villages. Would these 1911 and 1921 census records suffice? —  Melofors  TC 05:58, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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I occasionally see it argued that legal recognition under GEOLAND can be assumed just from there being a post-office or a school at the location. Typically this argument fails but it would be good to say something specific about it in the guide. FOARP (talk) 15:25, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Although "legal recognition" is a vague criterion, I would say "has a post office or school" clearly fails it. FOARP: can you give an example where the argument is made at AfD? — hike395 (talk) 16:07, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Hike395 - Here's an AFD I participated in where it succeeded in making the discussion no consensus. Here's another. Of course there were other arguments made in those discussions as well. Haven't seen any lately but then I haven't been so active at AFD. FOARP (talk) 18:17, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note sure the issue there is as much with the wording of GEOLAND as general competence... Incompetent arguments don't actually rely on any underlying policy or guideline so changing the underlying policy or guideline isn't going to change anything. Behavioral issues should be treated as such, not dignified or taken seriously. What if instead of opening this you had brought @Paulmcdonald: up for a topic ban from AFD? They seem to make a habit of policy and guideline free and lite bludgeoning on AFDs, examples: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] [11] [12][13] Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, we should. I know that just in the county I live in, there were post offices established at isolated country stores and at farms. There were other post offices at locations for which the name may appear on an old map, but I haven't found any information on what was there. There is even one post office for which the only information I have found places it on the mail route between two towns that were about 30 miles apart. Schools, churches, and even courthouses were often established at otherwise uninhabited places, although settlements might eventually grow up around them. So I think we should say that the presence of post offices, schools, churches, and other non-residential buildings do not in and of themselves demonstate that they were in a populated place. What we need are reliable sources that indicate that there was a population at the location that was more than the store keeper, farmer, teacher, or minister and their family and dependents. Donald Albury 16:08, 26 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A straight forward additional sentence in GEOLAND would read: "Legal recognition requires substantiation in reliable sources and should not be inferred simply from the presence or absence of non-residential buildings such as post-offices, schools, and churches at the location". FOARP (talk) 09:14, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This may well be true of the US, which AFAIK is in any case the only place where the term "legal recognition" has any precise meaning. It's not true of (for example) the UK and Europe, where a church standing in isolation mostly indicates a now-depopulated ancient settlement (and thus notable, since notability is not temporary). So remove churches, or limit the comment to the US? Ingratis (talk) 13:34, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Mostly" is not always, and I would still argue that a church building, no matter how old it is, does not, in the absence of other evidence, establish the notability of any associated current or historical populated place, i.e. it is sources about the populated place that are needed to establish notability, not the mere presence of a building. Donald Albury 18:05, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, we definitely have churches standing in the middle of nowhere that were never associated with a particular community in the UK. Rame Head chapel at Rame Head is an example of this (obviously potentially notable on GNG grounds though). FOARP (talk) 19:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should be amended to requiring at least one secondary source that describes the area in some level of detail.
The problem is articles where you cannot verify (with a secondary source) the basic details, Monroe is a good example because it is synthy/OR based on primary sources from the 19th century, which can lead to issues if those sources are incorrect. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, though this is a topic we talked to death last year (though I suppose it's been long enough that we could revive it). FOARP (talk) 19:22, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support changing this, but don't have high hopes for it passing. JoelleJay (talk) 20:05, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that just there being a post office or school should not be enough to green light it. And I think that "legal recognition" (especially for current times)) is a mostly good criteria but sometimes problematic. But there no harm is clarifying that such a/any building alone does not itself satisfy the"legally recognized" criteria. But the proposed wording goes a lot farther than that and IMO too far. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:26, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is 'legal definition' is never defined. To some it is inclusion on a census/database, some people take any mention in any sort of government document to count, to others it is having legal powers such as a local council - for the latter there are many cases where a historic town with plenty of history for an article gets merged into a new authority. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
True, but that's a different question. North8000 (talk) 18:20, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What part goes too far? FOARP (talk) 19:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was concerned about deltionists requiring wp:ver grade explicit "statements of recognition" when it is pretty clear that they are recognized. North8000 (talk) 22:34, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not FOARP but I presumed a statement of recognition would be as minimal as this: 'Mauku Historical Cemetery is located 4 km north of the rural South Auckland settlement of Mauku' [14] which verifies that a settlement named Mauku exists in the area given in the WP article. Traumnovelle (talk) 22:53, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I don’t see how this wording changes the requirement that there be some kind of substantiation and what that substantiation is is otherwise left open. This wording is just saying “don’t infer it simply from stuff that ultimately doesn’t require there to be a legally recognised settlement at the location”. We have *a lot* of articles that discuss post offices and similar (mostly as a result of C46) so this tends to come up fairly regularly. FOARP (talk) 04:07, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Post offices in the US definitely fail this, especially prior to RFD. 4th class POs had arbitrary names which often changed with the postmaster and which were located wherever convenient in houses, stores, and especially train stations. It had nothing to with whether there was a settlement around the place. Schools also were placed where convenient: near here there is a Pindell School Rd. but there is no "Pindell, MD" and for that matter it isn't pbvopis where the school lay on this entirely rural road.
In the US, as far as I am concerned, "legally recognized" means "incorporated". CDPs are something of a moot point because they almost invariably draw lines around unincorporated towns or the like which everyone recognizes as such without the Census's help, so they tend to be uncontroversially notable. The issue with these is the reverse: early on they made combo CDPs which lumped two adjacent areas together. I don't see these as meriting articles because they are completely artificial statistical constructs. and apparently someone at the census agreed because this practice seems to have ended.
Since I generate a lot of the deletion discussions which prompt these question, I just want to add that when looking at candidates I give a pass to any place which looks like a town in the maps and aerials. Particularly in midwest and plains states one sees a characteristic grid pattern consistent with "platting", and histories often give a date for that. Probably these don't really pass GNG but there's only so many arguments I have time for. Mangoe (talk) 20:05, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clarifying the definition of legal recognition per RfCs might be best because some people do consider census boundaries/tracts as legally recognised places. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:10, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Geoland already says that census tracts are not presumed to be notable. Donald Albury 21:46, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot that given that in practice it gets ignored often. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:49, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of our policies and guidelines get ignored sooner or later. :) Donald Albury 22:33, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Census boundaries/tracts per se are not considered to legally recognized places for wp:notability purposes. I think that with the "irrigation district" note it points our that abstract sets of lines on a map, even if legally recognized (e.g. irrigation districts, census tracts, library districts, sewer districts, water districts that nobody really considers to be a recognizable "place" ) does not green light them under this SNG. North8000 (talk) 22:40, 27 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The census thing requires some nuance. American CDPs are simply not notable in their own right; hardly anyone is even aware of them. They are solely useful as a key to statistical data, and articles which begin "X is a Census Designated Place" need to have that phrase removed. In other countries the census is a useful point of identification of villages and the like. The problem with the Iranian articles is that the people who did them apparently didn't know and Farsi and therefore didn't catch on that they were too far down the data breakout and were elevating arbitrarily named census tracts to being towns when the names in Farsi made clear they were no such thing. Probably this ought to be spelled out better. Mangoe (talk) 12:50, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't there something weird about CDPs in Hawai'i that would exempt them from this? JoelleJay (talk) 20:03, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are no incorporated municipalities in Hawaii. I don't see how that would exempt CDPs in Hawaii from meeting the SNG/GNG. There is a long list of articles about CDPs in Hawaii, but I don't see that as being different from other states. Obviously, many populated places in Hawaii will meet the GNG, and CDP data will provide statistical data for them. The main difference is that most states have incorporated municipalities that are smaller that most CDPs, and municipalities have official status while CDPs don't. But then, that is part of what we are discussing here. Donald Albury 21:21, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't mean "exempt from geoland/GNG", only exempt from Mangoe's characterization of CDPs and his instruction on articles beginning "X is...". JoelleJay (talk) 22:17, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at these places, they are largely individual housing development areas with possibly some commercial centers within them (I couldn't really check that well). Most of them seem to be named on the topos. Do Hawaiian newspapers use these names> Are they otherwise commonly referred to? The point is, they are CDPs because, at least on Hawaii, they represent distinct settlements for which someone would like to know the populations. Or in other words, they are notable because they are CDPs; they were designated as CDPs because someone felt they were notable.
Here's the thing about CDPs: look at Silver Spring, Maryland, which is, acto the Census, the fifth most populous place in Maryland. In reality it's a small city, but because it has no legal boundaries, being unincorporated, the line between it and Wheaton, Maryland, the next it-was-a-town-but-is-evolving-into-a-city-too north is arbitrary, which is why the census has to draw lines if it is going to provide counts. Meanwhile Takoma Park is a city, next to Silver Spring, with a fifth the population; but it is incorporated. And the thing is, nobody needs the census to identify all these places for them. Even now, in a sea of otherwise undifferentiated suburbia, they are obvious centers of greater or lesser urbanzation/townliness. Even in 1950 they were obvious, distinct towns. And in 1950 you could have written WP articles on each of them because of that, long before the CDP era. Mangoe (talk) 01:48, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And sometimes, a CDP isn't notable. I remember a CDP defined after the 1970 census that was called Range Line, presumably because it was a long a highway that followed a range line on a map. There was a cluster of buildings there, but it was primarily housing for migrant farm workers. The designation was dropped following the 1980 census and never heard of again. The farm fields where the migrants worked were soon thereafter converted to sub-divisions, I would say that the CDP designation does not confer notability, not does it establish that the place was notable before being named a CDP. It just gives us a handy set of precise statistics to attach to an article about a (hopefully) notable place. Donald Albury 02:58, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can say that all the Hawai'ian CDPs I've visited, and the ones my in-laws live/lived in, have been treated exactly the same as incorporated towns re: how they are referred to. I don't think anyone would know they weren't normal towns without looking it up (e.g. some in-laws who have been there for 5 generations didn't realize they lived in a CDP). Perhaps it is different for places like Hawai'i where population centers are more spread out, as opposed to the crowded CDPs on the east coast that are all seemingly contiguous with other towns/boros/CDPs and are only used for statistical reasons. Many of the HI CDPs have had the same name for centuries (e.g. Lihue, named in 1837) and have many namesake establishments (e.g. Lihue Airport, Hilo International Airport, Hilo Intermediate School, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, etc.). Is that typical for MD CDPs? JoelleJay (talk) 03:15, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt more than a few people in Florida realize that they live in a CDP. Many think they live in a city or town when they actually live in an unincorporated area that is served by the post office named after the city or town, or in a community that extends beyond a CDP boundary, and which may or may not share a name with the CDP. In a number of places in Florida the population of the unincorporated area served by a post office is considerably larger than the population of the incorporated municipality (and so we have editors trying to add notable residents or landmarks to a city article when they are outside the city limits). Those unincorporated suburbs are often divided up into CDPs, but the existance of a CDP has no effect on its residents, so they don't notice it, and any resemblance of the name of the CDP to what locals call the area is coincidental. For unincorporated communities that are not part of metro areas, the boundaries of the CDP are usually arbitrary, and again, have no effect on residents of the CDP compared to people living outside the CDP boundaries. Again, the existance of a CDP definition does not confer notability. CDPs are purely statistical devices. A notable community may have its core designated as a CDP, but a determination of notability does not depend on, and is not necessarily predicted by, a CDP designation. I think we have been seduced by the availability of precise demographic statistics from a stable government source into assuming that CDPs are automatically notable. Donald Albury 15:21, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, obviously I'm far from arguing CDPs should automatically count as a GEOLAND pass -- I think you (and probably @Mangoe) are well aware of my stance on anything resembling inherent notability. I'm just saying that when every settlement in a state is a CDP we should be careful not to assume an unincorporated population center is covered by some incorporated entity's article and that sometimes it is appropriate to state "X is a CDP" as that is the best or only descriptor for it. JoelleJay (talk) 18:36, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't you state 'X is a settlement' based on what the sources state? A reliable source discussing a town is going to call it a town not an incorporated municipality or a census designated place. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:04, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of the time these stubs will be based on government websites that do call it a CDP. But my main point is that the designation of something as a CDP can mean different things depending on location, including that the CDP is indistinguishable from the community's concept of a "town". JoelleJay (talk) 00:05, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a point in referring to it as a CDP. Sure it technically is, but you could also say something similar for towns that have corresponding census tracts to their area, but we don't do that because census areas are not notable. Traumnovelle (talk) 00:09, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok...but US incorporated towns are also legally recognized as such, so any census tracts can easily be redirected to those articles. The Hawaiian towns don't have that particular legal recognition but are generally functionally equivalent to their CDPs, so why not have the article be organized at the one entity that has some form of governmental definition and statistical data? Anyway, again, my main point is that no towns in Hawai'i--including Honolulu--meet the NGEO requirement of "populated, legally recognized place" if we're only going by their status as CDPs, which seems pretty ridiculous given how loose we are with that criterion for all the countries that just don't employ the concept of "incorporation" at all. I'm all for every article needing to demonstrate GNG coverage, but if we're already giving towns in every other state a free pass then why treat Hawai'i differently? JoelleJay (talk) 01:51, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why can't they just be referred to as a town? If there are secondary sources describing the legal position then it could be mentioned in a governance section but I don't see why we should refer to it as a CDP just because a database refers to it as such. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But, if we have an article about a community (populated place) without mentioning that some part of it is a CDP, then we would have to leave out the census data. The trick is finding balance in writing about a community that is notable, and for which census data is available for that part of the community that is in a CDP. The CDP is not the community, and is not what makes the community notable. CDPs rarely include all of a community, but tend to include the core of a community and much of its population, and therefore the census data is pertinant to a WP article about the community. Donald Albury 14:56, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the statistical data is (unfortunately, in my opinion) the main and sometimes only content in the vast majority of place articles, especially census cruft for stubs/start-class in the US, so if we only had articles on the communities without regard to any legal boundaries it would be "difficult" to write anything at all on them. Of course it would be better if all articles actually were based mainly on secondary coverage and the primary statistical details only comprised a small part, but that's not what the current practice is. And also in Hawai'i the CDP is the closest thing to a bounded town and AFAIK is always the same name as the town (e.g. "Hawi CDP, Hawaii is a city, town, place equivalent, and township located in Hawaii") -- the next administrative level below the county (which is generally the whole island) is the council district, and like census tracts these are continuous and so don't represent individual communities. The Hawaiian government websites certainly treat the CDPs the same way other states treat their incorporated cities. JoelleJay (talk) 19:52, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Except this data is not secondary and goes against most of the core policies and guidelines of WP. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Traumnovelle, I strongly support our policy requirement that articles be based on secondary sources, and if there was any chance of changing NGEO (or NPROF, or NSPECIES, where even a single unreliable primary source would be enough to meet the SNG for animals...) I would (and have) argued to force reliance on demonstrating GNG rather than encouraging article creation from single primary sources. But as it stands we're stuck with the current standard, and in that context I feel it's relevant to point out the very different status CDPs in Hawai'i have compared to those elsewhere, and that the reasonable practice of discounting CDPs re: evidence of being NGEO places probably should be amended in the cases where there are no alternative legal descriptors. JoelleJay (talk) 03:00, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Admittedly it is better to refer to it as a census tract than erroneously referring to something that exists on a census as a form of locality, the latter I have seen quite often. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:07, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A CDP is not a census tract. They exist solely because people want numbers for places that obviously exist but which don't have well-defined borders. To repeat. CDPs are generally a sign of notability because if people didn't think an area was a thing, they wouldn't be asking the census to give them a count for it. But they aren't the thing itself.
The underlying issue here is that people have in the past, and still do, it seems, run through a list of names of some kind and semi-mechanically generate articles for them without checking the individual places. Nearly every class of such lists has problems which cause spurious or badly worded articles to be created. It's not a question of notability as much as it is saying things that aren't true. For instance, at the top of geography deletion list there are two articles on US places where sloppy map reading has converted a couple of isolated churches into "unincorporated communities", our euphemism for a settlement without its own governance. It's not that these places aren't notable; they simply do not exist as such, and the churches themselves aren't notable. The only reason why census lists of villages are generally OK is that their methodology generally doesn't make places up; but correlating these with spots on the map is often extremely iffy because the maps themselves aren't reliable. Mangoe (talk) 14:37, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Late to this, but "correlating these with spots on the map is often extremely iffy because the maps themselves aren't reliable" is exactly on the money. We have tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of "village" articles that are basically just GNIS or GNS plus a reference to a government list - I always wonder how people knew that the place on GNIS/GNS was the same one as in the list when the only data-point linking them is the name? The answer is they didn't, they just assumed it was, an assumption which might be true most of the time but is wrong often enough to be problematic.
This issue is most obvious when there are multiple locations with (supposedly) the same name in the same area, and whoever mass-created the articles has apparently arbitrarily assigned the stats in the census to specific locations. Take Sharifabad (31°28′ N 53°47′ E), Dehshir and Sharifabad (31°24′ N 53°52′ E), Dehshir how did the page-creator know which Iranian census stats belonged to which location on GNS? The Iranian census doesn't include co-ordinates. FOARP (talk) 10:16, 9 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion in the enclosing division

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The sentence "If a Wikipedia article cannot be developed using known sources, information on the informal place should be included in the more general article on the legally recognized populated place or administrative subdivision that contains it" has proven problematic and generates inconsistent results. Generally when place articles show up at AfD, it's not because they are not notable enough: it's because the place is being claimed to be "a community" (the preferred euphemism for unincorporated town/village) when research tends to show that this isn't true. This leads to spurious information being kept sometimes because some closers take AtD as sacred and the enclosing article has a list of "unincorporated communities" which includes the incorrect entry; but if the list is corrected, then there's no reason for the resulting redirect.

Personally, I'm inclined to strike the sentence entirely, but if not, it needs clarification/rewording. Mangoe (talk) 13:15, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good luck with that! Last years RFC couldnt get a concensus on changing GEOLAND when it is totally inaccurate, as legally recognised place is actually impossible to fulfill outside of the US. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 16:23, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
CCC so maybe something early next year might finally get through. I agree that GEOLAND is basically US-centric. FOARP (talk) 18:56, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the issue is things like housing subdivisions, post offices, geographical features etc. being incorrectly passed off as being settlements/communities Changing the wording to say 'can' instead of should may be better, but I don't see an issue with merging articles that say 'X is a hamlet in Y county' to the Y county article Traumnovelle (talk) 20:07, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, that's not the usual issue, except maybe by chance. Nobody really has a problem with listing the neighborhoods of a city, for instance. The more typical issue is that someone tries to "save" a place that's not notable because it isn't really a settlement at all by redirecting to the (typically erroneous) list of "unincorporated communities" in the next level up division (typically a township). Mangoe (talk) 16:47, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just one day...

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I don't want to call out the editor who did this as I understand they don't do this any more, but this single day in 2011 in which they created 866 articles is really quite something to look at and really puts all the problems we have with notability in the GEO space in context. Notably:

  • The articles appear to have been sourced alphabetically from another list, presumably either GNS or something ultimately related to it.
  • These articles are related to two different countries (Hungary and Sri Lanka) so they don't come from a country-specific source. Despite this, many of the Sri Lankan articles have a generic citation to a Sri Lankan government website (it doesn't link to any specific content, database, or interface there), given the speed of creation I don't believe anyone looked at anything in this source before creating these articles.
  • To avoid cherry-picking, I had a random number-generator generate five numbers: 62, 680, 97, 369, 354. These correspond to: Zaláta, Opalgalawatta, Szellő, Udabowala, and Udamulla.
  1. Zaláta - Unreferenced Hungarian village article. Appears to exist at the location in the article. There's a substantial Hungarian Wiki article but I don't think the existence of this stub is encouraging anyone to actually copy data over from it.
  2. Opalgalawatta - Sri Lankan village article. There's a generic reference to the Sri Lankan government website but, given the speed at which these articles were created, I genuinely don't believe the author actually looked at this when creating this article, and nothing at the link shows where you can find any information about it. There doesn't appear to be anything at the location in the article, which appears to be part of a nature reserve called "mækiliyā vala" (මැකිලියා වල) in Sinhala. It doesn't look like anyone confirmed that this was there on the map as a village when creating this article. No evidence that this exists as a village, nor could I find any searching on line. Based on it being included on this map of land-slippage locations I assume it's a location-name of some sort.
  3. Szellő - Single-sentence Hungarian Village stub article, though at least this has had referencing added to it. Based on the Hungarian wiki article probably a substantial article could be written here, but again the stub doesn't appear to have encouraged this.
  4. Udabowala - Like all the Sri Lankan articles created by this editor on this day, this is generically cited to a Sri Lankan government website, however there's no evidence that the creator ever looked at this source. The location in the article in really the village of Pallebowala (indeed, it's exactly on top of Pallebowala hospital). Searching online I can see it being used as the name of a road, but no evidence of a village with this name.
  5. Udamulla - This Sri Lankan village lacks even location data and is impossible to verify in any way from content in the article. Searching online I see what could either be a very small village or just a road with that name in/next to the village of Panagamuwa.

That is out of five articles I looked at, at least two of the articles appear prima-facie non-notable, one is highly suspect, and the other two are micro-stubs (albeit expandable). And this was just the content created by this single mass-creating editor on a single day, after 13 years of work by other editors (mostly gnoming) on these articles. FOARP (talk) 17:15, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Some of the articles from that day are part of Template:Divisional Secretariats of Sri Lanka - Southern Province. Looking at the 47 entries populating that template, just 3 have been expanded beyond the X is Y sentence: Baddegama Divisional Secretariat with an odd test edit (I will revert it), Malimbada Divisional Secretariat with what reads as government website text and based on the history may be a machine translation, and Kirinda Puhulwella Divisional Secretariat, which seems to have a proper expansion sourced to a now-dead government site plus lists (later removed) and some other things hidden behind copyvio revdels. That said, these places probably do exist. CMD (talk) 00:13, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure they exist as villages which is the key part here - these may well just be feature-names, and not even Sri Lankan-origin feature names. Since GNS is (apparently) the source, this would be very in keeping with the GNS data set, which is (in large part anyway) a set of feature-names taken from military maps compiled in the 1940's to 1960's, and of dubious accuracy (see, e.g., this analysis of place-names in South Korea).
One thing I'm thinking looking at these articles is "where are the Sri Lankans?", because, unlike when these articles were created, Sri Lanka is now a country where the majority of people now have internet access (~15% had access in 2011, ~67% had it in 2023). Roughly ~25% of Sri Lankans speak English. If these places were actual villages I would have expected to see Sri Lankan editors coming in to add material to them, but they aren't. To almost any of these articles. By itself this suggests that this is a bad data-set. FOARP (talk) 08:22, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]


A couple of thoughts:

  • They were by Wikipedia's most prolific editor. Currently autopatolled and so if that was current those would not be up for NPP review.
  • If they really are inhabited villages, then they are greenlighted by this SNG. There are currently few million of these that don't have articles yet.
  • Not sure if they run afoul of our mass-creation guidance.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 01:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think you may be correct that none of this is disallowed per se, though obviously "legal recognition" would have to be shown for a GEOLAND pass. But surely if the PAGs don't prevent what is clearly problematic behaviour (generating hundreds of essentially unreferenced GEOLAND-failing articles in a single day at a rate of up 25 a minute - see 00:55 UTC on that day), then that in itself indicates that they need to change.
PS - I think by now I probably have a reputation as some kind of deletionist in some corners of Wikipedia (ironically I used to be accused of being the exact opposite) but every single AFD I've voted in over 17 years editing Wikipedia doesn't match even a few days of mass-creation of this kind. FOARP (talk) 08:34, 3 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing wording of NPLACE

[edit]

Currently WP:NPLACE says both

Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low.

and

if the class of division is not notable (e.g. townships in certain US states) its members are not notable either, even though technically recognized in law.

The way I read this is that there is a class of legally recognized places (e.g., townships) that are both presumed notable (because of the first quoted sentence) and not notable (because of the second quote sentence). While this is logically possible, I find it very confusing at this point: I can foresee strong AfD disagreements where two editors come to completely opposite conclusions about notability based on this wording.

The second sentence was added on 28 November 2024 by Mangoe, possibly as a result from the discussions here or here. There doesn't seem to be any discussion around this specific wording: I would like to revert the edit, unless the consensus is around keeping the sentence.

Let's think of an editor who is reading this guideline. He or she reads "if the class of division is not notable". Which classes are those? Where does one look to find out? If there is a consensus to keep the sentence, can we modify the first sentence to say something like "Unless the type of a place is in the exception list, below, populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable." and then make an explicit bulleted list of types of places that are not notable (e.g., abadi, census tracts, township in a specific list of U.S. states, etc.)

What do editors think? Is there a consensus to keep the edit? — hike395 (talk) 01:24, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's likely confusing because underlying premise is confusing. There really isn't a clear meaning to "legally recognized", so one has to figure out what it means and where to look for this anyway. The whole premise is trying to describe a fuzzy consensus that has emerged over decades of discussions and AfDs. The issue with a list is that it implies anything unlisted will be presumed notable, which is not a given. CMD (talk) 02:06, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The issue with US townships in particular is that their significance varies from state to state, including those that don't have them. To take the two extreme cases, in New Jersey they are a major level in the hierarchy; in North Carolina they are legally defined but were in practice were abandoned almost immediately. Therefore, in the latter case it was decided through AfD that we weren't going to have articles on the individual townships in NC. The same thing applies to "hundreds". The thing is that there are so few cases I know where this exception is taken, that we could just as well list all the individual cases and point back to the discussion(s) for each.
The deeper issue is that people like to write articles for each legal/governmental/territorial entity even when a map of the lot and a listing with key data would serve as well and probably better, Mangoe (talk) 04:01, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We had a rather big discussion about this 2 years ago, which I started and went to RFC, but became just a slanging match and nothing eventually was changed. "Legally recognised" is impossible to really evidence except for the US, where census is only done in those areas, and i tried to put forward several different ways forward. The discussion was split between deletionists, the keep everything brigade and those who hate stubs, and nothing could be agreed. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:28, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And the bigger issue as User:Mangoe says, relates to government areas which don't really appear on any map and should not in my opinion come under nplace, but have its own wikipedia rule. At the moment, in the UK Geography group there is a discussion about changing convention on how you record government area and actual place, which as I pointed out is pointless at the moment as within the next two to three years, those areas will all change! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:34, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the other editors:
  • The underlying premise is confusing.
  • We have tried in the past, but there is no consensus to change the underlying premise.
  • Editors should be making list article instead of individual place articles
even given all of that, I would claim that the new addition (as it stands today) makes things even more confusing. Contra Chipmunkdavis, the current underlying guideline says that all "legally recognized places" are presumed notable, even without a list of exceptions. Right now, the guideline says that there are some vaguely specified exceptions (townships in some unknown list of U.S. states, perhaps other exceptions too). It's a total mess, IMO.
I cannot tell from the discussion above: is there a consensus to keep Mangoe's edit? I think there was not a clear consensus to add it in November, so I think we need a consensus to keep it. What do editors think about this edit specifically? — hike395 (talk) 15:02, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how what was just said is contra Chipmunkdavis. CMD (talk) 15:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies. I believe you said The issue with a list is that it implies anything unlisted will be presumed notable, which is not a given. I was saying that the guideline indeed says that "legally recognized places" are presumed notable. IMO, not having a list doesn't make the guideline stronger: it's already strong (if deeply flawed). — hike395 (talk) 15:26, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We know that not everything legally named place is presumed notable, as we have past examples of consensus that show this. Whether there is a list on this page or not does not affect this. CMD (talk) 15:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For my own edification, can you tell me some of the past examples of consensus that shows that? I hope those are not WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, because if not, those consensus discussions can be used to support a rewrite of this guideline. — hike395 (talk) 17:09, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Besides the township issue, where the difficulty is that they often lack any real notability and are vestigial, the US issue was that people were taking the names in GNIS as legally defined, which really they are not. And as you can see in WP:GNIS, its reliability about the nature of the places they were giving the names of has been sketchy, for a number of reasons. And even with the names, which was what they were tasked with, they made errors here and there. Just this week I came across a case where they have entries for "Broad Park" and "Board Park"; the latter came off the topos and is (based on other sources) wrong, whereas the other name came from a commercial atlas. The coordinates are so close that it's clear they were meant to be the name of the same place.
The only time in the US you can accurately claim a place to be legally named is if it is incorporated and therefore is chartered under law with a specific name. For other places, the task of GNIS was to determine a single accurate name for places, not to dictate what that name is. Mangoe (talk) 22:45, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would have removed the edit if I had noticed it. It doesn't clarify anything for someone coming to the topic for the first time. I'd replace it with something more descriptive, maybe something like For purposes of NPLACE, "populated place" is a settlement such as a city, town, village, hamlet, or dwelling, and does not include administrative divisions, including townships and census tracts. Anything not included by this section may still be notable for other reasons, such as passing the general notability guideline. SportingFlyer T·C 20:47, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support this wording. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:26, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh! 💡! The new sentence Mangoe added is about what is a place rather than what is notable. That wasn't obvious to me at all. I support this wording, also. — hike395 (talk) 22:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One possible problem with this is that it might exclude obvious things such as countries - is a country notable under NPLACE or GNG? SportingFlyer T·C 23:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Under your proposal, no administrative area could qualify under NPLACE, but only under GNG. I would be shocked if any country failed GNG. Townships in less well-connected countries (e.g., Chong-Alay District) may fail.
In any event, I would still remove or fix the old sentence added in November — hike395 (talk) 23:30, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why it matters if countries don't have an automatic notability requirement given they obviously pass GNG. Traumnovelle (talk) 23:36, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The RfC 2 years ago was on the topic of whether the guideline should explicitly state whether administrative areas should be considered notable (if information beyond statistics is known to exist). The RfC closed with no consensus. It's thus likely that we would have to have another RfC to make this change. — hike395 (talk)
I hated that RfC proposal because it tried to change notability (is this a settlement?) to apply to content in the article (is this a stub?) in order to solve for a problem that was more easily solved by other means (mass creation of articles). It did do a good job of specifying what exactly we think of WP:NPLACE applying to, though. The entire "legally populated" section reads like a bit of a mess at this point. SportingFlyer T·C 06:31, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a complicated area and the wording isn't great. If we're talking about places (based on) that were or are populated, IMO actual practice (for using the NGEO "way in"-the GNG alternative is always another way in) is that it has to fulfill BOTH of these criteria:

  1. Is generally recognized by the populace as a PLACE. This rules out abstract entities such as irrigation districts, electoral districts, census tracts etc.
  2. If based on modern times it needs to be something higher level than a neighborhood, subdivision or development. In major populated areas, it needs to be at a level that has it's own somewhat full-spectrum government. If not(as in rural areas or historic times) having a strong (recognized by the populace) settlement or town like identity fulfills this.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:04, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

BTW under the above, the situation varies regarding townships in the US. (again, this is only about using the NGEO "way in"). The variable is whether or not they are recognized by the populace as a place. Where I live (and in most of the US) the answer is "no" but in some parts of the US the answer is "yes". North8000 (talk) 21:16, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This perhaps starts to get at issue of what do we mean by "place". More densely populated townships and those with a robust home rule civil government tend to be recognizable places. Townships in rural areas often have a more rudimentary government and are more typically seen as administrative divisions rather than a single coherent "place". In terms of notability, I'd argue that a civil township with any sort of operational government is significant enough to warrant an article. That would exclude townships in the several states where there is no functional stand-alone government at the township level. Historical statuses would largely depend on whether there are enough reliable sources to discuss as distinct topic (rather than as part of a larger article or list). older ≠ wiser 21:46, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are there areas the inhabitants would consider a "place" that would not meet GNG? It seems like it would be very difficult to prove such thoughts without more than enough sources to meet GNG. CMD (talk) 03:19, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Basically any subdivision trying to gentrify/distance itself from a poorer area? Traumnovelle (talk) 03:34, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Like Shoreditch? That would almost need to meet GNG, as that sort of organic separation seems likely to emerge when the demographic situation doesn't reflect formal administrative boundaries. CMD (talk) 03:48, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Shoreditch has existed for a thousand years? I'm referring to names that were invented/adopted for the purpose of avoiding the stigma of poverty/crime of the area the development is based in. These are almost never notable, but over time they may become distinct areas and become notable. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:59, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's an area with recent gentrification. I'm somewhat confused as to how this is a response to my point, which was determining if an area invented/adopted is regarded as a place will usually require sources. Such an area presumably wouldn't fall under NGEO as a legally recognized place anyway, being new and driven by non-government interests. CMD (talk) 04:50, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Shoreditch would be considered a neighbourhood anyways and need to pass GNG, which it should do very easily. SportingFlyer T·C 06:25, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any firm consensus that neighbourhood's are required to meet GNG? Traumnovelle (talk) 06:29, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yesterday, User:MRSC reverted an edit I completed a while ago for Westborough Ward. A discussion had taken place at the UK Geography Wikiproject page where the consensus was that Wards are not notable under NPLACE. The ward itself does not meet WP:Notability, so was moved to the settlement of Westcliff-on-Sea, which as per the Southend-on-Sea City Council is where it is located. Even if we change this, we are going to have editors either ignore it as they did with the original discussion. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:15, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a problem, though - Wikipedia rules are as much guideposts as statutes. SportingFlyer T·C 07:30, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But a ward is just the same as a neighbourhood, it doesn't come under NPLACE, that is Westcliff-on-Sea. The same user has done the same for Chalkwell (Southend-on-Sea ward). The ward is the same area as the settlement Chalkwell, holds just the electoral results for some but not all the voting, and is referenced to official documents i.e. not independent references. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:38, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid this is a category error. An electoral ward is not a place. It is a political constituency. MRSC (talk) 11:46, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So therefore it needs to meet GNG, which it does not, so I have referred to AFD. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 12:46, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you combine these into a single nomination as they all have identical issues? MRSC (talk) 12:52, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My two cents: remove the statement recently added as it causes unnecessary ambiguity and come up with a proper definition of what is notable. Populated, legally recognized places has been part of this policy since it was established 17 years ago. Unfortunately, the user who created it ceased editing a long time ago so we may never know what they meant by it. Legal recognition is a fairly simple concept - somewhere, on some statute book, the thing we are talking about (city, state, constituency, council, township, ward, village, parish, burgh, whatever it may be) is defined. If all of these things are not considered notable, then list what is considered as notable and leave the rest to WP:GNG.
My personal thoughts are that anything with legal recognition is notable. By that, I mean anything created by an act of Parliament or statutory instrument (or whatever the appropriate term is for other countries). That is basically what we have been operating on. I also see no reason that a hybrid solution can't exist in instances of small places/stub articles where lists cover things that we might not have the information for or there isn't someone to update individual articles or a group of editors feel they shouldn't have individual articles for whatever reason. Multiple solutions to the same problem can peacefully coexist on Wikipedia. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 14:08, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Legal recognition" would include abstract entities (with lines on the map and some type of board that oversees or runs what they do) ) which are not recognized as places. E.G electoral districts, library districts, park districts, fire protection districts, census tracts, sewer districts, water districts, precincts, irrigation districts, where I live they still even have old TB sanitarium districts. I live in about 6 of those and few know that they even exist much less recognize them as a place. Hence the wording I put in above. North8000 (talk) 15:14, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My only concern with your wording was "generally recognized by the populace". Others above I think have similar thoughts as different people consider different things to be places so that would be equally difficult to define and open to interpretation. That's why I think just list what Wikipedia considers notable and leave the rest to WP:GNG Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 15:51, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What I think Mangoe meant to add

[edit]

Instead of

if the class of division is not notable (e.g. townships in certain US states) its members are not notable either, even though technically recognized in law.

I think Mangoe actually meant

if a type of administrative division is not considered "a place" (e.g., townships in certain U.S. states), instances of that type are not considered "a place" either.

This may still lead to more arguments (because where does this consideration take place? in WP? out in the world?), but at least it's clear that the sentence is about the definition of "a place". What do editors think? — hike395 (talk) 01:05, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As per the RFC a few years ago, "place" is was the one thing most agreed was wrong in the wording, it should read "settlement". "Place" meaning in the dictionary states:

an area, town, building, etc. Her garden was a cool pleasant place to sit. What was the name of that place we drove through on the way to New York? They decided to go to a pizza place. place of interest There are several places of interest to visit in the area. place of work It's important to feel comfortable in your place of work. (Cambridge University Dictionary)

This means nplace can be misconstrued by Editors to mean just a building! That's why it needs amending (along with the legally recognized bit!)

Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:25, 24 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Legally recognised" is a bad standard and has always been bad

[edit]

We can't have standards for notability that depend entirely on local law. It's as simple as that. It means that for some countries we get articles about micro-hamlets, whilst in others the coverage is at a higher level, because the law differs between them - or even for different legal jurisdictions within the same country. It also means our coverage is completely independent of whether there's anything to write about. FOARP (talk) 08:37, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree -- but we've been down this road more than once, and we cannot get global consensus for this change. Can we make the current guideline incrementally better? — hike395 (talk) 10:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm fine with getting rid of the whole "legally-recognized passage as well as with that following it, but that's taking us in the direction of relying solely on GNG, which is going to put us on the path of deleting a lot more places, since the documentation on so many is so poor. The thing about "legally recognized" is that, as a rule, places in the US which are incorporated are well-documented and have an easily-accessed history, and the same is true for foreign places with local governance. Also, the typical deletion arguments that get places deleted— that they don't exist or aren't the sort of things that would fall under a geography standard in the first place— are not an issue for the "legally recognized" because what they are is clear, and where they are is clear, and that they are is clear. The only cases that have proven problematic have been where an entire class of legally-defined entities is questionably notable, which has been a persistent issue with townships in the US. Personally I think that in most states that have them, townships should just be listed within each county and a map provided, because there's really very little to say about them in their own rights, but mostly the sentiment has been to multiply the number of articles. We did manage to get rid of them entirely in NC because they are a legal fossil there and were never of any importance, but they are an exception. And the pattern elsewhere has been that any legally-defined division is notable, period. So I don't think doing away with this is going to do anything more than generate more arguments and get more articles deleted, because it raises and not lowers the standard. Mangoe (talk) 11:51, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It may be a rule for the US, but "legally recognized" is not the same thing as "local governance", and the meaning of the term is vague. The assertion "the pattern elsewhere has been that any legally-defined division is notable, period" is wrong, see for example WP:Barangay. As for vagueness, the vast majority of UK addresses are registered under the Postal Services Act 2000, but despite this legal mandate we haven't established each address is notable. Presumably the community overall believes that individual houses aren't notable, but that's not because they lack legal recognition or population. CMD (talk) 12:07, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm wondering whether it may work to split off the US entirely into its own guideline, which can keep "legally recognized", and start again without it for the rest of the world with wording that spells out the lowest unit of local government or administration that has been found to be useful for each country (i.e., a level or so above barangays or wards. I have a dim memory that that has been suggested before). That's surely not an impossible thing to achieve and would create some clarity. Ingratis (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as a USian, the legally recognized standard is completely meaningless in the US. I don't think US usage was the primary impetus for including that line (nor the main source of resistance to removing it). older ≠ wiser 12:44, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That wont work either. Take the UK for instance - Southend-on-Sea has a unitary council, that covers Southend, Westcliff-on-Sea, Leigh-on-Sea, Eastwood, Essex, Prittlewell, Southchurch, Thorpe Bay and Shoeburyness. Only Leigh is a parish, so based upon the lowest level of local government, only Southend and Leigh would still exist? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 15:16, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They can be independently notable/meet GNG Traumnovelle (talk) 19:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And that is the reason why the RFC two years ago failed! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Eastwood, Essex, Prittlewell, Southchurch and Shoeburyness are covered as former civil parishes: NOTTEMPORARY. Westcliff-on-Sea passes GNG comfortably. Ingratis (talk) 01:04, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it is already established that many "legally recognized" things are not covered. In the US, things such as Soil and Water Conservation districts, Improvement districts and Port districts do not get their own articles, even though they have legally defined boundaries and have governing boards elected by residents and property owners. What might make more sense is saying that any place which has a legally-defined local general government which has some combination of the powers of legislation, taxation, and/or law enforcement within just its defined jurisdiction is inherently notable. ("General government" to exclude home owner's and condo associations and those districts I mentioned above.) Is this worth discussing. Donald Albury 14:28, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is somewhat established in practice, but is not really clear in the guideline. Your definition feels more thorough. CMD (talk) 14:48, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. Thus, no, not every page has to be a full-blown article from the start, especially because there's an inherent bias towards English-speaking countries (because there are disproportionately more editors of the English Wikipedia from those countries). You can't think of US subdivisions and apply them to the whole world. Each country or region of the world is different, and this has to be decided on the country level. Historically, settlements in Europe started off as little hamlets, and over the centuries they expanded from the core. In many European countries, they'll be the third or fourth level division of the country, legally recognised, and notable since ancient times. Please don't tell me we should go into the categories of Italian settlement stubs and delete them just because of some bad decisions made for other countries in the past. This has to be done per country, in a reasonable and well-informed way. 68.82.48.213 (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:5P is not an official policy or guideline, nor is it a constitution either. It is essentially just an essay. Combining features of gazetteers does not mean Wikipedia is a gazetteer. FOARP (talk) 09:08, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I completely disagree with the premise that this doesn't work. It is a relatively simple test to administer at AfD. The "any of the following" test is far more complicated. SportingFlyer T·C 18:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding those "seeking" wp:notability based on being a populated place, IMO some standard that tries to implement this would be good: meet any of the following:

  1. For modern populated populated places, ones that have their own somewhat broad scope governments. So includes villages, towns, etc but not abstract specialized things like irrigation districts.
  2. If they are a clearly recognized settlement-type populated place, and not a subset of a locally governed area. For example, a settlement in a rural area. But not a subdivision, ward, neighborhood etc within a town or city.
  3. If in far-back times, was widely acknowledged as a settlement type populated place by that name.
  4. Meets GNG

Just to emphasize, exclusions in the first three criteria just means that can't use that "way in" and have to use a different criteria like GNG.

And no mass or "production line" type creation of stubs. There are over a million towns etc. that meet the above criteria that don't have an article. If someone is going to spend the time to write a real article on one of them, that's fine. If not, not. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:19, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a good standard and basically the status quo for the US. Subdivisions are still a grey area but at least they're factual 'places that exist where people live'. The must important thing is that we're able to address phantom "incorporated communities" that are actually just mislabeled railroad sidings etc that never had a population. One improvement would be to keep NPLACE as generic overall guidance and split out a separate page for country-specific places like 'abadi', GNIS, etc. –dlthewave ☎ 16:12, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is not bad. We may want to mention post offices specifically. Re subdivisions, the issue with them has been that if newspaper coverage is readily available they have from time to time been kept on the strength of real estate section coverage of their construction. I think this is unjustified but that's the way things have gone. Mangoe (talk) 23:52, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support this proposed standard. Traumnovelle (talk) 00:33, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@North8000 proposal seems reasonable. If a place has been know for a century or two by that name, it definitely is notable. It may take time for someone to write that history, because that time is proportional to the number of people multiplied by time. Per Wikipedia:5P1, a gazeteer-style page is perfectly acceptable in that case. We don't need our readers to look elsewhere. 68.82.48.213 (talk) 16:23, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A place being known for a century or two by a given name does not make that place notable. Notability requires significant coverage in multiple independent, reliable sources. As an example, the community of Santa Fe in Alachua County, Florida (see Historic communities of Alachua County) had a post office from 1900 until 1960, but after a lot of searching I found nothing about the community beyond a source giving dates for the post office opening and closing, a GNIS entry, and a website with six short sentences about the community. Note that having a post office or being listed in GNIS does not constitute legal recognition, whatever that means. I have also created articles about some places that, although they were mentioned in more than one WP article, were obscure enough that I had to wait years before I found enough material in independent, reliable sources to meet GNG. I will also note that the Five Pillars of Wikipedia is not policy, but rather descriptive, and saying that Wikipedia has aspects of a gazetteer does not guarantee that it will have articles about every place that might appear in a gazetteer. Donald Albury 18:30, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That hasn't been like that for geological fearures now for more than 20 years. Coverage is assumed, past or future. Also, in all these discussions, USA is confused for the World. There are churches built in many European villages that are older than the USA. There may not be enough English speakers in those villages, or people interested in writing for Wikipedia in general, but the places are notable, and will eventually be destubbed. All content policies describe, to some extent, our status quo, and status quo for Italian, German, French, Serbian, Ukrainian (etc) villages is to have separate pages for each. Otherwise there would be hundreds of thousands articles ready for deletion. I'm wondering why people push for the change of GEOLAND every so often when it's obvious, from the existence of those many articles, that GEOLAND actually works. And if some unnotable places sneak in - so what. No one will open up those pages, it will be as if they do not exist. 63.127.180.130 (talk) 12:46, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At the top of this guideline, it says: Geographical features meeting Wikipedia's general notability guideline (GNG) are presumed, but not guaranteed, to be notable. Therefore, the notability of some geographical features (places, roadways, objects, etc.) may be called into question. NPLACE makes an exception to the requirement of meeting GNG: Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. This discussion was started to address perceived ambiguity of the phrase "legally recognized". (Populated places that are not "legally recognized" are subject to GNG.) The problem with "legally recognized" is that the term is not defined. Some editors have used a very broad interpretation of "legally recognized" to mass-create articles that are dubious or blatantly false. We have been trying in this discussion to find an interpretation of "legally recognized" that may be applied consistently across all political entities. Donald Albury 17:10, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia doesn't have a category for pages which are authoritative and definitive information it but which do not provide rules and guidance as policies and guidelines do. We need that category, and right now it has one page in it which is 5 Pillars. IMO it is as authoritative as the highest level policy. Between it and the reality of Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works, geographic articles, both by what 5P says and by receiving extra consideration for being highly enclyclopedic topics, geographic topics get a finger on the scale towards inclusion when they meet the criteria in the SNG. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:54, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t think you can define one “legally recognized” to apply to all countries. You'll need some knowledgeable people to help you with that.
There are less than 200 countries in the world. Let’s make a page with 200 sections, invite relevant projects, and once for all define what country division level is acceptable. Is it counties, is it municipalities, is it villages, is it hamlets, is it census designated places?
Then please try to tell people from Suffolk County, New York#Census-designated places (unincorporated) that their Stony Brook, Shirley or Montauk articles should be redirected or deleted, as you'd say that to someone from a village in Poland, Italy, or China.
This is what I’ve learned: The German town law inspired similar laws throughout Central and Eastern Europe and was used in the founding of many cities, towns and villages beginning in the 13th century! By 1477, 132 towns and thousands of villages in Poland were granted Środa law.
That’s why the English Wikipedia has 50000 Polish village pages. It also has 52000+ Polish geo stubs. That's status quo, that's Wikipedia:IMPLICITCONSENSUS, that's why Wikipedia:5P says what it says, and that’s why GEOLAND is so special. 209.212.20.5 (talk) 18:41, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why we have "50000 Polish village pages" is because Kotbot mass-created a whole load of articles about what are mostly just entries about state farms, railway sidings, factories, warehouses and so-forth. You've just mentioned another area where we have a major problem due to mass-creation. For reference, there aren't 50,000 actual villages in Poland (UN stats say 43k) so the fact that we have that many "Polish village" articles demonstrates that we have a problem. FOARP (talk) 08:53, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One reason we require significant coverage is to ensure that "no original research is needed to extract the content." This comes up quite often in articles about places. USGS topo maps often show rural landmarks like "Bob's Corner" or "Richard's Mill", which are literally an intersection where Bob lived or a mill run by Richard. Often there will be sources that mention them indirectly, like "A tornado touched down near Richard's Mill" or "The county road will be repaved between Alice's Place and Bob's Corner", but none that actually decribe the place itself. We don't do gazeteer-style pages for these places because 'we don't have enough information to describe or categorize them accurately'. It's taken years to track down all of the places that were mislabeled as "unincorporated communities" because somebody didn't know what else to call them. –dlthewave ☎ 20:17, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
GEOLAND never required significant coverage, that's why we have GEOLAND as a policy separate from the one you cited. We're here not to dump a whole encyclopedia (almanac, and gazeteer) in one day, we're here to build one in an infinite amount of time. Human settlements, current or past, have history, geography, climate, population, landmarks etc. written by their very existence. Thus even the smallest contribution here should count, a gazeteer-style information is still more information than none.63.127.180.130 (talk) 12:54, 20 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:N preceded GEOLAND, and requires articles to be about notable topics. WP:NOT also preceded GEOLAND, and WP:5P, and requires Wikipedia to be an encyclopaedia, and not just a random collection of statistics. GEOLAND is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for having anything to write about the location - there never has been an assumption of automatic notability on Wikipedia.
I'm sure it's morale-boosting to conceive of the creation of tens of thousands of articles about supposed "villages" that don't actually exist at a rate of hundreds or in some cases even thousands in one day, as in some way building an encyclopaedia. In reality it's just dumping a massive problem on to your fellow editors which they then have to spend years or even decades cleaning up because of wildly misguided guidelines such as GEOLAND. FOARP (talk) 09:14, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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