Talk:Maple Lake (Pictou)

Prod

Montanabw, you haven't given any reason for deleting Derek Andrews's prod. What are your reasons? Best wishes, Boleyn (talk) 20:38, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Boleyn, a bit more history, see User_talk:Dr._Blofeld#Lakes_of_Nova_Scotia, we have lots of similar articles, many of these at List of lakes of Nova Scotia I would guess though only two I prodded. I ran out of enthusiasm for this task, and at this point I am happy to let the prod slip. Derek Andrews (talk) 21:51, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

There is no requirement to provide a reason for removal of a prod tag. It is "encouraged," but not mandated. Montanabw^(talk) 22:16, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Montanabw, I didn't suggest anything was mandated, I just asked what your reasons were. Boleyn (talk) 22:24, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

As Derek noted, there are multiple stubs on these geographic features in Nova Scotia, it appears that this is an area of article creation getting some attention, but it's a big task, so WP:DONODEMOLISH applied. Montanabw^(talk) 22:38, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I think the essay Wikipedia:DONOTDEMOLISH is a rather poor analogy as it doesn't take into account our requirement of notability. While some of these articles might expand into something approaching an encyclopedic article, most are no more notable than most of the dirt roads in Nova Scotia that have a name and appear in a database. Some have been expanded with snippets of data such as water quality and fish stocks just like their neighbours, but this doesn't meet WP:GEOLAND 'information beyond statistics and coordinates'. Most I suspect will sit there for another six years untouched. I am now of the opinion that redirecting them to List of lakes of Nova Scotia is the way forward, but only because it will take more effort to sort them into keepers and deleters than it did to create them in the first place. That in itself is a huge and boring task, so in the meantime I am slowly adding geocoords and updating the now broken references to those articles that are on maintenance lists. Derek Andrews (talk) 10:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

GNG does not fit for certain subjects, and geographic features are one of them. I'm not sure what the Canadian list looks like, but I know that in the USA we have NGIS and some folks have put a lot of work into creating articles on nearly every feature listed therein; while some features would do best being part of a list article with only the more notable articles spun off, it's sometimes difficult to apply GNG: Why is one 20-acre lake significant when another is not? Why is one 1000-foot elevation hill significant and another is not? Often, these determinations are made locally and you can't google it to figure it out. My own take leans inclusionist in general, sometimes deleting an article takes up more bandwidth in disscusion than the article itself... I'm not really offering a solution, just sharpening the horns of the dilemma Montanabw^(talk) 21:10, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

We have the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base [1]. (Is this similar to the NGIS? I'm not finding anything relevant to the US when I google that.) Basically anything that has been given a name is on there. There are plenty of lakes on the interactive maps that have no name, a bit of a crap shoot really, so solely using this database as a guide to notability is flawed. You mention GNG, but as I said above we also have Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) which deals with this:

Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist. This includes mountains, lakes, streams, islands, etc. The number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article. If a Wikipedia article cannot be developed using known sources, information on the feature can instead be included in a more general article on local geography. For example, a river island with no information available except name and location should probably be described in an article on the river.

So whether one lake gets in and another doesn't just comes down to verifiable sources as in most other topics in WP. For most of these lakes all we are going to find will be name, coordinates, and maybe various statistics such as water analysis, depth, fish stocks etc if someone has published a study. I fail to see how we could make an encyclopaedic article about them. Using the same logic, we could justify writing articles about all the named Points [2] and Bays around our coast, or every Brook [3]. I rather lean towards exclusionism, especially when it comes to expansions from lists as seems to have happened here. I think that what happens is someone sees a list with a few items that have links to notable articles, and decides that every item should have its own article. I see this in so many realms, such as sports and tv. It's unbelievable the amount of dross out there that has little hope of developing beyond what could easily have been put in the original list or table. And the problem is that it just encourages more of the same. And it all creates maintenance problems: most of the references in this NS lakes series have the wrong name (National Resources Canada should be Natural Resources Canada, though its possible it really has changed) and they point to a 404. Which is how I got sucked into this mess. Derek Andrews (talk) 00:38, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I meant GNIS - screwed up the acronym... In a perfect world, we'd probably start with lists and then spin off the bigger features. But seriously, I don't see articles like this one breaking the internet! When we have articles on Pokemon characters, IMHO, a lake is more important! LOL! Montanabw^(talk) 08:28, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you on that last point. Derek Andrews (talk) 12:20, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

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