Talk:Sydenham, Grey County, Ontario

Discussion about amalgamation

• Oppose' combining this article with Meaford, Ontario. The township was an independent municipality for many years. Information about events up to the date of amalgamation should remain in this article. A short section in the Meaford article should start with a "Main article" hatnote to this article. Information about events after amalgamation should appear in the Meaford article. —Anne Delong (talk) 16:46, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

That would be a valid reason to keep a separate article, yes, if the separate article actually had any substantive and properly referenced content besides "Sydenham existed, now it's part of Meaford, the end." It's not a useful argument in favour of keeping this version of a separate article about Sydenham. Bearcat (talk) 09:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Okay, Bearcat, I've added some information from online history books to get the article started. —Anne Delong (talk) 07:22, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, thanks for the improvements. Just to be clear, essentially the rule on Wikipedia is that any past or present named settlement — regardless of its current status — is a valid potential topic for an article, but the article has to be properly sourced and say more than just the mere fact that the place exists or existed. So anything below the level of a current municipality (neighbourhood, rural community, former municipality that's been annexed into the current one, etc.) is allowed a separate article if it meets those content rules, but gets redirected to the parent topic instead if it doesn't. So thanks again, the improvements do indeed help bolster the case. Bearcat (talk) 18:29, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree that an article that just says "There once was a place named X" isn't very useful. Luckily, with all of the centennial history books, and the "Our Roots" digitization project, it's pretty easy to find online historical information about many Canadian municipalities. —Anne Delong (talk) 20:17, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

That's true. But you'd be surprised sometimes how little substantive effort many Wikipedia contributors are actually willing to put into actually writing a substantive, properly sourced article about their favourite topic. Bearcat (talk) 17:04, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

I know it seems as though we have a lot of active editors, but the number of interesting topics is so much larger that even the most active editors can't work on everything that they would like. In the area where I live there are hundreds of places that I could write about, and innumerable interesting historical and other topics within these places, with plenty of published material available. I'm sure it's the same everywhere - luckily there is apparently no deadline. Anyway, do you agree that the Sydenham article is adequate to avoid redirection at this point? —Anne Delong (talk) 19:39, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Given the history of Sydenham Township, it would make more sense to merge it with the nearby City of Owen Sound, which was originally named "Sydenham", and which has much more in common geographically with the former Sydenham Township than does Meaford. [LizRob] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.110.6.119 (talk) 15:42, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Why does it need to be merged? It was a recognized place with a long history of its own. —Anne Delong (talk) 22:53, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Not disagreeing. Why was it proposed to be combined with the Meaford Ontario article in the first place??Elizrob (talk) 12:19, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, at the time it looked like this, so there wasn't really enough information for a separate article. —Anne Delong (talk) 12:11, 6 November 2014 (UTC)