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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]

Several unincorporated places in the US

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Perhaps within Wikipedia's home country, can be found several places that fail WP:GEOLAND? For example, Dott, Pennsylvania article contains only a single paragraph consisting of a single sentence and an infobox. Yet having only one source that does not back it up (statistical listing). This should be merged with Bethel Township, Fulton County, Pennsylvania, and all other uninc. places with no meaningful content be merged with the article of the township; the article of the township better be expanded. JWilz12345 (Talk|Contrib's.) 04:39, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there's still an endless amount of WP:GNIS junk out there. PA is a bad one on this, with lots of names on the map that were nothing more than a handful of homes. Yes, you should absolutely merge these empty pages to the township article, which is the actual recognized place. Reywas92Talk 15:25, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As to the endless amount of WP:GNIS junk, Ébresztőföl appears to be creating numerous stubs based solely on GNIS references. As previous discussed, something identified as a "populated place" in GNIS does not automatically confer notability, as many of these are no more than a road crossing with a store or a church nearby at the time the data was collected and might not even exist at present. older ≠ wiser 14:57, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any articles created by Ébresztőföl. Deleted? --Altenmann >talk 15:49, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, seems Ébresztőföl wasn't the creator, only adding them to disambiguation pages. A few of them do have some other references, but many don't. For example, Water Valley, New York, Pontiac, New York, Pinehurst, New York, Dellwood, New York, and Carnegie, New York. Williston, New York, Sand Hill, New York have nondescript photographs that could be anywhere but have only a GNIS reference. older ≠ wiser 16:09, 22 September 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]

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]
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