User talk:James.folsom

2006-2007 talk

2008-2016 talk

Tex Miller and Boiling Point Garage

@Hog Farm I still do a lot of genealogy and have an interest in the Miller surname. So, I've been trying identify him. A Tex Miller definitely had a "boiling point Garage" according to news articles. I've been trying to find a census record for him. A name and a location is generally all one needs to tell someones life story. But, I can't find him so I think Tex is a nickname. So, I started searching SoCal newspapers for "Tex Miller", and there is a guy who was from Texas going by the name Tex miller(this suggests both the possibility it's a nickname and the origin of the nickname). Additionally, there was a Miller in the census records who was from Texas. He is purportedly, a former notable football player turned boxer. He only fought two fights and quit boxing in 1928. This is about right for him to also be a garage owner in 1931.

Maybe that helps you? I continue to look, so if you found anything further let me know.James.folsom (talk) 00:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Georgia unincorporated communities

James.folsom, I am alarmed by your attack on the Georgia unincorporated communities articles. Especially considering you are from the South, please be aware there is a Wikipedia:Systemic bias, in which the South is underrepresented on Wikipedia ("As a result of systemic bias, Wikipedia underrepresents the perspectives of people in the Global South, people who lack adequate access to the internet or a serviceable computer, and people who do not have free time to edit the encyclopedia.")

Please stop trying to remove and/or redirect the articles of populated communities. ("Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low.") – Gilliam (talk) 05:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Unincorporated places are not legally recognized. Therefore they need to fulfill WP:GNG, which these place don't. So I guess we're going to do this by AFD. James.folsom (talk) 06:34, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

Census-designated places

Why are you removing the information on census-designated places from community articles? They're generally meant to represent a community that isn't legally incorporated, and even if their boundaries change, they're still a government-recognized count of a community's population. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 02:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Everything you said above is incorrect, read the article please Census-designated_place James.folsom (talk) 22:03, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Also, please note that WP:GEOLAND deprecates articles on census tracts, which are not census-designated places. CDPs are in fact entirely notable and have articles nationwide. Ken Gallager (talk) 17:30, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Because CDPs are not notable. The WP article for CDP states: "The boundaries of a CDP have no legal status". So CDPs do not have WP:GEOLAND presumed notability. And it doesn't matter anyway, because Presumed notability is not notability, it's a pass to create an article. The article subject must still meet WP:N, when challenged.

Also because its creating confusion when CDPs are conflated with the unincorporated communities. The CDP article states: "officially designated but currently unincorporated community, for which the CDP is named, plus surrounding inhabited countryside of varying dimensions and, occasionally, other, smaller unincorporated communities as well." These CDPs are not = to the place articles people are adding them too. The statistics added to the articles for say Irondale Georgia are wrong because the CDP often encompasses half a county or more. So when you say "x unincorporated community and CDP is ", and then you slap the CDP statistics on the unincorporated communities page; well your just basically telling lies. You would have to make a separate article for the CDP and then merge the unincorporated place articles into that article, in order to be not lying.

Additionally, CDPs change with each census and are only 10 year entities. So you cannot even combine the statistics from more than one census into a single article because they aren't for the same CDP boundary. The next census might not even have same names for the CDP. (see interesting quotes below) I'm guessing the census statistics for counties, are actually for the counties.

Other interesting quotes from the CDP article

• may not always correspond with the local understanding of the area or community with the same name.
• CDP boundaries may change from one census to the next to reflect changes in settlement patterns.
• Recognized communities may be divided into two or more CDPs while on the other hand, two or more communities may be combined into one CDP. A CDP may also cover the unincorporated part of a named community, where the rest lies within an incorporated place.

This mess people made, needs to be cleaned up one way or another. James.folsom (talk) 21:59, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

We do usually consider CDPs as notable, even though they're not "legally recognized", so I suggest you try to gain a broader consensus here before making these changes. Elli (talk | contribs) 16:01, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

This stance is merely customary, and can change when challenged. And I'm aware of the process of changing it. James.folsom (talk) 21:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The Census Bureau has to include caveats like that if it wants to capture growth in communities, and "local understanding of the area" can mean anything from just a downtown area to an entire ZIP code depending on the area, so CDP definitions inevitably won't always match that. There are edge cases, and probably a few cases where the Census Bureau didn't use the best boundaries, but overall CDPs are a solid government effort to collect population and demographic info from populated places without legally defined boundaries. This is why we've always reflected that data in our articles about these places. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 22:23, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Then you should be clear about this when you add this to the articles, so that your not telling lies. The article for any given place is about the place, not the CDP which is different. How about a compromise wherein the CDP is not mentioned in opening paragraph eg "X Georgia is an unincorporated community in...". Then in the demographics section say something about how this is statistics for the CDP that contains this place. James.folsom (talk) 22:48, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

You must run this by WP:USCITIES before you proceed any further with your changes to articles. Note that it has been brought up in the past, with no consensus to change the status quo. Ken Gallager (talk) 02:54, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

To be clear these problems were created by people wanting to do something that was not compliant with WP:N. They either didn't bother to work with others to get a consensus or wouldn't do so. The only way it's going to get fixed is to go higher than you suggest. James.folsom (talk) 22:58, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

AFDs

Hello, James.folsom,

I see you are participating in AFDs these days. If you are arguing for a Move, Merge or Redirect, you need to specify what target article you want this action directed toward. A closer can't decide on their own what your intentions are, that's what is called a "super vote" and is highly discouraged. A closer just assesses the discussion, they don't come up with original solutions on their own. So, please be specific and not vague in your argument. Other editors might agree or disagree but that's why it is a discussion. Thank you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:14, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Which one did I screwup? I could have sworn I was clear on them all. But, I do have a tendency to ramble that can make it hard to interpret. I try to keep the worst in check, but it would be developmentally useful to know which vote it was. This place actually gives me a place to practice clear communication. BTW thanks for all you do, I just don't have the free time to do much on WP. James.folsom (talk) 22:55, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

CS1 error on Foster Dwight Coburn

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Foster Dwight Coburn, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL and missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 22:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Marib-Jawf gas field

Just curious, how thoroughly did you search for notability? I found plenty of results and even tossing out non-sognificant mentions there are several e.g. here [1]

Respectfully, RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 12:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Gas fields are not notable. You can't see them and would never know they were there. They require significant effort to even find. You can't visit a gas field, there is no tourism around a gas field; it's just another run of the mill industrial operation. Would you support having wikipedia articles about every slaughterhouse on the planet or every agricultural field? These gas fields are even less notable than that. All these google hits are just mentions of basic stats and reports on production and etc. they don't establish that the gas field is relevant or important. Your supposed significant coverage of the gas field is not. It is sigcov of the houthi, but that doesn't confer notability to the gas field. I prod'ed it because it's non notable. If you really believe that gas fields should be articles on Wikipedia and that we must discuss the removal of any of them, then your task is to remove the prod. Thus, condemning editors to yet another afd discussion about about an article that never should have been written. But, I think it's ridiculous that's this is even a conversation I had to have. James.folsom (talk) 23:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Gas fields

Separately, I’d like to ask that you make a bulk AfD with all the Romanian ones and rescind the PRODs. Verifying notability, even cursorily with a web search, would be somewhat time-consuming and it’s getting late/early in my time zone.

PROD requires that the nom have verified notability and other concerns thoroughly, as there is potentially little to no peer review involved.

I also would note that someone bothered to add them all to Template:Resources in Romania.

Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 12:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

As I explained Gas fields are not notable. I'm not going to take a bunch of obviously non-notable articles to an overloaded AFD process without doing a prod. People are already able to create these ridiculous articles several orders of magnitude faster that even prods can get rid of them. There are 200ish articles in prod now, and bet in the week it takes for those to get deleted there will be another 1000 just like them that got created. I get that the process working this way is advantageous, but it breaks down when people are not reasonable and wont follow the policies. But hey, if your so in love with gas fields, I'm happy to find something else to do. I hope you enjoy it when 90% of the articles here are 2 line stubs about random blades of grass categorized by country. James.folsom (talk) 00:14, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi, I reverted a couple of your gas fields PRODs. I agree that the notability criterion might not be met for most of them, but I think they could all together deserve a list (and could then be redirected to it). I generally think this would be a discussion better suited for AfD. I would kindly ask you to rescind the PRODs on this type of articles and open one combined discussion in AfD. --Broc (talk) 08:24, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I just created List of natural gas fields in Romania, which should list all Romanian gas fields, which are in the Romanian Energy Navbox (including ones which were deleted by PROD a few days ago). I will redirect the currently PRODed articles to this page. --TheImaCow (talk) 20:45, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think they make a good list and it's already well understood that the person who made them did a shoddy job of copying over the information plus all the info in those stubs is out of date anyway. Are you also going to take the time to update all the figures and other info to current? Furthermore, It isn't my job to carry out your demands. The person who wants them in a list or taken to AFD is the person who needs do it. If you don't care enough to do the work, then you don't care enough to object to them being deleted. Here is a convenient list: "Category:Natural_gas_fields_in_Romania", I will graciously allow you some time to enact whatever action you like. But I'll be back to proding the non-notable ones if no action is forthcoming. But, my advice is to redirect them to articles about the larger production areas areas that encompass them, because your list is probably going to meet a challenge eventually.James.folsom (talk) 22:52, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I think we're misunderstanding, I agree that most of those gas fields are not notable enough for own articles, but I don't think there is anything wrong with having a list article for them. I didn't just de-prod the stubs and said "you/someone else can possibly make a list instead some day", I made the list already, it's more or less complete. --TheImaCow (talk) 19:39, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I was clear. But, I will be more clear. Those stubs (1) contain out of date information about the output and ownership and development status of said gas fields. Nobody is going to go around and update that info everytime there is a press release about them. (2)None of them are notable, they are gas fields for gods sake. There is no difference between them and a rock quarry, or a poultry farm. They are simply too commonplace to be notable without extraordinary significant coverage. Like for say if one of them turned into a volcano, for example. That would be notable gas field. (3) Putting them in your list does not resolve any of these problems, and the list is also nonnotable. So, If you want them merged into your list, then do it. But, know that my goal is to delete them along with your list. When you want something done, it's rude to try and make other people do it for you.James.folsom (talk) 00:15, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The notability requirements (WP:NLIST) for items in a list are less stringent than for stand-alone articles. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 23:23, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying you Have you reviewed the list and determined it meets policy? James.folsom (talk) 23:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

No. I was pointing out the rules for lists. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 23:51, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Okay I already knew that. James.folsom (talk) 00:04, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I think "List of natural gas fields in Romania" is off to a good start and it's a good alternative to deletion for all the Romanian gas fields you're trying to delete. The topic (Romanian gas fields) is notable. Individual fields don't have to be but they do have to be adequately referenced.

There are 2 referencing issues for list items I see:

• Some links are dead. Someone needs to find the pages on archive.org
• Even if links are live, they may not be to reliable sources.

I think it would also be useful to have an additional column to indicate the age of our data for each item.

Lists like this will be useful for other countries with gas fields you're deleting.--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

@TheImaCow A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 00:02, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I still do not agree.James.folsom (talk) 00:07, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

”None of them are notable, they are gas fields for gods sake. There is no difference between them and a rock quarry, or a poultry farm.” There’s a lot more money in a gas field than a barn full of chickens or a pile of rocks. And at a time when Europe is short on gas, there’s probably a lot more interest. —A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 19:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Then maybe one of you could explain which policies allow these gas fields to be stand alone articles when they do not meet WP:N. That is the only reasonable argument you can make that would change my mind.James.folsom (talk) 19:26, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the majority of the individual gas field articles meet our notability policy. —A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 21:05, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

That is merely your opinion. James.folsom (talk) 21:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Hale Area Schools

The AfD on that one just closed and I noticed that I missed a response from you that I would have replied to. Apologies for missing that. As you make a good general point, I'll reply to you here. Because in general I agree with you - GEOLAND guidelines and the consensus that Wikipedia is a gazetteer encourage thousands upon thousands of permastub articles. Although the philosophy is that one person creates a stub and other editors improve them, this doesn't happen because the fire hose of creations are beyond the large but finite pool of editor's capabilities. Policies that were designed to facilitate the expansion of the encyclopaedia may not be appropriate any longer. And the concept that it is both encyclopaedia and gazetteer is not widely understood, and may not be the best approach. So I understand the frustration.

Those, however, are meta questions. At that AfD, kvng had pointed out that school districts are there in the notability guidelines, and my point is that the page met them. It was a keep, even though I would agree there are better approaches. There are more egregious examples of this "loosy goosy" approach though. Such as the 600 articles on Samsung products under discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products?. Or the guy who added an almost blank stub for every Irish churchman in history. Or many many more. AfD is a lot of work, and allows a trickle of deletions while a river of permastubs keep coming in. That is Wikipedia. It is like fixing "citation needed" templates whilst keeping an eye on the growth of them. A sisyphean task. I wouldn't have said all that at AfD - it is all meta. I would, however, have made a couple of points:

1. Arguments about how the encyclopaedia will look in 1,000 years can be safely ignored. Wikipedia is incredible in many ways, but the direction of travel is towards AI curation of knowledge. Wikipedia's place in that landscape, if it is there at all, will look very different from Wikipedia now. And that is looking forward decades, not millennia.
2. Arguments that the county article will do for the curation of school districts are only good where school districts are co-extensive with counties. They often are, but not always. However there might have been some mileage in that one for those districts that are co-extensive with counties - except an argument that all school districts should be made to conform would make the 600 Samsung products discussion look tame.

So yes, on philosophy, I expect we agree. If you want to get there, don't start from here! Cheers. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:32, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, for stopping by I really appreciate the perspective. I'm with you on all that. I still do think the attitude that "the philosophy is that one person creates a stub and other editors improve them" is a good thing. IT is also good that stuff gets done through agreement and consensus. Essentially Wikipedia assumes everyone means well, and I like that too, but we're all too squeamish to deal with those few who do not mean well. Doesn't the AFD rules allow you to weight the votes according to the substance of the argument? It'd be useful in those cases where people just vote with no useful argument given. Because it's getting silly to have an article that should be deleted be kept because a bunch of people make keep votes without any reason, and one person makes a really good point to delete. Or even vice versa. James.folsom (talk) 00:03, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, AfD closes definitely should be wighting the arguments. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes they are just closed as "no consensus" when, in my view, one side had arguments and another just had votes (but maybe I was biased!). But closers do know to weight the arguments and you see that happening. I think it is rare for the side with the best arguments to outright lose just because of vote numbers. Although, by convention, a "no consensus" might as well be a win for anyone voting "keep". Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:57, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

There's a whole Hell of a lot of background Wikipedia history when it comes to schools and school districts. This précis doesn't do it justice, but very briefly: Some (U.S.) people many years ago originally thought that having an article on every (U.S.) school would suck in editors; it definitely sucked in a lot of school children who went on to write about their teachers and other schoolchildren; an enormous tidal back-and-forth happened at AFD to the extent that there were entire factions of editors who rote-contributed to AFD discussions of school articles; a later compromise to stop this included the idea of having articles on the (late 20th century consolidated) school districts.

Of course, none of this took into account that historically there were a lot of tiny rural school districts in some rural parts of the U.S. before consolidation happened. A lot of this had nothing to do with how possible it was to actually write in accordance with content policy, either; it being a way to settle what had become an extreme factionalistic tug of war. And non-U.S. editors, whose education systems don't work like the U.S. and some of whose schools have centuries-long individual histories, looked on with reactions varying from amusement through befuddlement to despair.

I should add one more piece of history: The idea that the GNIS mess or other mass creations was in line with the "policies that were designed to facilitate the expansion of the encyclopaedia" is wrong. Mass creations were suspect from the start. Back when Rambot (talk · contribs) was creating articles for Census-Designated Places, which is nowhere near as many articles as the GNIS importers created years afterwards, there were even then discussions on the mailing list and elsewhere about mass-creation leaving masses of boilerplate never-actually-going-to-attract-people bare-statistics-only stubs around. (Citizendium adopted a very different inclusion requirement, maintainability, in part because of the Wikipedia experience of hundreds of thousands of articles that no-one maintained.) There were people who expressed doubts that this sort of thing would work, even for articles where there was more than just a database of names and coördinates for the statistics.

One thing to consider, in hindsight, is how much damage was done by Wikipedia mass creations. The CDP articles didn't do really any damage, and ironically some of them still stand with just the census data today; but the school articles attracted a lot of BLP vandalism, and the GNIS mess articles propagate(d) outright falsehoods by the thousands.

Uncle G (talk) 20:44, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this. Yes, mass creations were always suspect, and also gamed human nature, where editors wanted to top stats of page creations any way they could. My own philosophy is that I never create any page I am unwilling to develop and maintain. Mass creations? Hmm. I think I will stop talking now. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:58, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Newspapers

As noted before, I don't have the access to newspapers and suchlike. So Lena Park, Indiana (AfD discussion) is awaiting the attention of the newspaper searchers. Note that the 1 newspaper article so far is the WWW site's cited source. Uncle G (talk) 19:38, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Dettol

@A. B. obviously didn't bother, to do any research before choosing Dettol as an example, You would have found that it's a household word for over 2 Billion people and probably rakes in more cash than your sewage treatment plants or your gas fields combined. And actually is historically relevant. Also, I didn't write that article. I simply split up the original Dettol article to separate Dettol the antiseptic liquid from Dettol the hugely propular brand name. James.folsom (talk) 01:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

You missed my point. And yes, I did research Dettol.

Some people would be interested in Dettol. Most people wouldn't, including most Dettol users. But nobody, myself included, proposes to delete it -- that's because it's notable, even though it's "run-of-the-mill" -- just like notable sewage treatment plants and notable gas fields. "Run-of-the-mill" is not a reason for deletion. Our policies and guidelines govern deletion; run-of-the-mill is not mentioned.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 18:51, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@A. B.You didn't do your research very well. I hadn't either so I hadn't said anything before now. Frankly, all the material in that article was simply split out of the Dettol article and the Chloroxylenol article because it was out place. I hadn't really considered it's notability. Having done so now, now I find it an order of magnitude more notable than you precious sewage plant.James.folsom (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Frustrating when people miss your point on purpose, huh? James.folsom (talk) 23:09, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 23:24, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Denison, Washington

First of all, thank you for adding to the Denison, Washington page. But your edit summary of "This is the complete story told by Meany, but was beyond the grasp of the editor blindly typing stuff into WP" is flat out rude and incorrect. SpokaneWilly (talk) 19:29, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

Your opinion is noted. James.folsom (talk) 00:57, 5 June 2024 (UTC)