Wikipedia talk:Notability (populated places) (failed) 2

Why this again??

Why on earth has this been resurrected? It must be quite clear to virtually anyone that there was consensus against it. One person with an obsession should not be allowed to overcome consensus by sheer dogged persistence. JamesBWatson (talk) 13:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear - I have nothing to do with this new proposal. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 16:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The previous discussion comprehensively rejected the whole idea of having such a guideline, not just the specific wording. OrangeDog made a spirited defence of the previous proposal, but, I note, has not been so obsessive as to try to resurrect it. Everyone seems to be too exhausted by the previous discussion to go through this again, so could I suggest marking this as a proposal that has failed to gain consensus? Phil Bridger (talk) 21:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, a good idea. JamesBWatson (talk) 11:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

This new proposal actually seems like a good and easy to implement compromise between include everything and include only those that have significant coverage in secondary sources. Why not publicize it and have the wider community discuss the new proposal? There is great merit to having a guideline in place that has been accepted wide consensus, even if all it says is "any placename that can be found on a map or database is notable and deserves its own arrticle." If that statement is indeed the prevailing consensus, why not propose a formal guideline as such and have it ratified by the community and then you can always point people to it and minimize long AFD discussions about the notability of minor places. --Polaron | Talk 13:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The only consensus that was established on the last proposal was that there wasn't enough consensus to establish a formal guideline for notability. Crickel (talk) 21:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Sigh . Alright, since the existence of consensus not to bring in such a guideline the last time is not persuasive enough, here are a few objections to this proposal.

1. The very first sentence: "A populated place is notable if it meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines." In that case why do we need a special page on this? Wikipedia's notability guidelines are already defined elsewhere. It would be necessary to have a special definition for places if the normal guidelines did not apply to them, but a proposal which starts off by asserting that they do apply denies its own purpose.
2. "A map or atlas cannot be used as a source to establish notability. This is because many detailed maps are highly comprehensive and have their own standards for determining what is listed that may not match reliable sources." Yes, if we are referring to large scale topographical maps, but this scarcely applies to atlas maps.
3. "A location that has a government of its own": The problem is what is a "government"? In India, for example, any village of 500 inhabitants can, if it chooses, have a local council or "Gram Panchayat". Is this enough of a government to establish notability? If not, then where do you draw the line? And whatever your answer, someone else will want to draw it in a different place, leading to disputes and AfD arguments. Why am I even spending time discussing this? Wasn't this gone into when the previous incarnation of this proposal was discussed? I seem to remember it was.
4. "Why are legally defined jurisdictions notable? This is because their status inevitably will result ..." This chatty style, like personal musing, is not consistent with Wikipedia's style. Of course, it would be easy to remove this example, but it just illustrates the lack of clarity with which the proposal has been constructed.
5. "Why are legally defined jurisdictions notable? This is because their status inevitably will result in an abundance of multiple, independent reliable sources existing." Then in that case there will be no difficulty in finding sources to cite, and we don't need a special rule to say that they are notable.
6. "Towns and village for which a mailing address recognized by the country's postal service exists": the level of significance at which this applies varies enormously in different parts of the world. The same applies to other criteria given: it is not necessary to list them all to illustrate the point. It is grossly unrealistic to imagine that a list of defined criteria like this will give the same standard of notability everywhere.
7. "In some countries, metropolitan areas are officially set by the national governments, leading there to be an exact definition, and are therefore notable." If we were given a definition of what "metropolitan areas" means then I would be able to form an opinion as to whether they are inherently notable, but to suggest that having an exact official definition is sufficient is ludicrous. The street I live in has an official name, and the delimitation of that name has an exact official definition: does that mean that the street is notable? And it is no good saying "don't be silly, we all know that that is not what the proposal means", because once we start using "we all know what it means" we are back to where we were without this proposal, using the normal WP standards for notability. Besides, we don't all know what it means: you try introducing such a guideline, and just wait and see how long it will be before disputes arise as to where to draw the line.
8. "Such divisions are often not legally defined, and frequently have no official recognition": So what? There are many things which are not legally or officially defined, but have a clear meaning. It would be bizarre to introduce a policy that Wikipedia cannot have articles about anything that is not legally defined, and I see no reason why places should be special in this respect.
9. "A neighborhood or community within a city or town or in a rural area is not worthy of a standalone article unless it clearly meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines." This is crazy. Nothing is worthy of a standalone article unless it clearly meets Wikipedia's notability guidelines. If you are saying that this is so of "A neighborhood or community within a city or town or in a rural area" then are you implying that the same is not so for other types of place? If so then (a) you are proposing more than a guideline, but a radical change in WP policy, and (b) you had better drop the very first sentence of this proposal. On the other hand if not then what on earth do you mean?

I could go on, but I feel I have said enough to establish the point. This proposal is clumsily constructed and internally inconsistent; it tries to establish firm rules, but those rules are subject to interpretation, which would lead to an increase in disputes about deletion; the rules are expressed in terms which make it impossible to apply uniformly everywhere. Moreover, the problems could not all be removed by a careful rewrite: no matter what the details, introducing more rules to define notability would introduce more debatable borderlines, more disputes as to exactly how the rules are to be applied. Wikipedia already has so many pages and pages of policies and guidelines that no editor can have a thorough knowledge of them all: we need less, not more. The present notability guidelines are enough. However, there is an even more important objection to the proposal. Wikipedia works by consensus. The idea of such a guideline has recently been discussed and rejected. As Phil Bridger has pointed out above, there was consensus against "the whole idea of having such a guideline, not just the specific wording". For one editor, or a small minority of editors, to refuse to accept consensus, and keep plugging an idea that has been rejected is all too common on Wikipedia. As Phil Bridger has also pointed out, people are tired of the previous discussion, and do not wish to go through it again. I resent the time I have had to spend on this after the matter had already been dealt with. When consensus has been reached it should be accepted. JamesBWatson (talk) 21:25, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

There are other subject-specific notability guidelines that seem to work just fine. The issues is that the general notability guideline is being ignored when it comes to places. Why not just formally codify it and have a guideline that says "all places no matter how small should have an article" and be done with it? --Polaron | Talk 21:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

To add my tuppence-worth, I'd like to add that even a guideline that just says "any placename that can be found on a map or database is notable and deserves its own article" would lead to more dispute than the current situation. That describes my general approach to this issue, but if it were put in a guideline we would end up with people arguing that it allows for the inclusion of articles on every street, or about small-scale housing developments with names invented for marketing purposes. Very few articles about communities end up in serious dispute at AfD, so I don't see that there's any need for this sort of instruction creep. Phil Bridger (talk) 22:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

There are currently two active AFDs on places that are in serious dispute and some people do point to various essays/proposals (including this one) in their arguments. Other people say the consensus is that all places are notable. If that is indeed the current consensus then there shouldn't be a problem getting that formalized as a notability guideline. --Polaron | Talk 23:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Are they pointing to this one, or attempting to point to the previous one? The links were never fixed when moved the old version was moved. Just userfy this and wait at least a year before trying to get consensus that a proposal on this topic is needed. OrangeDog (talk • edits) 00:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

*In answer to "The issues is that the general notability guideline is being ignored when it comes to places": any reason to suppose a specific guideline would not be ignored?

*In answer to "Why not just formally codify it and have a guideline that says 'all places no matter how small should have an article' and be done with it?" and "Other people say the consensus is that all places are notable. If that is indeed the current consensus then there shouldn't be a problem getting that formalized as a notability guideline" Personally I am in favour of this general approach, but there are two reasons why this is not a viable suggestion in practice. For one thing there is no consensus in support of this, no matter what some people say, as the history of proposals and discussions on the question shows. For another thing "no matter how small"?? such as my street?? my house?? of course not, so how small does "no matter how small" really mean? It just doesn't work: somewhere you have to have a cut off point, and, no matter how you try to write rules to define that cut off point, there will sometimes be disagreement in actual cases.

*In answer to "Very few articles about communities end up in serious dispute at AfD, so I don't see that there's any need for this sort of instruction creep": Yes, exactly.

JamesBWatson (talk) 15:18, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Conclusion

Polaron has argued in favour of a policy which simply says that all places are notable; this is not what the present proposal suggests, so this is not an argument in favour of the proposal. Nobody in fact has supported the proposal at all. Consequently in the arguments on this page there is a clear consensus against the proposal. In addition, as Phil Bridger has pointed out, in the last discussion there was a consensus against any such guideline. Crickel has said "The only consensus that was established on the last proposal was that there wasn't enough consensus to establish a formal guideline for notability". However, the fact remains that there was consensus that it was not appropriate to introduce such a guideline. Clearly some people positively thought it better not to have such a guideline, while others would have liked to have had one, but accepted there was no consensus to do so.

Reading the discussions on the two proposals together, it is clear that there is no consensus in favour of a guideline on this topic. Those who would like such a guideline are divided between those who want something along the lines of "all places are notable" and those who want the opposite: a detailed prescription of conditions on which a place is to be regarded as notable.

Under the circumstances it is clear thet the proposal has failed to acquire a consenus in its favour. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)