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Census designated place

There have been a few AfDs lately regarding whether census-designated places are notable, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Muhlenberg Park, Pennsylvania. I am of the opinion that they meet the criteria of legally recognized places since there is census info on them. They clearly are inhabited places, and villages are usually kept. This is a first for me - the only communities I saw deleted were trailer parks, developments, etc. Let's sort this out. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 21:04, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment My reading of WP:GEOLAND: census tracts are usually not considered notable unless SIGCOV exists. I do not make such a major distinction between a census tract and a Census-designated place: nor does the WP:SNG of GEOLAND. The following is from our own Wikipedia article: Census-designated place The boundaries of a CDP have no legal status and may not always correspond with the local understanding of the area or community with the same name. So it seems clear there is not inherent notability in a Census-designated place. So my opinion is that the area would need to pass GNG or WP:GEOLAND#2. Lightburst (talk) 22:03, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
• I don't know, I'm really hesitant on this. There was an AFD on what was primarily a mobile home park in Montana that was kept recently, and I deliberately did not comment. First a CDP is technically not a tract (though it is odd that census tracts had been explicitly called out, see this map of tracts in the Seattle area – why would anyone conceive of making articles for them in the first place? Here's the one that includes Muhlenberg park, and the Statistical Atlas is a great resource for exploring every level of census population information), but it is still a statistical division without local government. Many represent fairly distinct, significant communities that simply aren't incorporated, while others are neighborhoods or super-neighborhoods that, while outside cities and towns, are both large and dense enough that the census and state statistical authorities found worth counting the population of as a unit. At the end of the day though, they have some sort of defined borders, and we seem to already have comprehensive coverage of every CDP in the US. Therefore, regardless of the poor drafting of this guideline and "legally recognized", I would recommend not deleting CDPs and instead focusing on unincorporated communities without any such data available.

A main concern this brings is that CDPs change (e.g. Riverton-Boulevard Park, Washington was split into Riverton, Washington and Boulevard Park, Washington in 2010) or are annexed, and when they contain multiple communities (e.g. Downieville-Lawson-Dumont, Colorado has Downieville, Colorado, Dumont, Colorado, and Lawson, Colorado). In these cases, I encourage consolidating information into a single main article and avoid having several pages either having little information of their own or only historical population data. Also I see info on some pages about ZIP codes and post offices: this gets into ZCTAs and falsely conflates the way mail is organized and delivered and places being independently notable. Reywas92^Talk 22:57, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

• As a rule the issue is whether the CDP represents a place in its own right or should be subsumed in a larger area. This is not terribly cut-and-dried in the areas where this is even a question. For example, I live in suburban Montgomery Co., Md., where there are some incorporated cities/towns, but where most places that are obviously towns are nonetheless not incorporated and tend to be represented as CDPs. For instance, as you drive out Georgia Ave. from DC, you start out in Silver Spring and pass through Wheaton and then Glenmont, all of which the post office claims as Silver Spring, but which everyone else recognizes as three distinct towns/cities, even though there are no definite boundaries between them. Between Silver Spring and Wheaton is Forest Glen, which lacks the obvious commercial/urban concentration that marks the others. Is it a distinct place? Well, good question.

I have generally leaned towards assuming that CDPs are notable, within reason. I don't think articles should begin "Place is a Census Designated Place", because I don't think that's what makes them notable; I think they get to be CDPs because the census recognizes them as in some sense notable and having a certain place-quality to them. When the census consolidates places together, I don't think a separate article on the A-B-C-ville CDP is justified; better to say "A-ville is counted by the census as part of the A-B-C-ville CDP, which in 2010 had a total of nn residents."

The zip code/post office situation we addressed, inconclusively, a short while ago. The problem here is that it appears that at various times the USPS put post offices in various places simply because people had to have some place to pick up their mail. So there seem to be cases where the local train station was also the post office, or where a farmhouse was a post office. All of these places needed town names (because that's the way addresses worked), which was easy enough for a place on the railroad (they all had names due to dispatching), but not so much for a farmhouse. But there has been a push to declare these all settlements. Mangoe (talk) 00:19, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

• If a census designated place corresponds to an actual historical place, there's a good chance it's notable, but relying on the CDP designation by itself is a bit iffy. Basically, the census is the lowest possible bar for "legally recognized" and thus is a weak justification for keeping an article. If a place had no legal recognition other than as a CDP, I would suggest applying the WP:GNG test instead. Kaldari (talk) 03:36, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
• CDPs are sort of a gray area for me. They are administrative designations not legally defined places like incorporated areas, so we shouldn't "presume notability". However, the census bureau does try to define CDPs as

"communities that lack separate governments but otherwise resemble incorporated places. They are settled population centers with a definite residential core, a relatively high population density, and a degree of local identity."

This document from the 1990 census does a nice job of explaining incorporated areas and CDPs. In my mind a CDP isn't automatically notable but an indicator that we should look closer and apply basic WP:GNG test. Glendoremus (talk) 05:13, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

• As far as I'm concerned, census-designated places are notable. In order for an area to become a census-designated place, it has to be recognized by the Census Bureau as a population center; you don't get into the problem of railroad sidings or decades-old mapping mistakes. Recognition by the Census Bureau also does count as legal recognition in my mind, since an agency of the government is effectively certifying that the place is a named place with a distinct population as of the year in which the census was taken. "Legal recognition" doesn't necessarily mean incorporation.

As for places that are consolidated into one CDP, I'd say to not have duplicate articles on places but also to use the most recent census as the basis for what the articles should be called. I say that because the Census Bureau made an effort before the 2010 census to eliminate a lot of the combined CDPs, and the ones that are left are places that grew together to the point where they can't easily be separated. (The 2010 census also eliminated most of the few CDPs that didn't actually represent a community, like Greater Galesburg, Michigan, so those aren't even a problem like they used to be.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 01:41, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

• I've been AFDing articles that were mass-created from GNIS data and apparently there were a few CDPs (such as Muhlenberg Park, Pennsylvania and Pocono Ranch Lands, Pennsylvania) in the mix. I wasn't familiar with the specifics of the CDP designation, however when it comes to coverage and apparent notability they're sometimes indistinguishable from the type of subdivision, neighborhood, etc that's routinely deleted.

The problem with the "officially recognized" criteria is that these designations are often made for a specific purpose (delivering mail, counting people) that doesn't necessarily correlate with our concept of notability. The "Sources" section of WP:GEOLAND specifically excludes "maps and various tables" from establishing notability; if the official recognition consists solely of this type of coverage, we shouldn't have an article on the topic. –dlthewave ☎ 03:34, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but we can create a decent article based on government data. Are you aware that for several years, the vast majority of place articles in the US were based on nothing but government data? ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 00:10, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

"Geographic Terms and Concepts" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. 2010. as "settled concentrations of population that are identifiable by name but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the state in which they are located."

"Census Designated Places (CDPs) for the 2020 Census-Final Criteria". Federal Reigister. November 11, 2018. Retrieved March 8, 2020. Census designated places (CDPs) are statistical geographic entities representing closely settled, unincorporated communities that are locally recognized and identified by name.

CDPs pass the bar for legally recognized places for GEOLAND. Additionally a encyclopedia such as Wikipedia should be comprehensive and leaving few out diminishes the quality of that encyclopedia being incomplete.Djflem (talk) 21:24, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry but that is an misleading interpretation of "legally recognized". CDPs do not have any legal standing WHATSOEVER. A CDP cannot be party to a lawsuit in a court proceeding. A CDP cannot enact regulations. A CDP is NOTHING more than a statistical entity created for the convenience of comparing populated areas. A CDP MAY correspond to a recognizable populated place name, but such a place should be subject to general notability guidelines (i.e., have some verifiable notability independent of the demographic data). older ≠ wiser 21:45, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

I think this section is interesting: "A CDP constitutes a single, closely settled center of population that is named. To the extent possible, individual unincorporated communities should be identified as separate CDPs. Similarly, a single community should be defined as a single CDP rather than multiple CDPs with each part referencing the community name and a directional term (i.e., north, south, east, or west). Since a CDP is defined to provide data for a single, named locality, the Census Bureau generally will not accept combinations of places and hyphenated place names defined as a CDP. In the past, communities were often combined as a single CDP in order to comply with the Census Bureau's former minimum population requirements. The Census Bureau's elimination of population threshold criteria starting with Census 2000 made such combinations unnecessary. Other communities were combined because visible features were not available for use as boundaries for separate CDPs. The Census Bureau's policy to allow the use of some nonvisible boundaries so that participants can separate individual communities has dispensed with the need to have multi-place CDPs." I think it would be fair to delete any former combined CDP if there are separate articles for current single CDPs.

It also says later "Some CDPs, however, may be predominantly residential; such places should represent recognizably distinct, locally known communities, but not typical suburban subdivisions." I've seen a number that are groups of subdivisions combined, but they're usually not individual ones.

Reviewing the rest of the document and my experience with these places, they should generally not be considered for deletion (though perhaps in some cases merged). Since there is no minimum size threshold, there may be greater scrutiny on non-CDP unincorporated places that are not necessarily "closely settled" or "locally recognized," which is further explained in guideline 7. It will be interesting to see the resulting designated areas after this census is finalized, and there will certainly be a bot updating articles with the new populations. Reywas92^Talk 21:53, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

GEOLAND clearly acknowledges administrative subdivisions: a CDP is clearly an administrative subdivision.Djflem (talk) 19:35, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Please Show us a document which says that CDP is an administrative subdivision. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:05, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Um, a CDP is an officially recognized place, a subdivision created by the government. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 16:30, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Um, back, please read my question carefully again. I highlighter the key words for you.Staszek Lem (talk) 18:18, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

CDPs include both incorporated communities (a.k.a. municipalities) and unincorporated communities. The incorporated communities are administrative subdivisions; the unincorporated communities are not. Thus, not all CDPs are administrative subdivisions. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 19:29, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: No, CDPs do no include incorporated municipalities. The entire purpose of CDPs are to provide statistical comparisons between unincorporated places and incorporated places. older ≠ wiser 23:02, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

It's a common misconception that CDPs do not include incorporated communities, but they do. The misconception is common because, in true government fashion, the Census says that one of the rules for CDP is "A CDP may not be located, either partially or entirely, within an incorporated place or another CDP" (2010 CDP criteria, 2020 CDP criteria), but, of course, the Census itself doesn't follow that rule.

They are not the norm, but there are CDPs that are identical to incorporated communities, or that include parts of incorporated communities, or sometimes include multiple incorporated communities. This is explained, for example, in the introduction to our featured list, List of United States cities by population.

One such example is Arlington CDP, Massachusetts, and Arlington, Massachusetts. This presentation has some maps showing how the Massachusetts CDPs and incorporated places line up. In fact, New England is one of the places where we see CDPs that are incorporated communities. This is discussed in some detail at New England town#Census treatment of the New England town system.

Also at Census-designated place#Effects of designation and examples: "Generally, a CDP shall not be defined within the boundaries of what the Census Bureau regards to be an incorporated city, village or borough. However, the Census Bureau considers some towns in New England states, New Jersey and New York as well as townships in some other states as MCDs, even though they are incorporated municipalities in those states. In such states, CDPs may be defined within such towns or spanning the boundaries of multiple towns." Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 23:13, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: The census documentation is actually pretty clear. CDPs are not administrative subdivisions by any stretch of the imagination and none of what you cited above indicates otherwise. Yes, in certain states a CDP may be designated for all or a portion of a minor civil division in order to provide statistical representation in the tables for populated places, but that does not make the CDPs an administrative subdivision. older ≠ wiser

I'm not sure how you missed this in the links I just posted, but the whole gist is that some MCDs, like New England towns, are CDPs and also incorporated places (and thus administrative subdivisions). Examples: Arlington town & Arlington CDP, MA; Belmont town & Belmont CDP, MA; Burlington town & Burlington CDP, MA. These are all CDPs but they are also incorporated municipalities (towns or cities) with governments. If you click on the links (to Census QuickFacts), you'll see one column for the town, one column for the CDP, but the numbers are the same. They're both incorporated towns and CDPs. It happens. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 23:54, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

I didn't miss them (I think I may have actually written portions of the articles you mention). The point is that such places are administrative subdivisions independent of being CDPs. The census bureau designation has no bearing WHATSOEVER on the legal status of such places. Whatever legal status they might have is completely independent of any census designation, which is done to enable statistical comparisons. older ≠ wiser 00:25, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with those above who have said not unless the CDP otherwise meets GNG. The first paragraph of GEOLAND clearly states that places that meet GNG are presumed notable (but not guaranteed). That statement emphasizes the importance of GNG. To say that a CDP is notable without meeting GNG is going in the other direction. As others have said, this is a grey area due to all the overlapping designations that can exist. But to have an encyclopedic article on a location, there need to be sources that discuss it in-depth, which happens by defaulting to GNG. Keeping articles that rely only on a few administrative statistics results in perma-stubs. As expressed in GEOLAND#2, such places should be discussed in an article on the higher-level place. To facilitate searching, there should always be a redirect to that article. MB 17:15, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

As something of a meta-comment of this, the standards generally applied in practice have blatantly violated the requirement for in-depth discussion. Or should I say, the standard for "depth" has been sidewalk-puddle-shallow. When it is permissible to keep an article for which the only information is name, location, and (maybe) population, well, that's about as superficial as it comes. In that regard the difference between CDP and not is no more than that "maybe population". Mangoe (talk) 23:11, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

• I think every 1 square inch (6.5 cm²) of the Earth is notable, just like every species. When it comes to people or books, or most other things, the question is notable/not-notable, but when it comes to life or land, I think the question is WP:PAGEDECIDE. There's no reason to give every CDP its own page. If all we have is one sentence, better to make it a redirect to the county or next-highest unit, and have a list of CDPs on that page. Any editor could WP:SPINOUT a CDP to its own page if they had the sources to expand it beyond a stub. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 02:28, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
• Populated, legally recognized places have been held to be less restrictive than requiring WP:GNG. CDPs are populated, legally recognised places. In certain instances, it won't be appropriate to have an article on the place for reasons explained by Reywas92, but if there's anyone living there, and the land isn't otherwise incorporated, it's still probably appropriate to have an article. SportingFlyer T·C 00:00, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, is less restrictive, but it cannot override WP:GNG. Various notability guidelines are to define things presumed to be notable. It works like this: if a thing fails the criteria of NGEO, then it is up to deletion, unless WP:GNG from the policy kicks in. The policy also says that GNG still can be overridden by other encyclopedic considerations. Conversely, if a thing satisfieds NGEO, it still has to squeeze through the needle eye of WP:GNG and further filters. In other words: the !vote "delete, fails NGEO" is a strong !vote, but "keep, satisfies NGEO" is a weak !vote. In third words, NGEO judges the notability of a geothing basing purely on geographic/demographic info. While the geothing may be notable for other considerations making it interesting hence covered in sources hence encyclopedic.. Staszek Lem (talk) 05:40, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, is GNG a policy? I don't see a policy tag on WP:GNG (WP:N), only the same guideline tag used on WP:NGEO. Besides, it is called the "general notability guideline". Daß Wölf 23:00, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I didnt write GNG is a policy. I wrote WP:GNG from the policy (WP:GNG=WP:N#GNG). Anyway, sorry I thought WP:N is a policy. It turns out it is a guideline as well. Now I am at a loss of the relative priorities of notability rules: WP:N vs. specific guidelines. Now I see where the confusion comes from. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:12, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

FYI - relevant WT:CSD discussion

I've proposed a CSD criterion targeting the worst and least notable of the GNIS permastubs. See here. CJK09 (talk) 07:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Is a plantation a town?

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Homochitto, Issaquena County, Mississippi. Is a plantation, of which there were about 46,000 in the pre-Civil War South, a town because people lived on them, with automatic notability regardless of the presence of significant coverage? Does it fall under WP:GEOLAND#1? This does not seem to be the way to WP:Right great wrongs as if deletion of this would “wipe out their history.” Reywas92^Talk 00:53, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

If company towns are notable (and IMO they are), I don't see any reason why plantations shouldn't be. They are places where large groupings of people lived - the fact that those people were slaves doesn't change things. However, I'm still inclined against one-line permastubs. I expect enough information is available for most if not all plantations to avoid one-line permastubs. CJK09 (talk) 02:16, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Of course company towns are company towns because they are remote and a full infrastructure of road, stores, etc is needed to support it as an independent entity. When one plantation is next door to the next plantation is next door to the next plantation, they are not separate towns. If "enough information is available" and an article passes GNG that's fantastic, but none of this automatic notability nonsense. Reywas92^Talk 21:31, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Larger plantation like Homochitto had a number of slaves living there, and there was infrastructure similar to non-slave settlements. Plantations are notable just as company towns. Magnolia677 (talk) 21:50, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

No. Plantation in the prewar US South was basically a farm. (You have to read wikipedia before writing it :-) There were plantations with as few as 20 slaves. Therefore I don't think we can indiscriminately assign notability to individual plantations. Of course, some even small farms are notable (e.g., the one of old MacDonald's :-) And therefore we better follow the NGEO advice about merging smaller features into larger ones, if there is an insufficient number of RSes that cover the subject in depth. In any case, did you find reliable sources that say "plantation is a town"? If not, case closed. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:48, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

GNIS database

There have been a number of Arizona geography stubs at AfD recently, all of which sourced only to the GNIS. Included in the GNIS were some old Phoenix subdivisions which are now incorporated and were never really distinct places to begin with which I agreed with deleting, but now a mass cull of GNIS stubs from around the state has started, and by the rapid way in which these were nominated, without apparently any WP:BEFORE searches. In a lot of instances, these places are historical but still appear on maps, and so I'm trying to figure out if there's a proper way to analyse these considering we function as a gazetteer. SportingFlyer T·C 00:16, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Articles that only have a single database source generally fail to meet our notability guidelines. The argument is often made that simply being listed as a "populated place" by GNIS means that a topic passes GNG, however GNIS uses quite different inclusion criteria and is a poor substitute for our standard requirement of significant coverage in reliable sources. Furthermore, its "populated place" description is applied to everything from railroad sidings to small family ranches that would not be considered notable in any other case. –dlthewave ☎ 02:23, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

• I've found that everything with the "populated place" classification still shows up on USGS topo quad maps, even if the place no longer exists at all or never should have had that GNIS classification in the first place (and other mapping services just import data from USGS). Per my comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nommel Place, Arizona and elsewhere of course it should not be assumed that being in the past and listed on maps is historic. Let the the surveyors make the actual indiscriminate gazetteer, and we can "combine the features" that have significant coverage. I'm happy to mass cull GIGO, apparently mass created without before searches either...but we are still putting eyes on these. Reywas92^Talk 02:27, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
• Bad facts die hard on the internet. It would be great to get the GNIS updated for the locations that are clearly only railroad sidings. If this does not happen, then these pages will probably get recreated. One problem is that the GNIS definition of a "Populated Place" is:

"Place or area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population (city, settlement, town, village). A populated place is usually not incorporated and by definition has no legal boundaries. However, a populated place may have a corresponding "civil" record, the legal boundaries of which may or may not coincide with the perceived populated place. Distinct from Census and Civil classes."

This definition is not the same as the WP:GEOLAND, hence the confusion. However, I recall have seen some GNIS entries that state that the location was a railroad siding, or even better, a "railroad siding (historic)."

FWIW, I was able to get the GNIS updated for Great Boiling Spring Park, which was showing up as a park near Gerlach, Nevada in Google Maps. There was public access to that location in the past, but there is no longer public access to the springs, and having Google maps show the area as a park caused people to trespass. Once I was able to get GNIS updated, perhaps it was easier to get Google to agree to remove the park and hopefully other maps will not show the park.

The problem is that the GNIS is no longer being updated directly and instead the National Map Corps is to be used. Perhaps as an output of the Arizona cleanup, some of this info should go over to the National Maps Corps. As a background task, I'll see about generating a list of all of the recent geographic deletions and see about getting some updates in the GNIS. Cxbrx (talk) 17:40, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

@Cxbrx: I've edited a bit on National Map Corps and they use USGS as a reference framework but they have their own guidelines for what should be retained. If anything, using GNIS as a starting point has never seemed as a bad thing. – The Grid (talk) 22:09, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Sources section

I propose the following text for Sources:

To establish notability, the subject must be described (not simply mentioned) by reliable sources. This guideline specifically excludes maps and tables from establishing notability because these show little except the existence of the subject. Still, maps and tables contribute to the requirement of verifiability. Unreliable sources such as Facebook and most blogs or YouTube videos cannot be used to establish verifiability or notability of a geographical feature.

This puts the section in a more logical order and doesn't significantly change the meaning. I would also suggest adding "Databases" to "Maps and Tables", since we've deleted large numbers of stubs sourced only to database entries. –dlthewave ☎ 16:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• I agree with the proposed re-ordering of the text. Focus should be on the positive--what does establish notability. The specific exclusion of maps and lists is also important: they can be used to confirm viability and specific facts can be gleaned from them but they should not be the starting point for proving notability. I would support the specific exclusion of databases on the basis that a database is nothing more than a glorified electronic table. Glendoremus (talk) 17:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I support this change for clarification. Glendoremus is right that databases are often just tables that show one entry at a time. Perhaps the guideline should also mention that maps and tables often duplicate each other as their own sources. Reywas92^Talk 18:09, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The addition of "to establish notability" makes it a bigger change than it sounds like. If followed, it establishes a GNG type criteria and voids out the SNG. North8000 (talk) 18:42, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, the "establish notability" language is present in the current version and I kept it in place to avoid changing the meaning. Are you seeing something that I'm not? –dlthewave ☎ 19:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Maybe a moot point now, but the old wording just excluded sources from an implied requirement ("establish notability"), aside from what Staszek Lem, your wording flat out states a requirement for establishing notability. North8000 (talk) 21:23, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

You probably didn't pay attention that the proposed change changed the formal logic. The old version states that "object to be described" is a sufficient condition, while the new version makes "object to be described" as a necessary condition (hence my revert which have led to this discussion). I have nothing against this change, but y'all must consciously accept this change of logic.

Second, it changed the semantical logic: in the old version, sources establish notability of the subject, while the phrasing of the new version is sloppy: "to establish notability (of what?)" ... "the subject must be described", i.e. the subject establishes notability of something

Finally the language "establish notability". The correct phrasing would be "contribute to notability", because a single source does not necessarily establishes notability. Example: "The guide told us than this low bald hill with only two trees on it is called "Kalb al Rai", or "Dog's Head". Surely the subject "is described" and the description may be longer, saying that three camels died on this spot and birds do not shit on it, and so on. But while this makes it a recognizable landmark, I don't thing this "establishes notability" for WP. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:29, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Therefore IMO the statement must be phrased, .e.g., as "To contribute to the notability of the subject, sources must reasonably describe it (rather than simply mention it)." (I omitted the word "reliable" because this goes without saying per our basic policy, so no need to be too legalistic.) Staszek Lem (talk) 20:29, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Two birds with one stone. Your wording also avoids the problem that I described above. North8000 (talk) 21:25, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree, this wording makes more sense. –dlthewave ☎ 00:30, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree this needs to be changed. The low quality of GNIS database entries has long been established, but they're still being used as means to attempt to claim a nominal GEOLAND pass. It needs to be clearer simple database entries such as GNIS don't quite cut it. Hog Farm _Bacon 00:45, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Voting precincts

I know townships seem to be considered notable per WP:GEOLAND. What about voting precincts? I'm not familiar with any guidelines for them, but The Forks, Kentucky is almost certainly a voting precinct. The three sources I've found call it a precinct, a voting precinct, and an "area" (as opposed to a locale or populated place). I'm leaning on non-notable, but if precincts are considered notable, then I don't want to AFD it. Hog Farm _Bacon 01:40, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

the article calls it [unincorporated community]]. is this verifiable? in nay cse, I've just voted in a similar page:

merge into List of unincorporated areas of Estill County, together with all other one-liners of this ilk.Staszek Lem (talk) 18:23, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think a voting precinct would be notable on its own. A few sources do mention "the Forks Precinct" in a non-voting context, but no significant coverage or official recognition of any sort. Older topos mark it in a typeface that's used for geographic features or areas, not communities, and it shows every sign of being a classic WP:GNIS mislabeling.

The "Unincorporated community" label fails verification since the sole source uses "populated place". –dlthewave ☎ 02:06, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Populated places

There is concern that the guideline for populated places is far too broad compared to WP:GNG; in particular, it ignores that no subject is inherently notable. It leads to the creation of thousands of unsourced, poorly written stubs about villages in certain Third World countries, sometimes even with incorrect name and/or coordinates. For specific discussion on populated places, see also:

• Most discussions at Wikipedia talk:Notability on inherent notability mention articles about populated places
• Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump_(proposals)/FritzpollBot (about a bot proposal, June 2008)
• Wikipedia:Notability (populated places) (failed) 1 (failed proposal from March 2009)
• Wikipedia talk:Notability (populated places) (failed) 2 (failed proposal from May 2009)
• Wikipedia:Notability (populated places) (failed) 3 (failed proposal from July 2010)
• Wikipedia_talk:Notability/Archive_46#What_is_the_consensus_on_City_articles? (October 2010)
• Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics/Archive_55#Indian_and_Pakistani_villages (for India and Pakistan, November 2013)
• Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(geographic_features)#GEOLAND_is_self-contradictory_–_what_is_a_"legally_recognized_place"? (see above, May 2019)
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Indonesia#Random_non_notable_village_additions_to_the_project (for Indonesia, September 2020)
• Various attempts to establish notability guidelines for specific types of features, such as Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Rivers/Archive_5#NRIVER_proposal (December 2018)

The entire page is too general and barebones compared to other notability guidelines, and therefore there is a need to establish specific criteria for each type of feature, like WP:NASTRO.

• They should be country-agnostic where possible, since that avoids unwanted nationalist bias.
• They should avoid quantitfiable cutoffs that are arbitrary, or where statistics may not always be readily available.
• They should be consistent with WP:GNG.

–LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:15, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

...thousands of unsourced, poorly written stubs about villages in certain Third World countries -- This has nothing to do with this guideline. Any unsourced article must go, because WP:V is a policy, and it beats guidelines. "Poorly sourced" is an unfortunate problem with any information from the 3rd World. The latter issue may be handled in the way explained right in this guideline: merge them into next best country subdivisions. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

...no subject is inherently notable, -- well, thats's what the NGEO guideline says at the very top. (Since you are citing NASTRO, zillions of asteroids are handled in a similar way: they are collected/redirected in tables. And I do not think that asteroids are more notable than villages.) Staszek Lem (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Most discussions ... -- if you look at the archives of this talk page, you will find that many of them and more were taken into an account during the extremely long discussion of the proposal of this guideline. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• ...criteria for each type of feature, like WP:NASTRO -- I fail to see its superiority to NGEO. In fact IMO it is way too verbose, regurgitating what was already said in more general relevant policies and guidelines. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:47, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

If you have specific suggestions, you are welcome. But first review the archives; may be it was already discussed. Staszek Lem (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03: Thank you for that thorough post. @Staszek Lem: respectfully, I do not agree with your description of the the current status. First, the question at hand is existence/non-existence of an article. WP:V certainly does not tackle that topic nor is it used to resolve questions in that area. Also, even though SNG's may give lip service to the need for GNG they are in reality a way to bypass GNG. GNG says so itself , and so what is written in the SNG is very impactful. That said, LaundryPizza03, I don't think that this would be a pursuit likely to end up with a change. The SNG on this is pretty widely accepted. Some experienced folks say that it is because it's been accepted that wikipedia is also a gazetteer. My own personal observation is that this "finger on the scale" is widely accepted because inhabited officially recognized places are very encyclopedic Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works right now Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:35, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

REspectfully disagree with your disagreement. First of all, I did not describe any "current status" I was merely contesting colleague's description. First, surely WP:V is the cornerstone one cannot bypass. Heck, how you can even discuss notability of an article if there are no sources? "I say so" argument does not work in wikipedia from day one I am here. Second, NGEO does not give "lip service" to GNG; it actually excludes a wide range of sources which were often used by inclusionists as argument in AfDs. What else you disagree with? Staszek Lem (talk) 04:16, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Hello @Staszek Lem: Of course we know that wp:v is a core policy. It's a content policy; material challenged or likely to be challenged must be sourced. IMO this does not affect what I said about wp:V. on my second point, when I said my "lip service" I meant ONLY lip service....that in practice the other SNG criteria bypass the sourcing requirements of wp:GNG. North8000 (talk) 16:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• The actual issue here seems to be a discussion about Indonesia. This is now being forum-shopped elsewhere. This does not seem helpful because the original discussion is already quite vague, with no specific examples. Generalising the topic without hard facts and examples just leads to lots of loose talk and no useful conclusions. Please see WP:NOTLAW and WP:NOTFORUM, which are actual policies. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:00, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• Andrew's characterization of this as being forum-shopped strikes me as inaccurate: from what I can tell there was near unanimity in the original discussion and the decision was made to bring things over here, I imagine because of the likelihood that a decision made in the Indonesia project would be disregarded by outsiders, and that matters would then be fought out here anyway. The longer reality is that GEOLAND's not-much-of-a-standard has led to several cleanup projects because "officially recognized" has been interpreted to mean that anything that looks like a governmental (or even quasi-governmental) source is absolutely authoritative, resulting in swathes of spurious villages and towns which, upon closer examination, don't actually exist and never did.

As far as Indonesia is concerned, eighty thousand villages is an awful lot, particularly if the information available on most of them is no more than their location and place in the political structures; even adding population to that doesn't advance things much. Personally, not knowing the political/geographical structure of the country that well, it might make a lot of sense to simply list villages below some threshold in an article on the district/province, or even omit mention entirely. Mangoe (talk) 14:04, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• Based on my experience with United States placenames, editors interpret this guideline in many different ways and it would be particularly helpful to clarify the definition of "legally recognized place". I've seen folks interpret this as anything from official incorporation status to being mentioned as a landmark by a government agency, i.e. "the county announced that they will repave Road #30 from Chicken Corner to Pig Crossing, therefore Pig Crossing is a legally-recognized place." We should also put more emphasis on the Sources section since it already specifically excludes the sorts of passing mentions and table/database listings that lead to these poorly-sourced stubs. –dlthewave ☎ 15:33, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I believe the accepted standard for US places is incorporated and unincorporated communities as well as municipalities, including ghost towns but excluding census tracts and most neighborhoods, for which there is evidence of population and legal recognition as such. Many AfDs are for random places misidentified as communities, from wells and ranches to railroad stations and road crossings. Most of these rules may be applicable to other countries. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 14:50, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

SNGs and GNG

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability on the relationship between SNGs and the GNG which might be of interest to editors who watch this page. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:48, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Add unincorporated communities to the list of examples of "Populated places without legal recognition" under WP:GEOLAND

In this AFD the claim is being made that unincorporated communities are an example of a place with legal recognition. I think it would help if this were clarified, particularly given how many articles we have dealing with unincorporated communities, at least in the US, and how often the question of whether or not they are legally recognised under the definition used in WP:GEOLAND comes up. FOARP (talk) 20:04, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• This is a hard no. Most places in the US aren't incorporated, and most countries don't have unincorporated places anyways, so this would be an Amerocentric change. For the US, legal recognition is typically "census-designated," not "incorporated," which just implies the populated area wants to be managed as a municipality. SportingFlyer T·C 20:41, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Census tracts are already covered in WP:GEOLAND (it explicitly excludes them from a presumption of automatic notability).FOARP (talk) 21:08, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not talking about census tracts. I'm talking about census-designated places. SportingFlyer T·C 21:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Same story "The boundaries of a CDP have no legal status" FOARP (talk) 21:42, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

You're still being very technical with the definition. CDPs are "legally recognised" in the sense that they are officially designated by the US Census Bureau. They are not legally incorporated, though some of them have legal status depending on the state (see slide 10.) Remember, the spirit of WP:GEOLAND is to include all populated places, which is more difficult to define in the US than it is in other countries. SportingFlyer T·C 22:21, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

CDPs are really not notable in themselves, but they can confer notability. Probably the majority of them do represent the census making some delineation of an unincorporated town. For example, there are a lot of these in Montgomery County, Maryland. But there are cases where they will for some reason combine two towns into one CDP, and then later split them. My feeling is that a CDP for a town does confer notability on that town, because it does confer an official recognition as a place with a distinct population, but that a CDP encompassing two towns shouldn't have its own article.

"Unincorporated community" is a euphemism we should be abjuring, but be that as it may, saying that they are, as a class, legally recognized is just flatly untrue. The presenting issue at the moment in the GNIS cleanup is that, considering the number of errors, hardly any of these places had some obvious "legal recognition". There's no rigid standard which definitively divides the notable from the non-notable among settlements in the USA, because the legal structures just aren't there, and to the degree they are, they vary wildly from place to place. Mangoe (talk) 23:14, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think incorporation/unincorporation has any place in the hierarchy. Incorporated municipalities are self-organised - that's different from the government saying "this is a place." Whether a town is incorporated or not is not the sole determinant of whether WP:GEOLAND is met in the U.S. As we've seen with the GNIS, but that database has so many errors it doesn't accurately reflect whether people once lived in a place, or if the place is a subdivision, town, et cetera. That's less an incorporated/unincorporated issue than it is a "no one ever lived here, but a topo map once had a typeface claiming they did, and we digitised it" issue. In a non-US location, "legally recognised" clearly means cities, towns, hamlets, and does not mean neighbourhoods, subdevelopments, commercial regions, so for the US we need to use common sense to determine whether these stubs are considered or were once considered hamlets per GEOLAND #1 or if they're subdivisions per GEOLAND #2. There's no hard and fast rule here - we need to look to the spirit of GEOLAND, which is to be very inclusive about the geographic features we can include in the encyclopaedia. SportingFlyer T·C 23:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Unincorporated communities (with respect to the US here) are already excluded from Geoland#1: they are not, except for CDPs, legally recognized. The issue is that "community" is an incredibly vague term: a neighborhood and a subdivision are communities, but those can likewise be vague terms. A few homes near each other would be neighbors who form a community (as we may see in this AFD), as would homes that are more spread out but are on the same road or all in a broad vicinity (some of the mass-productions in KY and WV come to mind). And then there are subdivisions/housing developments that are nothing more than homes but aren't immediately part of an incorporated place or larger community. The issue is that WP:NPLACE, which says "Cities and villages anywhere in the world are generally kept" has been treated as a de facto guideline. But depending on the country/state a village is a vague term too. If they are kept "regardless of size" then what's to stop ten people in three homes from saying "we're a village, we're automatically notable"? Because that's what has absolutely been seen in many of these GNIS places.

When I look at Google Maps or topo maps, my thoughts have always been that if there's a focal point of the community which has perhaps a church, general store, or school bearing the name, or something else that is evident that this is a distinct population center as an entity, it might pass the bar, but if it's a small number of homes and lacks anything unifying other than a name then it probably does not. It's hard to have all-encompassing guidelines for globally inconsistent settlement patterns and legal terminology – not to mention development before and after car ownership arose, but people merely being from a place with a name doesn't make it notable. So many of these cases are just neighborhoods – which would be neither legally recognized nor considered a stand-alone village even if the name is used as a residence or place marker – and therefore require some coverage of greater depth. Reywas92^Talk 01:35, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't see a need to change anything here. In practice it seems like incorporated places are generally presumed notable at AfD while unincorporated ones are considered case-by-case, although I agree with Sportingflyer that incorporation shouldn't be the determining factor. As a side note there are a vast number of stubs listed as "populated place" in GNIS that were changed to "unincorporated community" at some point with no sourcing whatsoever. –dlthewave ☎ 03:32, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Flaw in wording for buildings?

An RFC and ANI elsewhere regarding shopping malls made me take a look at the relevant sentence here which I think may be the root of the problem. It reads (separation and numbers are by me):

1. "Buildings, including private residences and commercial developments, may be notable as a result of their historic, social, economic, or architectural importance, but
2. they require significant coverage by reliable, third-party sources to establish notability."

This is basically two different sentences with no relationship established between them.....what is it supposed to mean? The "but" on #1 means that such alone does not establish notability. #2 is a watered down / weakened version of wp:GNG. Was the intent that it needed the coverage under #2 to establish the attributes listed under #1? If so, it doesn't say that. It looks like what is causing the problem is that #2 is usable and used separately. Since it removes the "in-depth" requirement of wp:GNG, I think that the problem is that just getting lots of mentions is considered to be sufficient. I don't know what the big fix would be....it depends on the intent of the phrase. But I plan to do a little fix which is to add "in depth" (standard GNG wording) to the coverage requirement wording. With a RFC and ANI open on this this might be a bad time to do this or maybe a good time in order to help resolve it. North8000 (talk) 12:59, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't "significant coverage" imply "in-depth"? WP:GNG doesn't have an "in-depth" requirement, that's covered by "'Significant coverage' addresses the topic directly and in detail" and this wording mirrors GNG. I would agree that one would need significant coverage to establish a building's importance. Going through the archives of this page, you'll see concerns that it's not needed since it basically just defers to GNG, but I will look for this RFC. Reywas92^Talk 18:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Reywas92, the RFC, MB 18:55, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Reywas92 "Significant" can easily be interpreted to include lots of simple mentions. "In detail" would also cover that but is not in the subject sentence in the SNG. Regarding "in-depth" being in the GNG, I dunno. The core wording does acknowledge depth of coverage as a relevant metric. Then in the SNG section of GNG, where GNG paraphrases itself it says "in-depth". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:46, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to copy part of my comment from that RfC that's relevant here: NGEO is one of the loosy-goosiest guidelines we have as a result of it being built around "Wikipedia is a gazetteer". That's fine, but I've never been clear why we include not just rivers, mountains, and settlements, but also individual objects and buildings inside those settlements like that one-story building that went up in the 1990s with the Starbucks inside. Since NGEO includes none of the qualifying that other guidelines do (again, intended mainly for subjects in a very small class of inherent notability), we only have the one line to go by. It requires "in-depth" coverage, but nothing else, so as long as the local small town paper covered that building going up or getting demolished, we're basically good. I'd rather see buildings just removed from this guideline, since it inadequately covers them. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:45, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

• In considering how other SNGs are written, this one definitely causes confusion and I would agree with this assessment. The only building criteria that should stay is Artificial geographical features that are officially assigned the status of cultural heritage or national heritage, or of any other protected status on a national level and for which verifiable information beyond simple statistics is available, are presumed to be notable. as I can accept that gaining this status usually means there's documentation to why that status was confirmed. The one about infrastructure may be possible to restate as a presumption if there's some solid criteria (like federal-level government owned infrastructure). The third one about buildings in general is just restating the GNG and its inclusion causes confusion and should just be removed. Additionally, this guideline specifically could use the AUD from NCORP in dealing with local structures. Yes, the lamppost at 5th and main may be the talk of the local newspapers, but that doesn't make it notable for WP. --Masem (t) 16:12, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree. I think that the was it was before my minor tweak was harmful and actually causing problems. After my tweak it basically says nothing (repeats GNG) so maybe complete removal is a minor change that we can just do. The alternative (and possible original intent) would be that it has sources (not necessarily GNG-grade) that establish "notable as a result of their historic, social, economic, or architectural importance" but I think that simple deletion would be better and not a real change.North8000 (talk) 16:58, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

A couple of times recently I have seen it alleged in AfDs (by those that want articles on them deleted, naturally) that heritage-listed buildings do not count as Artificial geographical features that are officially assigned the status of cultural heritage or national heritage..., because it doesn't specifically mention buildings. I am at a loss to work out what these editors do think it covers... -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:58, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I have experienced the same issue as Necrothesp that editors at AFD state buildings don't count as artificial geographical features even when you actually quote what is classed as an artificial geographical feature! I agree the wording is not exactly helpful but what to replace it with I am not sure.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 22:37, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

AFD regarding bulk-created places in Iran

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mazraeh-ye Dariush Baharvand Ahmadi and related discussion at User_talk:Carlossuarez46#Places_in_Iran. Reywas92^Talk 07:20, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

"Wikipedia functions as a gazetteer"

I changed a sentence in the lead from "Per Wikipedia's Five pillars, the encyclopedia also functions as a gazetteer" to Per Wikipedia's Five pillars, the encyclopedia includes features of a gazetteer". This more closely matches the actual text of WP:5P1 which states "Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." –dlthewave ☎ 16:32, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Agree with this. Wiki is not a gazeteer per se. It will not list everything that the GNIS does, for example. It merely has some of the features of a gazetteer. FOARP (talk) 10:39, 4 April 2021 (UTC)