Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hoy (Lake Constance)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. - Mailer Diablo 06:16, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hoy (Lake Constance)

Tiny island that, from the looks of it in the image provided as well as the text of the article, is completely non-noteable. Descendall 01:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per nom -AMK152 01:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Please specify why it should be kept. --Wafulz 01:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Nvm...i didnt know what i was thinking. -AMK152 01:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. This is about as important as a hill or a small street. Unless the island has had some profound historical signficance, the article should be deleted. --Wafulz 01:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete and possibly (but unlikely) merge to Lindau. What's next, documenting every sandbar and shoal? My Alt Account 01:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge with Lake Constance Zazaban 02:39, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. It's less than 100 square meters! I'm quite surprised that it actually has a name. --Supermath 02:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Unless there's something particularly unique or important about this truly tiny island, there's no way it's notable enough. Dylan 03:12, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Merge. Someone went to the trouble to build a wall around it, must be worth mentioning somewhere. Kappa 04:13, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Change vote to behalten (keep) per the German AFD. Kappa 04:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Change again, if the map mentioned below is the only verifiable reference, mention it in Lindau or somewhere and redirect there. Kappa 23:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Need more information here. I can't find anything on Google [1] even confirming this at all. But there is an ariticle on this in the german Wikipedia, so I doubt it's a hoax... more likely just something not very well documented in English. --W.marsh 04:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• W.marsh points out the basic problem with this article. It doesn't cite sources. Neither does the article in the German Wikipedia. For all that readers know, this could be complete fiction. (It wouldn't be the first time that a fictional article originated at the German Wikipedia.) Even if this were a real island, how are readers expected to verify the article's contents? How can readers verify that the dimensions of the island are as the article gives them? Requiring that readers go to the island and physically repeat the measurements is contravening our Wikipedia:No original research policy.

  We keep articles on real places not because they are "real places", but because they are independently and substantially documented real places. (The plot of grassland to the side of my house is a real place.) Small towns with small populations are documented in censuses, for example. Mill Ends Park was written about in a newspaper for several years and was listed in the Guinness Book of Records, for another example. Where is the documentation for this island? The article doesn't say, and a search for documentation doesn't turn up anything more than this or this from which we can get no more than "Hoy is an island in Lake Constance.".

  Redirect to Lake Constance or (since the disambiguation at hoy (disambiguation) is where readers will come to and that can be redirected directly) delete. Uncle G 14:00, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: at least keep note in Lindau article an in disambiguation. Lake Constance has served as a important waterway for thousands of years and even a tiny island could accumulate more history that a city recently founded somewhere in a desert. That Google has nothing doesn't wipe out the history. Pavel Vozenilek 14:52, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. It seems to be real (search for Hoy and Bodensee (the German name), but apart from that completely uninteresting. Unless more info can be found to give it some importance (an interesting history or so), it should be deleted. Fram 19:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Sure, it could have accumulated more history than a city in a desert, but unless there are verifiable sources that say it has done so, that's not a persuasive argument. Geoffrey Spear 19:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep real place, and if lack of sources were reason enough to delete articles then we'd be half the Wiki we are. Carlossuarez46 20:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Follow-up I have added a couple of references that were easily obtainable from Google had anyone wanted to. Apparently, this island is of a vacation spot for Germans. Also, other small islands have articles: Wake Island, Sealand, Alcatraz, Rikers Island, Liberty Island, Lindisfarne and while Hoy may not be as notable as these, it is apparently notable. Carlossuarez46 21:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Hoy isn't even close, the former are much bigger and most have considerable historical significance. Irongargoyle 22:58, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment You forgot to include Manhattan and Singapore in the Worst Analogy Ever there. Geoffrey Spear 23:46, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Are Germans agoraphobics? They like to vacation on a 53 square-meter island? Wavy G 02:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Those references seem to just be about the entire Lake Constance region, talking about museums and castles and town centres - which I doubt exist on this island... anyway the one mention of the island literally just says that the island belongs to Lindau. No information about the island at all beyond that it's in Lindau. And yeah, Worst Analogy Ever seems warrented here, sorry. The Lake Constance region is no doubt a vacation spot - this island, not so much so. --W.marsh 04:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Before you claim too much high ground on the matter of editors doing research, you might care to notice that I already linked to two such pages, including one of the very ones that you cited, in my rationale preceding yours, and noted that they provide no information about this island beyond "Hoy is an island in Lake Constance.". (There are several such pages. They all have no more information on this island.) Also note that lack of sources is one of the primary reasons that we delete things here. Uncle G 15:34, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Before you deleters claim any high ground at all and criticize the analogy: be bold and set a stake in the ground: how small is too small for an island to be notable for WP? Does that same size apply to the plethora of schools or fictional pokemon monsters the plague this so-called encyclopedia. Carlossuarez46 23:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. LOL, is this the place where Johnny Castaway lived? My bedroom is nine meters long and six meters wide--Can I write an article about it? Wavy G 21:45, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete sorry, I'm still not convinced. The new reference does not say that this island is a major vacation spot, it's only alluded to once as an afterthought. I think I'll go ahead and AfD the German version as well; perhaps someone there will come up with a good reason to keep this. -Elmer Clark 21:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Nominated the German version here. -Elmer Clark 22:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Strong Delete. The weirdness of this article intrigues me. Why in the world did someone build a stone wall on this island? Very strange indeed. Anyways, the ducks in the foreground are probably more notable than the island itself, so a reluctant delete for now, but if somebody can provide some more references I might be inclined to change my vote. Might be a WP:BJAODN candidate if it were actually funny. It is just odd. Irongargoyle 22:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I am changing my vote to strong delete based on the arguments for keeping. These make me realize what a bad precident would be set by including this island. The argument that all real places with names should be keep it is an awful one. It has no references, it has no notability, the only real verifiability is that someone has placed it on the German Wikipedia as well and happened to take a photo. Irongargoyle 20:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• Heh, the german AfD is... taking a bit of an unexpected turn. They all want to keep A) because it's the smallest island in a large lake (apparently this is seen as a very compelling reason to keep) and B) Because they rarely keep an article that wp-en would delete, and find doing so to be an amusing concept. They don't even seem to understand why the article is nominated. Wp-de is weird! --W.marsh 04:25, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Yeah...they seem to consider any geographic location intrinsically notable. -Elmer Clark 10:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Like the English one thinks of schools. Carlossuarez46 23:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Please ask the German Wikipedians to cite sources, that can be used by readers to verify the content of the article. Uncle G 15:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete--Peta 05:38, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Why should we delete this article? Only because the island is small? Then we must delete all arcticles about small islands, towns, ... Chaddy2 07:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Towns are or have been inhabited. This island is empty, and as far as we know has always been empty. But if you can show me a bunch of other articles for similar islands (let's say, less than 100m²) which have no historical facts, disputes, lighthouses, or other clearly important distinguishing features, then I may rethink my position. As it is, I don't think that we would have to delete even one other article based on this precedent... Fram 07:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • I thought it was kind of clear that the problem is that there's little to no information in English about this island. The only information in german so far is just that "It's an island". Obviously if there is more information than that on an island, we would probably keep the article... but right now now one but Wikipedians seems to care enough about this island to write anything about it. --W.marsh 13:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Please don't use straw men. The reasons were given above, and have everything to do with a lack of sources and of anything verifiable to write about the island beyond 1 sentence, and nothing to do with the size of the island. Uncle G 15:39, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, see Diskussion AFD in the German WP. And yes, every geographical location, whether river, town, island or named hill is relevant in the German WP, which has otherwise much much harder restrictions for relvancy. --213.155.224.232 17:03, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • ... but which has not, apparently, even considered the problem of having no sources to cite. Uncle G 17:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• I just read that there are 3.5 million lakes over 20 acres in Alaska alone. I personally find the idea that every geographic location is "relevent" to a bit troubling, Uncle G's arguments make a good deal more sense. I'm not sure wp-de's philosophy on this has been sufficiently challenged... although I was just looking at it through a machine translation, it didn't seem like there was anything approaching the refinement of Ungle G's arguments on the german AfD for this article. It was just a pretty simplistic "Keep, all places are notable" argument, regardless of whether there's actually any good information on that place. --W.marsh 17:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • We don't delete African villages just because we don't have a lot of data about them, and including every named location seems reasonable, wikipedia not being paper. 213.155.224.232 could you please ask the German wikipedians to provide an enternal reference to prove that the island actually exists? 213.155.224.232. Kappa 17:18, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I too reiterate my request for the German Wikipedians to cite sources. But we need more than "mostly harmless". Existence isn't enough. The plot of grassland to the side of my house exists, and there are citable public records to prove that. We need something that contains enough to actually hang an encyclopaedia article off — something that, for starters, can be used to verify the current content of this article. Uncle G 17:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I know that we could technically have 3.5 million articles on 3.5 million lakes, but 99.99% of them never say anything more than "There's a lake this big at these coordinates". There's just literally no more information in print or on the web. I don't think that's at all useful in an encyclopedia. So by extension, if an article about a place could literally never say more than "There's a place here that's this big"... I don't think we should include it, it's really no more important than Uncle G's plot of grassland. But I think there might be some confusion here, the german's might be assuming "Well of course there's more information" and just not mentioning their sources. --W.marsh 17:43, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
  • @Kappa: We have problems with that. ;-) It seems that a row of sites around Lake Constance and the town Lindau does mention it, but [www.google.com The World's Biggest Trash Can] does not provide any further information. What I can do is to try to send an email to the town administration to confirm the information included into the article. --213.155.224.232 19:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

P.S.: At a town-map /first link at the right column/ A popüp window appears with an overview map on teh left. If you're clicking into the area just above the "D" in the towns mapyou'll get a part of the map (certainly) in which "Insel Hoy" is marked, as a proof for its existence. --213.155.224.232 19:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Strong delete: I think you're missing the point. Just because it exists does not mean that it should be included in this encyclopedia. The article makes no assertion of noteability, and that is grounds to delete it. --Descendall 19:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess it's size (smaller than the Oval Office makes it unique and therefore notable.--213.155.224.232 19:35, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Unique? Are you honestly suggesting that this is the only tiny insignificant island in the world? Small little islands are often found right off of the coast of lakes. --Descendall 20:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

But the only Bavarian small island in Lake Constance. OTOH I think some here are too much US-biased. Remember you're not writing a WP for the US but an English-language WP for everyone! --88.101.47.64 13:47, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you 213. Kappa 23:54, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. I am German and in WK-de for a month wondering about small islands and streets getting own articles. I argued in de against Hoy, but nobody listened. Maybe its because our country has less square miles than Montana (though more inhabitans), so there are not that many islands. But anyway, there are many bigger than this. --Adbo2009 21:19, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as non-notable. Akradecki 03:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Note: general discussion and comments have been moved to discussion page to keep things orderly. Akradecki 03:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Er no offense, but this was one afd where it actually was a civilized discussion, not a vote. Now it's back to being a vote... bah, humbug. --W.marsh 06:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree. Is there any basis whatsoever for this and other moves of comments to a Talk page by this user? Doesn't this violate the entire spirit of AfD to do so? Geoffrey Spear 14:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree as well, especially considering that it was the discussion that caused me to change the degree (if not the direction) of my vote. Irongargoyle 17:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • I agree. Bring it back. --Descendall 18:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • I believe I've successfully merged the comments back in where they belong; I hope I didn't mistakenly lose anything that was added after they were removed. Geoffrey Spear 18:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Has a history of 35 versions within a year in the German WP. Update rhythm can be considered as a measure of interest. Some over-detailled information (e.g. exact distances in m) may be simplified: "about 400 m" etc.--84.73.211.212 13:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Please note that this vote to keep is User:84.73.211.212's only contribution to wikipedia. --Descendall 19:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Sorry for adding a vote without signature. I usually contribute to the German WP - extensively. And please value a vote by its arguments, not by its contributor's statistics ;-)--Panda17 19:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • AfD is not a vote. --Descendall 13:29, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Your actual argument is fallacious. Counting edits to an article doesn't indicate whether something is encyclopaedic. Sources do. Please cite some. Several editors have asked German Wikipedians, who are in the best position to do so, to do this, several times. Yet you have yet to cite any. Uncle G 13:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Counting edits to an article doesn't indicate whether something is encyclopaedic, that's right, but whether it is of interest. The article seems to be of interest (but its style could be more encyclopaedic, yes). And as to citing sources, see above: If lack of sources were reason enough to delete articles then we'd be half the Wiki we are. Carlossuarez46 20:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC) So stop emphasizing this "argument" for deletion.--84.227.140.88 04:03, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Additionally: When compared to areas of the same size (e.g. Uncle G's grassland, see above), islands always get more attention. Another example of the grassland size type is Rockall with a diameter of 25 m. Size alone is not a sufficient argument.- However, I'd agree that, on average, relevance decreases with distance between the location of the place and the location of the readers, i.e. Hoy is definitely more interesting for the German WP than for the English WP. --Panda17 20:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Actually, this island apparently has less attention than the patch of grassland at the side of my house. We do not measure notability by how far away things are, moreover. Wikipedia, in both languages, is an international encyclopaedia. Furthermore: I draw your attention to Rockall#References. Please cite some sources. Uncle G 13:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
        • Sure, every Wikipedia puts more weight to things within countries of the specific language, even if they all try to be international. And there is no problem with that! That's why it's okay to delete the island in the English WP and to keep it in the German WP.

There are medieval sources. I have been editing the german version. There is some possible ambiguity in the sources due to high sedimentation in the area but the article represents the consensus on the topic. I think the problem is rather that the article on Lindau does not list it as a tourist attraction, so english-speaking tourists (there are quite a few) will not easily find the article. When i go traveling i like to know as much as possible about the place i am visiting even i do not care about the places i am not visiting. --Masegand 17:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Can you show us some links (in German is allright) that show us that it is a tourist attarction? Similarly, can you give any indication in what medieval texts it is referenced, and what is said there about it? The German version says nothing about either claim, and none of the websources given here do so. It is listed, usually at the end of the lsit, as a minor island in the Bodensee, and that's it. See e.g. Uncle G's post above, who says as well that while many claims have been made by 'keep' proponents, none of them has been able to give any source for it, making it (the claims of importance, not the island itself) unverifiable and thus a perfect candidate for deletion. Fram 18:36, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed i guess it is a minor tourist attraction, there are no visitors entering the island but it is well visible from the bridge to the island of Lindau and approachable by boat, and listed in the hungarian version of Lindau. The medieval sources i heard of are images not texts, and the english article does not make much claims other than that the island exists and showing an image. As well as on several tourism websites where it is listed among other small islands in the lake of constance (without image). The origin of the name is also not explained. In the german article on Hoyren the (church) latin horea/storehouse is mentioned. I could find a reference on horreum/barn, granary, storehouse on [2] and horia/small fishing boat which would also make sense. There is also the greek horaios/beautiful which would hint to an early 19th century fabrication for the purpose of tourism or simply greekophilia which was rampant in bavaria at the time, however Hoyren is mentioned in medieval text in 1275/1278. So apparently several sources would have to have been faked then which is not impossible though especially if you are a conspiracy guy e.g. the bavarian illuminati etc.... In alemannian language Hoy sounds like german Heu/english hay possibly related to the barn, granary, storehouse meaning, but unlikely/strange for such an small island. Please note i am not doing primary research just speculating, but possibly those people doing it needed to be contacted or referenced indeed.... In the german version there is also a reference to the medieval gallows island, which Hoy is not but sometimes assumed to be as it is the only small island left near Lindau in these days. About its relevance, nothing other than simple facts are mentioned in the current english article, but the length of this discussion is surprising and i think also related to US/European cultural differences about the relevance of something like that. --Masegand 20:33, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.