Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Inner Banks (2nd nomination)

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 keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 20:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inner Banks

Since it's first AfD several months ago [1], this article hasn't addressed the concerns of the first AfD. People have posted recently some points on the talk page that leads me to believe that there is still an issue with this article's existance and it might not be worthy of an article as a term. The concern is that the article doesn't show proof of this being a wide-used term to describe these areas. It appears as though the group that helped create this article and one newspaper are the only people to ever use this term in the context given in the article. Delete as a non-notable, unverifiable term. Metros232 19:25, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• keep. Whatever it is, it is not some small scam or gated community; it is a pretty much wide-area initiative, and deserves its mention. A brief google search shows notability, even if it is an orchestrated marketing campaign. I see nothing bad in marketing of development of a large community/area. It is not, like, promotion of a mom-pop shop. `'mikka (t) 19:51, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, but needs major revamping. From discussing this with proponents of the "Inner Banks" term, this is a fairly new term and has yet to catch huge attention like the "Outer Banks". As a result, the exact boundaries of this "region" are very very vauge. I personally do not think it should even come close to Fayetteville, as that would be considered part of the "Coastal Plain". The inner banks article may need to merged into a new article about the Coastal Plain of North Carolina (not just Atlantic Coastal Plain) until its definition can become more widely accepted. --TinMan 18:55, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

--- The October 2006 Issue of Business North Carolina magazine [2] is the 25th Anniversary of the renowned magazine. Pages 96 through 107 of this magazine has an article titled Go East and discusses eastern North Carolina in great detail, referring to the region as the Inner Banks 4 times throughout the article. The News & Observer [3], which featured a summer series on the Inner Banks, is the largest newspaper in North Carolina and is considered to be the newspaper of record in the state. North Carolina: The Official 2006 Travel Guide, published by the North Carolina Department of Commerce [4], has an article titled Discover the Inner Banks on page 146. A Google search for Inner Banks in quotation marks produced 24,700 hits today. When I searched Google News for Inner Banks in quotation marks I found 4 articles about the Inner Banks. A couple of other things to keep in mind:

• Marketing a region, whether it is for travel and tourism or to attract businesses, is done in virtually every state in the nation and in many nations around the world. Virtually every one of these regions are included on Wikipedia. Including 5 from Metros232's home state of Maryland, 10 regions in North Carolina other than the Inner Banks, and 14 in Virginia. There are literally hundreds of regions in the U.S. listed on Wikipedia List of regions of the United States. If Inner Banks should be deleted because it is seen as marketing, there are literally hundreds of articles on Wikipedia that are likewise deserving of deletion. Just because someone in Maryland has never heard of a region in North Carolina does not mean that that geographical location does not exist.
• Mbmariogc3s posted a message on the Inner Banks discussion page about an Inner Banks Parkway as proposed by Ron Toppin and even offers a link to Mr. Toppin's webpage. It should be noted that Mr. Toppin is running for Public Office, using the Inner Banks brand to promote his personal agenda, and using the Inner Banks brand to market his own website. Please feel free to look into this for yourself: [5], [6], [7], [8], and [9]. I mention this only because Metros232 mentions above that some comments have been posted on the discussion page that "leads me to believe that there is still an issue with this article's existance [sic] and it might not be worthy of an article as a term." The comments made by this user, Mbmariogc3s, are the only ones that I see that argue the Inner Banks is not what it is described in this entry. Take note that Mr. Toppin has a personal agenda as he is running for public office in a jurisdiction that includes parts of the Inner Banks and all of the Outer Banks. Kevin R Mills 14:50, 11 October 2006 (UTC) — Kmills (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Delete. This term has not achieved sufficient widespread usage to warrant an article here. In fact, I believe the term was created recently by the Foundation of Renewal for Eastern North Carolina as part of a fairly sophisticated public relations and marketing campaign, a component of which involves securing an article on Wikipedia. Mr. Mills alleges "A Google search for Inner Banks in quotation marks produced 24,700 hits today." That is patently false. To insinuate that those all refer to this region is false. If one continues to the last page of the Google search results, it is easily confirmed that this term receives only 688 GHits, the vast majority of which have nothing to do with this "region" of South North Carolina. The firm that Mr. Mills works for may eventually succeed in establishing this as a commonly used term, but they should not be allowed to use Wikipedia to do so. Come back when it meets the requirements of WP:V, WP:ADS, and WP:NEO. --Satori Son 04:39, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Come on, that's still not how google works. It shows the unique hits among the first 1000, and you can't get more than 1000 hits by google for anything. By that count, Wikipedia only gets 789 google hits and should be deleted. - Bobet 10:10, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for getting hung up on Googling and obfuscating my main point. I am not arguing that this article should be deleted because it only gets 688 unique Google hits. I was trying to say, albeit clumsily, that it should be deleted because virtually none of those 688 unique Google hits that can be accessed have anything to do with North Carolina (so saying this "region" of NC gets 24,700 hits is false). This term is simply not widely used as specifically referring to a geographic region of NC, and that's why we can't find reliable, third-party sources to verify it in this context. --Satori Son 06:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

 AFD relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
 Please add new discussions below this notice. Thanks, Yomangani^talk 00:21, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep At the worst, this should be re-directed to whatever other names this region of North Carolina might have. Note, that's North Carolina, not South. Mister.Manticore 03:14, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Delete as posible advertising and non-notable. Also, it must be noted that many of the ghits one gets for this term will be referring to other "inner banks" - when you google this term with "north carolina" and "-wikipedia", you only get 877 hits. It appears that the term is used, but not widely enough to warrant an encyclopedia article. Ultra-Loser Talk / Contributions 03:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

  People rarely type out North Carolina. gets 17000 hits, the ones in the first page of 100 hits seem to be about the same thing. Someone please use something other than google as a deletion reason. - Bobet 10:10, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Unless it can be shown to be a place in a third party listing, all I can find it the developers speal. HighInBC 18:46, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

*Delete or merge and redirect to As this link can confirm, the area highlighted by the map in the article itself is largely coterminous with the North Carolina Coastal Plain; which IS a recognized geographic area (the above link is from the North Carolina State Library, not some tourism board or marketing firm). Honestly, speaking as a local North Carolinian, the whole Inner Banks thing smacks of jealousy that the Outer Banks (a REAL region) receives most of the good tourism. Everyone still calls this area the Coastal Plain however. Until reading this article, I had never heard the term "Inner Banks". --Jayron32 06:04, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

As another fellow North Carolinian, I agree with Jayron32. I've never heard of the "Inner Banks" until I saw the WP article. It should be renamed Coastal Plain (North Carolina) or something like that and reorganized and reformatted to reflect the more popular and more official name. It is basically a subregion of the Atlantic Coastal Plain and can probably use its own article. A paragraph or so can be devoted to the "Inner Banks" name. --TinMan 04:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep Even it is a marketing ploy, it is a visible (i.e., notable) ploy and the name sounds catchy. Mukadderat 08:58, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete This is an encyclopedia, not somewhere to market catchy names. /Blaxthos 13:40, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per above. Seems worthy of an article per the discussion. --badlydrawnjeff talk 14:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep or Delete every article on Wikipedia referring to a region As I've said before, Marketing a region, whether it is for travel and tourism or to attract businesses, is done in virtually every state in the nation and in many nations around the world. Virtually every one of these regions are included on Wikipedia. Including 5 from Maryland, 10 regions in North Carolina other than the Inner Banks, and 14 in Virginia. These are all nothing more than marketing ploys. There are literally hundreds of regions in the U.S. listed on Wikipedia, see List of regions of the United States. If Inner Banks should be deleted because it is seen as marketing, there are literally hundreds of articles on Wikipedia that are likewise deserving of deletion. Kevin R Mills 16:05, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • There is now a two page article in the Sunday Tampa Tribune about the Inner Banks of North Carolina written by Willie Drye, a writter for National Geographic News and author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. Mr. Drye has also written articles about Hurricanes Floyd and Katrina. Kevin R Mills 16:05, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
  • The problem with merging this article with the Coastal Plain article, as suggested above, is that the Atlantic Coastal Plain is an area that reaches from New England to Alabama. This does not describe a region of North Carolina, it describes a region of ten different states. If this article should be renamed Coastal Plain of North Carolina, there are dozens of other regions on Wikipedia that should be renamed Coastal Plain of Fill in the Blank. Why have a Grand Strand of South Carolina, a Hampton Roads of Virginia, a First Coast or Gold Coast of Florida, a Colonial Coast of Georgia, or an Eastern Shore of Maryland? Why not merge all of these regions into the Coastal Plain article? All of these regions are in the Coastal Plain, after all. Kevin R Mills 16:05, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
    • replyBecause all of those regions have their names and borders clearly defined in the historical record going back for a LONG time. The term Inner Banks is a Neologism, and does not belong as the title of an article. --Jayron32 19:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: And even if one or two of those do not meet standards, it is no great surprise to anyone here that there are other articles on Wikipedia that should be deleted as well. Unless they have survived an AfD review, their existence is not illustrative of any precedental value. --Satori Son 20:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep and clean-up This is a marketing term, and it is possible to have an encyclopedic article on a marketing term. But the intro should describe it as a marketing term in an encyclopedic voice, not describe the area in an advertising voice. I think all the list sections should go away. Here is a (shorter, potentially still a stub), but I think reasonably well written article on a marketing term for a region in Maine: Maine Highlands. Compare the first paragraph of the two articles. The second paragraph of the Maine Highlands article doesn't appear to be relevant to this article, as there is no evidence of a historical usage for the term Inner Banks. GRBerry 17:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep revised vote. I struck-through my above vote. Upon further consideration, the article should be kept and renamed to Coastal Plain (North Carolina). The region is a clearly defined region and known officially and locally as such. Check out the NC State Library link above. The only real problem is the neologism "Inner Banks" which is NOT well established. The name "Coastal Plain" IS... --Jayron32 19:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, as per above. Smeelgova 04:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC).
• The Coastal Plain and the Inner Banks are two different things. The Coastal Plain is defined by geography, the geography of several states, while the Inner Banks is a regional identity. The Triangle (North Carolina) is in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. The Piedmont is the geographical region of the state, while The Triangle (North Carolina) is a regional identity that several communities have agreed to join for marketing purposes to attract business and tourism.
  • With respect to Jayron32's comment that "all of those regions have their names and borders clearly defined in the historical record going back for a LONG time." The Hampton Roads of Virginia was branded for marketing purposes with the founding of the Hampton Roads Partnership on May 15, 1996 [10].
  • The nonprofit organization that is working to brand the region as the Inner Banks is doing so for very important reasons. The region is three times the size of the state of New Jersey. If this region were to be removed from the rest of North Carolina and made the 51st state, it would be the poorest state in the nation. Ten of the 20 poorest counties in the United States are found in this region. Economically, the region is still in the 19th Century, having been traditionally dependent on agriculture and manufacturing. Many of these jobs have moved overseas as a result of internationals agreements such as NAFTA. This region has no clear identity outside of the region. Other users on Wikipedia who hail from North Carolina are not sure what to call it. The suggestion to rename this article the Coastal Plain (North Carolina) is proof of this. The purpose of having a regional identity is to set it apart from other areas. The Coastal Plain reaches across at least 10 different states, so it makes no sense to call this region the Coastal Plain (North Carolina) not only because it fails to set it apart from other areas, but because the Coastal Plain and the Inner Banks are two different areas on a map (while the Inner Banks is mostly located in the Coastal Plain, there are some counties, such as Warren County, North Carolina, that are actually located in the Piedmont region of North Carolina).
    • Jayron32, as someone who lives in Raleigh, you, of all people, should understand the power that branding can have on a local economy. People from all around the world know what you are talking about when you mention the Triangle. While you enjoy the benefits of having an internationally known regional identity, some of the poorest places in this nation are just a few miles away. But then again, if anyone should have the right to argue that this region should not have a clearly distinct regional identity, it should be you. You do, after all, along with everyone else who lives west of I-95, subsidize the poverty here with your tax dollars. Kevin R Mills 14:27, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
      • Comment. With all due respect, Mr. Mills, no one is criticizing your motives or the good marketing work you guys are doing. We're simply saying that Wikipedia is not a marketing tool; it is an encyclopedia of notable subjects. This article will be welcome here once you and your team succeed in achieving widespread use and notability for this term. Thank you, Satori Son 14:59, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
        • With all due respect to you sir, there are literally thousands of articles on this website that can be deemed as marketing. Whether it is marketing a brand, such as the hundreds of regions in the US that have articles (such as Hampton Roads and The Triangle of North Carolina), marketing a television series (such as VH1's Flavor of Love), marketing an entertainer (such as Britany Spears and her albums, like B in the Mix: The Remixes, which, technically, could be seen as a means of marketing a product), and promoting political groups (such as MoveOn). I might add that all of these terms have come into popular use within the last 10 years. Yet they all have articles on Wikipedia and they all deal with a marketable concept or marketable product. With regards to whether or not this term is a neologism or not, in THIS region, the term Inner Banks has been used to refer to North Carolina's second coast for many years (the Outer Banks being the other coast of North Carolina). Much in the same way that Hampton Roads was used for years to describe a geographical area - a body of water in this example - but is now (since 1996) used as a tool for marketing. It is extremely interesting to see how much attention people are paying to whether or not this term (the Inner Banks) is a neologism when Wikipedia has other articles that are clearly neologisms and that do a great deal more harm to the credibility of this Internet encyclopedia (see Dirty Sanchez) Kevin R Mills 16:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Reply The "If X then Y" arguement will get you NOWHERE. This article is being judged on its own merit and not on that of other articles on WikiPedia. If you have a problem with another article, put it up for AfD and see what happens. But don't bring up this article in reference to any other. Simply make a case based on the merits of the article in question. The question here is not whether it is marketing. It may be, it may not be. Who cares. The question is does the article meet the primary notability criterion: Does it get significant coverage in multiple, non-trivial sources as a primary focus of the writing. This region DEFINATELY does. So the information is worthy of keeping. The second question is is this the best name for this article? According to the map in the article, and the descriptions of the region, including one right here in the AfD, the region is more than a subset of the North Carolina Coastal Plain (again, check out the link from the official State Library), it is COTERMINOUS with that region (that is, it is identical to it). Thus, it is a renaming of a region with an established historical record and boundaries, not merely a division of that region. The Triangle is a subdivision of the Piedmont, not a renaming of the whole region. The older name is more established in the literature and the historical record, so the article, while it should be kept, should be renamed. Yes, a "coastal plain" is a generic geographic term. Yes the "Atlantic Coastal Plain" is a larger region. But within the context of North Carolina geography, the Coastal Plain has a very specific meaning: It doesn't mean Delaware or Florida. It means the area defined by this article. SO keep the article, and rename it to fit what the established record is. Redirect Inner Banks to it. You can even expand the article to explain the marketing strategy, and the origin of the term. That would be fine. But to imply that the region is BETTER known as, or MORE PROPERLY known as the Inner Banks is currently not verified by the established documentation. The established documentation points to the name Coastal Plain. --Jayron32 20:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
• The discussion on this issue (i.e., questioning its notibility, despite having articles in the Boston Globe, Tampa Tribune [11], The North Carolina Travel Guide for 2006, and having an entire summer series dedicated to it in the News & Observer[12]), when Wikipedia has articles on things like Dirty Sanchez, is the reason for Wikipedia's soon to be rival that is being launched by Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia [13]. Jayron32, you say you're from Raleigh but you've never heard of the Inner Banks. Ever think about picking up a local newspaper? The News & Observer is published in Raleigh, after all [14]. It is virtually impossible to go anywhere in North Carolina and not hear people talk about the issue of development along North Carolina's second coast, or what we who live here call the Inner Banks Kevin R Mills 14:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Reply If you read all of my comments, you can see I changed my opinion. The REGION being described is a coherant region. The NAME of the region is a new name for an old region. Until it recieves more coverage, what we should do is rename the article, redirect "inner banks" to thge newly named article, and rewrite the article (with sources) to indicate the alternative name. For example for how this works, see what typing Kings County, New York turns up. That name is a LESSER USED name for what is Brooklyn. The two designations are COTERMINOUS, and thus redundant. We don't need two articles where one will do. I posit that while Inner Banks is a valid name for the region, it does NOT describe a region different than the North Carolina Coastal Plain, and thus while ALL of the information in the article should be kept, we should name the article with the MORE WIDELY RECOGNIZED name. If you are positing that the Inner Banks is somehow different than the North Carolina Coastal Plain, then PROVIDE SOURCES that indicate so, and show how it is a different region. The article AS IT IS CURRENTLY WRITTEN does not give evidence to that point. Oh, and you keep bringing up other articles that should be deleted. If you want another article's deletion, please Nominate that article for deletion. The existance of another deletable article has NO BEARING on the status of this article. --Jayron32 16:34, 19 October 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.