Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greek exonyms

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 No consensus, default to Keep. Walton^One 16:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Greek exonyms

Greek exonyms (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Although it's interesting to see how Greeks refer to places outside of Greece, I don't see how this gazetteer-style article can be considered encyclopedic. Wikipedia is neither a directory, nor an indiscriminate collection of information, and the information in question is wholly unreferenced. I note also that the article is part of a larger series of lists of exonyms (see List of European exonyms) which all seem to suffer from the same problem. Rather than bring them all here in one go, however, it would be useful to first get the community's view on the merits of this article as an example of the genre. ChrisO 22:56, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

• Delete; I was planning on nominating these myself a while ago, the main problem is that this is the English language Wikipedia, so lists of translations from a foreign language to another foreign language don't belong here. I would support deleting all these lists, except English exonyms, which of course does belong in an English language encyclopedia. Masaruemoto 00:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
• Weak keep, tag for cleanup. Do we have a better way to cover this? CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:07, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

That's just the problem; it's plainly not encyclopedic, but it's unclear where else (if anywhere) it should go. Perhaps Wikisource? Though even then, it would need sourcing, which it plainly doesn't have now. -- ChrisO 14:50, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I have little doubt that sourcing could be found - see WP:DEL#REASON where the guidelines suggest deletion because of "Article information that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources" and "All attempts to find reliable sources in which article information can be verified have failed". I seriously doubt the former is true and it's obvious that the latter is false: Nearly any Greek language atlas, travel guide, or newspaper - or even the ministry of foreign affairs which is on the web - would easily be sourcing for any modern names. Carlossuarez46 05:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

• Strong keep toponymy is history, toponymy is encyclopedic. Exonyms often are evidence for cultural or historic ties between the name-bestower (here, Greece) and the current location. Note the huge number of places in Turkey - strong evidence of the Greek cultural influence and long period of rule by Greek-speaking people over the region. Carlossuarez46 05:35, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
• Keep Perhaps this article should be cleaned up to refer only to cities with Greek interest (Greek past/Greek influence/large Greek population) in order to be within the realm of an encyclopaedia, but definitely don't delete it.--   Avg    21:42, 26 September 2007 (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.