Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Place names considered unusual

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 of the debate was no consensus. Mailer Diablo 08:49, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Place names considered unusual

An article was dleeted at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of interesting or unusual place names. It was taken to deletion review where deletion was endorsed, and several expressed themselves satisfied with its continued existence in Project space at Wikipedia:List of interesting or unusual place names, since it failed WP:NPOV. This seems to me to be a pretty blatant attempt to get round that by citing other people's POV - including some newspaper space fillers. I don't want to provoke a war here, but I am greatly disturbed by this apparent forking. I realise it's slightly different in conception, but overall it really isn't significantly different to the old article in that it is still POV and OR, it just says so up front and then appeals to the appeal to authority fallacy to justify it. In the end, "Fucking" is only funny to a sophomore Anglophone - in its native language it is not actually that odd - and the places listed as producing many "unusual" names are merely an artifact of dialect or influx of people from non-English speaking countries. So this should, if anything, be a list of place names considered by an arbitrary subset of people to meet some arbitrary definition of "unusual". But in the end no amount of saying "look, this is not the same thing, really it isn't" doesn't make this any less a fork, in my opinion. Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] 23:16, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. As much as I think the original article should come out of Wikispace, doing an end-run around the rules isn't going to make things any better.--み使い Mitsukai 23:56, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. It looks to me like the previous version was nominated and deleted because of a lack of sources. This has sources so it is not the same article. We can't penalize people for making the effort to provide a verified treatment of the topic. Therefore "forking" does not seem relevant and I hope the article remains on this more scholarly track. -- JJay 00:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep' - don't be stupid. -nsh—Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.144.55.62 (talk • contribs) 00:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Too subjective. Too indiscriminate. -- Krash (Talk) 01:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Krash. rodii 02:03, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Reluctant keep. Imperfect as this article is, it is many orders of magnatude better than the other, as this one has sources. As it was sort of created as a compromise between having the other one (which includes anything anyone happened to toss in) and having nothing, I guess it should stay, just to help keep the other one away. As long as the entries in the articles have sources (real sources, not some "ain't this some funny shit" blogs), I'm not really against it. -R. fiend 02:32, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Moving the old article to Project space was the compromise. This is at best trivia, at worst an attempt to ignore consensus. Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] 10:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

• Weak Keep but change title to "non-traditional place names"-- unusual sounds POV to my ear, and perhaps a more accurate reflection of content. --Hansnesse 02:38, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep this article is referenced. A different name doesn't indicate a fork - this is a more NPOV name than the old one (saying that a name is considered unusual is more NPOV than saying that it is unusual). World wide focus is a reason for article improvement, not deletion. This kind of phenonmenon occurs in other languages - for example, there were plans to call the Iraqi army (ok, not a place name, but same principle) the New Iraqi Corps, until it was realised it'd be arabic slang for f***. Andjam 06:09, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as per nom. — Kimchi.sg | Talk 10:50, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete: (1) vague name. (2) potentially endless. (3) very prone to be a target of jokers from all over the world. The Fucking, Austria will get them started. (4) more-less recreation of AfDed article under slightly different name. (5) current infrastructure of Wikipedia simply doesn't allow to maintain such type of articles. After it improves article may be considered but not now. Pavel Vozenilek 12:28, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What do you mean by "current infrastructure of Wikipedia simply doesn't allow to maintain such type of articles"? Andjam 13:05, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Stable versions mainly. Such article will be left to horde of kids trying to outwit one another and no one will be able to maintain it. Not a first case here. Pavel Vozenilek 04:17, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

That's hardly a reason for deletion. We have lots of articles that will continue to get much more vandalized than this one. Nor are the other points you raise valid. Turnstep 06:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

The more such articles the worse situation. Limits of growth. Pavel Vozenilek 15:21, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Put George W Bush up for deletion, then. (Only kidding) How about only deleting articles with real problems, rather than deleting articles because of potential problems which may or may not eventuate? Andjam 22:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per (and thoroughly agree with) nomination. --kingboyk 19:26, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
• Either keep or move the old article back into article space. This is a list of place names that are famous for being strange, to the point that they appear in newspapers or other reliable sources. --Sertraline 00:03, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. No good arguments for deletion have been advanced. This is not POV, the items are sourced. "Other people's POV" is not a problem at all - the important thing is that it is not *our* POV, as the previous article was. Seems like a good-faith effort to address the strong verfification concerns raised previously. Turnstep 06:01, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

• Delete - given the parameters that were being placed around which references might be used for determing that a place name was unusual, this article will not be able to develop much further beyond the few entries it has now. Place names are easily verified, that the place names are considered unusual seems not to be according to the criteria for sources which as been demanded.--A Y Arktos 07:38, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep it is significantly different to the old list because it has a few examples which are sourced with references, rather than hundreds of unsourced examples. -- Astrokey44|talk 23:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, this is venue-shopping to try and avoid previous consensus. Stifle 21:18, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • What consensus? The only consensus was over a compromise. Andjam 22:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. Encyclopedic. WP:V is pretty clear that assertions in articles don't need to be true; they just need to be sourced. Some place names are of interest; in fact, I would cite Mary Pukui's fabulous Place Names of Hawaii (ISBN 0824805240), currently sitting on my shelf and my invariable companion in Hawaiian expeditions, as an example of a way that an editor can compile interesting place names in such a way as to produce an encyclopedic, verifiable and NPOV text. This article doesn't violate wikipedia policy; although it's currently in pretty sorry shape, I think it might one day turn into an article like List of people believed to have epilepsy, a "list" that rewards the encyclopedic reader by its perusal. -ikkyu2 (talk) 00:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• Merge with Wikipedia:List of interesting or unusual place names: resurrect and retrofit prior article, merge with nominated article (with current title), source/verify all entries in given timeframe. If untenable or unworkable, delete as per Mitsukai. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per JJay. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 15:38, 22 February 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.