Wikipedia:Places of local interest
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This is an essay; it contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. It is not a policy or guideline, and editors are not obliged to follow it. |
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This page in a nutshell: An article about a place could be created if there's enough referenced information to make it encyclopedic. Otherwise, write the description to articles of parent areas. |
Any community contains a large number of places, including but not limited to churches, historic buildings, breweries, malls, masts, neighbourhoods, parks, schools, stations, highways and streets, that may be well-known locally, but little-known outside the community in question. Many articles about such topics exist on Wikipedia. A significant percentage of such articles are very small, low-quality stubs that may have little potential for expansion. The question is sometimes raised as to whether one of these places "deserves" an article. Wikipedia:Notability says: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."
It may be considered that if enough attributable information exists about the subject to write a full and comprehensive article about it, it may make sense for the subject to have its own article. If some source material is available, but is insufficient for a comprehensive article, it is better to mention the subject under the article for its parent locality. If no source material, or only directory-type information (location, function, name, address) can be provided, the subject may not merit mention at all.
It is the purpose of this essay to suggest how to apply methods illustrated in existing policies and guidelines to this situation. It is not the purpose of this essay to create new methods of handling concerns about these articles, nor to define additional criteria for inclusion or deletion of these articles.
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[edit] Adding information about places of local interest
When adding information about a place of local interest, consider the following strategy:
- Initially, information on places of local importance should be added to an article on the community where that place is located.
- This information should generally be written in sentence form, but where only basic information is available about a group of places in the same community, you might consider presenting this information in list or table format. See Wikipedia:Embedded list and Wikipedia:When to use tables for more information.
- It is usually best to not redlink to places of local interest, without first considering the potential for a nontrivial article to be created about the topic. This provides less of an incentive for others to create an article that will be nominated for AfD. When in doubt, do not make a redlink -- if the situation changes later, a link can easily be created at that time.
- As more verifiable information on local places is added to the community article, the article or individual sections will grow. Large articles should be written in summary style, so when this occurs, the longer sections should be broken out into articles such as "Education in community" "Transportation in community", etc.
- Eventually, as the article becomes overly large due to more verifiable information being added, information on individual places can be broken out into individual articles. This process should begin with those places which have the most verifiable information on them, and therefore have the strongest case for a stand-alone article. See below for suggestions on how to do this.
You are certainly not obligated to follow this strategy, but it does have several advantages, including the following:
- Articles on communities are more comprehensive and detailed
- Places of local interest have better context within encyclopedia articles related to the community
- Fewer tiny stubs on places of local interest that may have little potential for expansion
- Since the community articles are highly unlikely to be nominated for deletion, the information is more likely to be kept than if it were found only in its own article.
Adding a large number of small stubs at one time tends to cause concern, and would need to be considered very carefully.
[edit] Creating articles about places of local interest
Eventually, you'll get to the point where the sub-articles are so large that you need to spin off information about some of the places into separate articles, or maybe you just want to start a new article anyway. Here are some ideas for information that should be included in an article about a place of local interest, if that information is verifiable:
- Significant events in the history of that place
- The architectural or historical significance of the building(s), if any
- Well-known former residents/employees/attendees/students/etc. of the place, especially ones that are well-known enough to have an article
- Interesting aspects of the activities that go on at that place (e.g. for a school, interesting curricular or extracurricular activities)
- Features of the place that distinguish the place from other similar places, or that make the place well-known
- At least one image, such as a photograph or map
- References
While some demographic or directory-type information is essential to provide context about the place, it tends to make for a dry article if that's all the article contains. If the only verifiable information is along these lines, you probably shouldn't create a new article specifically about the place. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is not a directory. Such directory-type information might include:
- Location, address
- Numbers or lists of residents/employees/attendees/students/passengers/etc.
- Facilities available at the place
- Schedule information (e.g. hours of operation, what time trains or buses arrive, etc.)
- Other basic facts, depending on what type of place it is (e.g. for schools, other basic facts might include what grades are taught, the principal's name. etc.)
Information that should not appear in an article about a place of local interest comprises material that violates Wikipedia's three content policies, namely Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. If you are well-acquainted with a place, it can be easy to inadvertently add material that violates these policies, especially if there is little verifiable information about the place, so be careful.
Before creating a new article, consider whether there is enough material available that meets these content policies. Certain places of local interest, such as unremarkable subdivisions or streets, often have little such information available and so are generally not good candidates for separate articles.
After creating a new article, ensure that the appropriate article about the community contains a link to the place in question, and that the new article contains a link to its appropriate community. There may also be community category, that should be added to the new article, such as category for the city, county, or suburb.
[edit] Dealing with problem articles
Editors will generally not object to articles about places of local interest that are sufficiently long (not a stub), contain appropriate information (e.g. several of the ideas for information to include above), and are reasonably well-referenced. Such articles can be kept as separate articles, even if they weren't created in accordance with the above suggestions.
However, even if everyone tries to follow the suggestions above, it is inevitable that some problem articles will exist. Many such articles existed before the above suggestions were written, and likely more will continue to be created by new users who wouldn't have read the above suggestions.
If you run into an article like that, here are some suggestions to deal with it. Most of these suggestions are common sense, but are summarized here for completeness:
- If you can fix the problem yourself, do so, especially if the article has already been tagged for cleanup or merging.
- If the article doesn't appear to contain much significant, verifiable information, tag it with {{local}}, which will encourage expansion or eventual merging. Other useful tags are {{geo-stub}}, {{not verified}}, or {{merge}}. A glance at search engine results may help to determine if there is potential for expansion or if merging would preferable. If an article has been tagged for a while and it seems unlikely that more verifiable information can easily be added, consider merging it.
- If the article is a very small stub with no clear potential, be bold and merge it to the appropriate article on the community.
- If the article doesn't appear to contain any verifiable information, and none can be found, tag it with {{not verified}}. If sources are not cited after a reasonable period of time, nominate the article for deletion via {{prod}} or AfD.
- If an article containing verifiable information has already been nominated for deletion, consider suggesting a possible merge on the deletion discussion page, rather than outright deletion.
- If the user who created the article in question is a new user, consider welcoming them to Wikipedia and pointing them to this page.
