Talk:The A

Should there be an article on The A?
Note that a decision was made to make "The A" a redirect after discussion as follows:

Hi Keizers. I'd like to revert the page The A to Atlanta since this is apparently the only significant use of the term. You say that this is not a disambiguation page but if it's not then what exactly is it supposed to be? It certainly isn't an article since "The A" doesn't constitute a legitimate object of encyclopedic study and in its current form it's beginning to look like a bunch of external links and loosely associated topics and that falls in the category of what Wikipedia is not. Cheers, Pichpich (talk) 16:55, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess a redirection is ok, I am just concerned about what happens if people are looking for a possible meaning of "A" (without the "The") or "The A's" (the baseball team). I guess in principle this is supposed to be taken care of on the target page, Atlanta, with a template at the top, but in the context of the Atlanta page (high hit rate) it would be so rare for that error to occur as to make such a template seem not worthy of being there.


 * Is a nickname in itself not a useful topic of discussion? Viz. Big Apple. This is really just a skeleton version of the same concept. Being from Atlanta, I think it is interesting to see in which media and songs the term appears and which community (African American / hiphop) it is used. Can we keep it if I make it look a tiny bit more like Big Apple? Keizers (talk) 17:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Well if you want an equivalent of the Big Apple article, I think the correct title would be something like The A (Atlanta) or The A (nickname of Atlanta) but I'm not sure that a separate article is necessary. I'm not from Atlanta but I see no evidence that the nickname is used much beyond metro Atlanta and it's not so clear there's that much to say about the nickname without running into original research problems. In any case, I think the first step is to add a small section in the article Atlanta and see where that takes you. Does that make sense? Pichpich (talk) 17:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Gotcha, but I am seeing a little inconsistency in how articles about city nicknames are handled. Big Apple does not redirect you to New York City, but rather informs you on the origin and use of the term. This is what I am envisioning for "The A" - short as that might be in comparison to "Big Apple". Judapest, Metromahala, Mokum, and The Great Wen do the same. I have reformatted the article's text to prose and - short as it may be - to reflect the principle of the Big Apple et al. articles. If you still find it unworthy, then please go ahead an institute a redirect and I will incorporate the text within either the main article or a Nicknames of Atlanta article.Keizers (talk) 18:00, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Inconsistency on Wikipedia? Surely you're mistaken. :-)
 * All kidding aside, the examples you just listed are interesting and I see a stark difference between them and the case of "The A". The first obvious difference is the need to explain the nickname. Everybody gets why New York City or Los Angeles are nicknamed NYC or LA but The Great Wen or Mokum definitely require an explanation. The other and perhaps most important difference is coverage of that specific topic in reliable sources (otherwise known as the general notability criterion). The current article on "The A" lists authors using the nickname but Big Apple cites sources whose sole concern is the nickname itself. Ditto for Mokum and Judapest. (It's not the case for Metromahala but that one shouldn't be a standalone article either). While your examples of use of the nickname are interesting, they are still anecdotal and come close to original research. All in all I still feel that the best option is to redirect The A to Atlanta and to add The A in the list of nicknames of Atlanta in List of city nicknames in Georgia (U.S. state). Pichpich (talk) 19:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)