Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alchesay Flat (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 no consensus‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ between keep and merge. A consensus to delete is not going to emerge here, and the discussion has run a month. Further discussion, including a potential new name can continue on the Talk. Star  Mississippi  14:59, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Alchesay Flat
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Non-notable physical feature. Deleting it is grounded in policy. WP:GEONATURAL states:
 * Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist. This includes mountains, lakes, streams, islands, etc. The number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article. If a Wikipedia article cannot be developed using known sources, information on the feature can instead be included in a more general article on local geography. For example, a river island with no information available except name and location should probably be described in an article on the river.

The sources are exclusively primary and some not even reliable like the GNIS. There is no coverage about this feature, only mentions of it. So "information on the feature can instead be included in a more general article on local geography". And so I suggest Deleting and then writing about this feature elsewhere. बिनोद थारू (talk) 00:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Arizona-related deletion discussions.  बिनोद थारू (talk) 00:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep Passes WP:GEOLAND - WP is also a gazetteer, and this would fall under that aspect. It's included in The National gazetteer of the United States of America, Flyfisher's Guide to Arizona, Annual Report on the Archeological Programs of the Western Region, National Park Service (1977), as well as many atlases. It's also discussed in local newspaper articles, such as in the Arizona Republic in September 1987 and July 2003 (see this, this, which talks about it being evacuated during a forest fire, and this). Also, from the earlier AfD, "the United States Geological Survey has a named map - "USGS 1:24,000: Alchesay Flat, Arizona", here is a survey that describes the area - "Archaeological Survey of Two Housing Parcels Near Whiteriver and Alchesay Flat", this obit from the White Mountain Independent mentions that it is a settlement - "Chief Alchesay received Medal of Honor for his service in the Apache Wars" - "His granddaughter, Yvonna Redsteer, and her husband, Guy, live on the site of Chief Alchesay’s former home. She said, “All of us in Alchesay Flats are from him..."", this obit states it is a settlement - "..the family residence, 9651 N. Chief Ave, Alchesay Flats, Arizona."."  Onel 5969  TT me 00:58, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Passes WP:GEOLAND.
 * No, as it has no legal recognition. So it must be deleted. बिनोद थारू (talk) 01:04, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment First I don't think anybody thinks it's good idea to write an article on every place that was ever evacuated by a wildfire, not these days anyway. Also, WP:GEOLAND also states the following: "Geographical features must be notable on their own merits. They cannot inherit the notability of organizations, people, or events. " and "A feature cannot be notable, under either WP:GNG or any SNG, if the only significant coverage of the feature is in maps,". All this expressly says that having a name and being mentioned in passing a bunch of times does not make a place notable. So you are incorrect, it does not pass WP:GEOLANDJames.folsom (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Relisting this discussion as there are very opposing arguments here. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 00:37, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep Passes WP:GEOLAND with ease. Also is the site of the grave of Chief Alchesay Baha.  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 02:19, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Yet another GNIS record. For 33.92222°N, -109.93889°W.  Is no-one apart from Coolabahapple in the last AFD discussion capable of finding anything else other than GNIS database records?  Uncle G (talk) 10:48, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I was able to find a note of the location from the tribal government and a history from a woman who lived there and added them to the article. It's also the burial site for Medal of Honor recipient William Alchesay. I will admit that this took a lot of digging and with sparsely populated areas like this it's hard to pin things down. For example there's a lot of information about the White River because of the fish hatchery and a lot less about the land that is around it. I think the article from the White Mountain Independent is pretty good evidence.
 *  Dr vulpes  (💬 • 📝) 00:22, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Except that Alchesay is buried approximately 300m from the North Fork White River, and cannot logically have been buried in a place that is supposedly named after he died. Uncle G (talk) 11:24, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Again WP:GEOLAND is clear "Geographical features must be notable on their own merits. They cannot inherit the notability of organizations, people, or events." These things you cite as notable do not transfer.James.folsom (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  05:43, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * What a piss-poor article! Falsely sourced for the derivation of the name twice, with both sources being the GNIS in various guises, and the GNIS record never stating the derivation of the name.  The article's creator is pretending that The National gazetteer of the United States of America is somehow not the same thing as the GNIS, which of course it is, it being a 1986 printed paper copy of the then computer dataset.  Then there's a third GNIS source. The location of the flat from the GNIS dataset doesn't actually match the archaeological report mentioned by Coolabahapple in the last AFD discussion, which is actually the sort of source to be using here instead of trying to abuse the GNIS via multiple different routes.  We don't get encyclopaedia articles by repeatedly abusing gazetteer database entries in different guises, and quandrangle names are not indicative of anything.  So that's 1 source, with some encyclopaedia content in it.  One might think that another is the Preliminary studies using syntheic polymers to reduce turbidity in a hatchery water supply paper by Olson, Chase, and Hanson in the Proceedings of the Northwest Fish Culture Conference, Volume 22, 1971 (also printed in the 1972 The Progressive Fish Culturist), which despite the title tells us a bit about the watershed, and there are other things to be found including BuSpoFisWil statements about Alchesay Spring in the Congressional Record.  Also there are actual history books.  We can connect Alchesay to North Fork White River through .  However, like many of these sources the real topic is not the flat, but North Fork White River, which is the actual location where the hatchery, the upstream reservoir, and Chief Alchesay's residence, all are in everything that discusses them.  Alchesay "eventually became a farmer on the North Fork of the White River" says the 1978 ISBN 9780823022397, for example.  All of this focus on trying to write a gazetteer using nothing but a fairly bad other gazetteer would be better directed at writing an encyclopaedia based upon everything from history books to USDOI reports; and getting where things are right, instead of trying to extend inferences from a 1986 paper printout of the GNIS computer database.  Uncle G (talk) 10:48, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep The populated place seems to be called "Alchesay Flats" (plural). In addition to the sources provided by Coolabahapple in the last AFD, (see p. 3),  (see p. 90), and  (among others) all seem to indicate this is a populated place with some sort of legal recognition. (The first source is from the tribal government, and the third is from the federal government). I believe GEOLAND is met. - Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 16:14, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Trivial mentions in government documents do not confer notability, and only having a government makes a place legally recognized.James.folsom (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   08:55, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep Think this is clearly notable per our current geographic notability guidelines. SportingFlyer  T · C  02:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The so-called "from the federal government" source cited above turns out to be a table entry for Whiteriver, Arizona. Bad research by phrase matching in Google has carefully ignored the "White River" right there at the start of the line.  There is more bad research by Google phrase matching in the second source, where someone is quoted as saying that xe lives in North Fork, Arizona.  "I live in North Fork" are literally the first 5 words of the sentence. The final "from the tribal government" source is in fact organizing a dance ceremony when one actually reads it, and doesn't document an Alchesay Flat at all.  Rather, buried in an itinerary, the bad research by Google phrase matching has found a dance location of "Yvonna Redsteer's cornfield".  A field.  Of corn.  Even when prodded to do better, are Wikipedia editors this bad at reading sources?  Uncle G (talk) 11:24, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The federal government source states gives the location as "White River, Alchesay Flats." If you look at the other columns, you can see that the first part of the phrase actually appears to refer to the name of the tribe, not a location. (Compare for example, "Hopi, Shepoulovi" and "Umatilla, Reservation Wide"). This seems, to me, to indicate that Alchesay Flats is a location on the reservation of the White River tribe (which I am assuming is an alternate name for the White Mountain tribe). The tribal government source indicates the location of the event as "Alchesay Flats (Yvonna Redsteer's cornfield)," i.e. "Yvonna Redsteer's cornfield" in Alchesay Flats. For the third source, the interviewee says "I live in North Fork at Alchesay Flats..." When looked at it context and not selectively quoted, all of these sources show that "Alchesay Flats" is a distinct place located on this reservation. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 15:46, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It's definitely you that's doing the selective quoting, here, carefully missing out Whiteriver, Arizona and North Fork, Arizona and the dance itinerary until I read the sources, spotted this, and pulled you up on it. And now we have the desperate tap dancing that "Alchesay Flat is a distinct place". You selectively mis-read the sources to get us a corn field as a populated place. You mis-read the article, whose first sentence tells you that this is "a physical feature, named flat" (as indeed the GNIS computer database record, using the feature code "flat", did).  And you mis-read the maps where the words "Alchesay Flat" run diagonally along a flat.  This is a flat, and trying to prove something that neither the computer database record nor the article itself originally asserted, that this is a populated place just because someone mentions the flat in conjunction with Whiteriver, Arizona and North Fork, Arizona, is really putting the goal of trying to "save" an article ahead of actually having Wikipedia tell the truth.  You are synthesising rubbish.  As I said before, all of this effort would be better directed at trying to find documentation of the landform.  But the problem with that is that there is very little to none of that.  Hence your omissions of the context of Whiteriver, North Fork, the cornfield, and the other desperate reaches to try and falsely document a flat as something else when it is hard to document it as what it is.  Uncle G (talk) 15:00, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
 * trying to find documentation of the landform is what I, and other users, have done. Sources are open to interpretation, and you are free to disagree with mine. If you have sources to support your assertion it is not a populated place, I would be glad to evaluate them. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 20:16, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You have done no such thing. Documentation of the landform would give things like its geology and physical geography, none of which you have presented.  Moreover, now you are trying to avoid the burden of proof that is upon you to support your assertion, when the article and the sources contradict you.  This is a flat, and it is you that needs to prove, and has not done since your sources fail verification when investigated, your repeated assertion here in this discussion that it a "populated place".  You have zero documentation of the landform, and have only selectively mis-read documentation that is synthesizing a "populated place" out of a corn field and the actual populated places Whiteriver, Arizona and North Fork, Arizona that your sources stated and that you omitted when claiming that they were about something else. Uncle G (talk) 07:32, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment Being a place doesn't matter for this situation because all standalone articles need to meet WP:N or be merged or deleted.James.folsom (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment. It would be good to see how this passes the use-mention distinction. Otherwise, it fails WP:N: "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.. बिनोद थारू (talk) 17:27, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The use-mention distinction isn't a notability guideline. SportingFlyer  T · C  17:43, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I wrote use mention but I mean WP:SIGCOV बिनोद थारू (talk) 17:46, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Relisting comment: One more try... Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, CycloneYoris talk! 03:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Delete Merge to Fort Apache Indian Reservation Doesn't meet WP:N and cannot be a standalone article per comments above.James.folsom (talk) 22:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Merge to Fort Apache Indian Reservation. This is not an independently notable geographic feature, but it is likely a noteworthy feature of the reservation, considering that an Apache chief is buried there. BD2412  T 02:49, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Merge per BD1412, but definitely do not delete. This is just a question of how to cover named geography. SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:48, 14 January 2024 (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.