Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alter Road


 * 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 delete. Missvain (talk) 01:29, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Alter Road

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The sourcing is not enough to show notability. To begin with, Alter Road is actually not the city boundary, so Sec. Cisneros' off hand comment about it in a much larger article is not defining, and that it was quoted by a newspaper in the city does not tell us much. I know, Alter Road is more in people's heads then in reality, but one quote from a cabinet secretary and mention on one page in 1 book is not enough to show this. I live on Alter Road, north of Mack so not actually at the boundary of the city. I actually first discovered this article one summer as I walked from my house to the park to help with food distribution there during the summer. None of that walk was anywhere near Grosse Pointe. Why the page should be deleted. I do not think we can justify having an article based on the sources that exist, especially since they do not consider the whole part of the road. There is almost an intersection between Alter Road and I-94, but that is even further north [technically north-west, the road runs at an angle as a legacy of the French Ribbon farms being drawn at a 90 degree angle to the Detroit River], but by then it has turned into Outer Drive. Hmm, the fact that we do not have an article on Outer Drive tells me that a street the size of mine clearly does not deserve an article. This is not 8 Mile, and not just because noone has made the film Alter Road (film) yet. 8 Mile is a real boundary, Alter Road is never actually the boundary, it is just to the west along the property line, so if we want an article on the bounary, we need Alley Way Between Alter Road and Maryland Street. However Mack Avenue (the article there is a redirect to a Grosse Pointe Farms record label that does not explain the meaning of the name) is a longer boundary between Detroit and Grosse Pointe. I see no reason to have this article. If we want to cover the boundaries of Detroit than have the article Boundaries of Detroit and maybe a sub-article Boundaries of Detroit in the popular imagination. Start the later by examing how some have written about Mayor Mike Duggan moving back from across 8 Mile, even though he actually lived in Livonia which is on the same side of 8 Mile as Detroit. To some "crossing 8 Mile" means leaving the city. I know original research is not welcome, but as a Detroit resident I know people reguarlay speak of 8 Mile in a symbolic way [to be fair I grew up in Sterling Heights, where to go into Detroit other than crossing 8 Mile, you had to try hard, although on occasion I did go in by crossing the imaginary line just north of Moross, not one the occasions I biked in Detroit, rarely by bus and rarely by car, at least until I started dating my Alter Road resident wife, 8 Mile is the northern boundary of Detroit for 17.5 miles, and I grew up near the intersection of Dequindre and 15 Mile, the fastest way into Detroit was by I-75. When I biked it was by Dequindre, by bus most often a sort of Dequindre/Woodward hybrid. Even when I worked in the northwest of Detroit and drove in on the Southfield Freeway, I was still entering Detroit across 8 Mile. OK, so I digressed a lot, but I still do not see the level of sourcing that would justify this article. John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:21, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2020 December 17.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 16:32, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Michigan-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 16:38, 17 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete: This article is garbage and overly detailed for a common street that tries to make vague comparisons to 8 Mile Road. There's no indication that Alter Road has any significance, and it doesn't appear to have ever been a state trunkline or have any distinguished history. —Notorious4life (talk) 19:49, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
 * This is true. It is not even one of the prime roads in Detroit. Chalmers Road about half a mile further west is either as major or even more major at road. It was never designated as a state route, unlike 8 Mile, and the southern third of so of Alter is a local residential street.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:32, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete, this article does not meet notability at all so it must be deleted asap, but at least I do appreciate very much the effort of the user who dared and spent a so long time to write the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NicolaArangino (talk • contribs) 21:17, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I strongly DISagree with any effort to delete this article from Wikipedia. Alter Road (between Mack Avenue and the Detroit River), IS--repeat IS--a municipal boundary between the City of Detroit and the City of Grosse Pointe Park and the thoroughfare been used as dividing line between ethnicity and economic status for several decades even by elected and high-ranking appointed government officials. Alter Road has caught the attention of the entertainment industry with the NBC television network briefly toying with the notion of making a series about the thoroughfare and with the rock band "Alter Bridge" naming itself in reference to the road. Contrary to the remarks of John Pack Lambert, there IS a Wikipedia article about Outer Drive, just as there IS a Wikipedia about Detroit's Grand Boulevard. -- Gregory Watson
 * This article was created in 2005, a time when Wikipedia was a wild west with little regulation or oversight, and very little sense of what was and what was not notable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:32, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment My reference to 8 Mile above should have linked to the article M-102 (Michigan highway). I can assure you that no one who lives in Metro Detroit ever refers to it that way, and I could cite a huge number of scholarly works and newspaper articles that make reference to it as something more than just a method of moving around and more as the divide in Metro Detroit, and they will all call it 8 Mile or 8 Mile Road. The same is true when people refer to it as a real way to move around or a real address, we call it 8 Mile. The school I taught at on 8 Mile people always refered to as such, and my friend who lived at the conner of 8 Mile and Gratioit would describe her address as such, even when it meant that people reacted in odd ways to her living in a place that at one point people thought of as the ultimate in crime. Some maps will also call it Base Line Road. I really think the article should be renamed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:37, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - JPL summed it up perfectly. There's nothing I can add other than "I completely agree" Spiderone  18:51, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
 * No, Alter Road is not the municipal boundary. The municipal boundary is half-way between Alter Road and Wayburn Street. Outer Drive does have an article, but that is sourced to one hyper local, not even mainstream publication, and then google maps links, it is not the level of sourcing that shows notability. Being a municipal boundary is not a sign a road is notable. We do not have articles on Mack Avenue, which is actually a municipal boundary of Detroit, nor 5 Points Road, another real municipal boundary, nor Tireman Road, another real municiapl boundary. Nor Kelly Road, which is the boundary for the entirety of the west side of Harper Woods against Detroit. Detroit has something like 18 points on its municipal boundary. Even 8 Mile Road mainly merits an article because it is a truly major throughfare, not just because it is a boundary line. 8 Mile Road is a state route, it is normally 8 lanes wide with a grassy median, and it has fully built interchanges at at least 3 points complete with ramps. Alter is 3 miles long, much of it a local residential street, always overshadowed by Chalmers, and is preempted by Outer Driver before it interests with i-94.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:58, 22 December 2020 (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.