Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Averasboro Township, Harnett County, North Carolina


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__. A close call, but after several relists, consensus has emerged that it doesn't seem possible to write an article on this. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:00, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Averasboro Township, Harnett County, North Carolina

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

Fails WP:GNG. Additionally I would argue that while this nominally passes WP:NGEO as a "Populated, legally recognized place" it substantively fails it as it is functionally similar to an "area in an irrigation district", as townships in NC have been politcally defunct (though technically legally extant) since 1880. We might as well be having articles on rural fire districts or polling precincts, these are not like the self-governing entities of the same name in the northern US but administrative divisions which counties use or ignore at their pleasure. This article has been unsourced for 16 years for a reason. I can find some evidence the boundaries have been used to inform the drawing of a special lodging/tourism tax district and use in raw stats collections (since the US census collects population figures on townships) but no significant coverage of any kind. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2023 September 23.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 05:03, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and North Carolina. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 07:22, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep. As the nominator mentions, "... the boundaries have been used to inform the drawing of a special lodging/tourism tax district and use in raw stats collections (since the US census collects population figures on townships) ..." Eastmain (talk • contribs) 07:23, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * So are local tax districts notable? -Indy beetle (talk) 21:41, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect to List of townships in Harnett County, North Carolina or the like. In Delaware we have a similar situation, where the subdivisions of the counties ("hundreds") have not been meaningful since the late 19th Century or thereabouts. However, they were widely used as geographical designations until the 20th century, and probably have meaningful, substantial early histories. Given the much greater number of townships presumably present in North Carolina, I'm doubtful adequate material exists for an article on all of them; redirect to a list and they can be broken out as sufficient information is found. Choess (talk) 21:00, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Harnett_County,_North_Carolina. Townships are functionally irrelevant in NC, stripped of their governments in 1877, just 9 years after creation ; most all articles in List of townships in North Carolina (which has populations that may be added to the list in the county article) should also be redirected unless there is more substantive content than statistics regarding meaningless lines. Reywas92Talk 03:51, 25 September 2023 (UTC)


 * ●Keep- https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/averasboro-town-of/, https://www.carolana.com/NC/Towns/Averysboro_NC.html, https://censusreporter.org/profiles/06000US3708590104-averasboro-township-harnett-county-nc/, http://gis.harnett.org/mapgallery/pdf/Townships_Large.pdf. PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 17:40, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * @PaulGamerBoy360 To be clear, the first two links here are about a town of Averasboro, not the township. This is mentioned in the article as Averasboro being the site of the Battle of Averasborough. I would support creation of an Averasboro, North Carolina article and redirection of this one. Unclear what the map links are suppose to prove...yes the township technically has borders and statistics, but that doesn't mean they have practical significance or that it's a notable entity that needs a stand-alone article. Reywas92Talk 18:33, 25 September 2023 (UTC)
 * On top of that, Carolana.com is a blog. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:36, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 05:04, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
 * delete This is just "increase article count" crap, and I don't understand why people are fighting so hard against the apparent reality that these political divisions are long obsolete and were made meaningless shortly after their creation. The most we need is the list and a map for each county; a redirect is actually a nuisance because it distracts from the actual town in searching. Mangoe (talk) 05:02, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete, per the nom, Reywas, and Mangoe. This is only a "place" by virtue of a long-defunct and short-lived statistical designation. We have zero sources that suggest it could be expanded to anything beyond some coordinates and infobox parameters. Good grief.
 * JoelleJay (talk) 05:06, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, signed,Rosguill talk 14:33, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect to List of townships in North Carolina for now, as there is more there than in Harnett County, North Carolina. If this township had its own government in the 19th century there could be an article about that, but there are currently no references. Peter James (talk) 09:00, 7 October 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Note: Averasboro, North Carolina was created yesterday, I stumbled across it via Category:All uncategorized pages and began editing, then stumbled across this deletion discussion. Gjs238 (talk) 09:47, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Averasboro, North Carolina covers both the township and the former town, the reson being the history of the township links to the former town. PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 14:08, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Using Kernville (former town), California as a model, I am considering moving the article to Averasboro (former town), North Carolina and opening the article with that section and making the current opening the secondary section. I suspect that is more in line with what Reywas92 envisioned when he/she said "I would support creation of an Averasboro, North Carolina article and redirection of this one." Gjs238 (talk) 15:18, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Question: Would the other 12 townships in Harnett County, North Carolina be deleted as well? Category:Townships in Harnett County, North Carolina Gjs238 (talk) 10:58, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I would say yes, I can't find SIGCOV on any of them. PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 04:12, 10 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Strongest possible Delete - townships are not "a thing" in North Carolina since the 19th century. Here's the current version of the Constitution of North Carolina as amended:
 * https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Constitution/NCConstitution.html
 * Section 24 mentions townships in passing but does not describe their role - just that the Legislature can rename them and can draw new lines. That's it - there are no powers granted and no township governments authorized. There are no other mentions of townships. They are vestigial from the 1868 NC constitution (which has since been replaced in its entirety with a different constitution). See List of townships in North Carolina.


 * 9 out of 10 North Carolinians probably don't know townships even exist.


 * NC has 100 counties. It has 1035 townships. Do we really need 1035 articles on these useless things? Who would put them on their watchlist and maintain them against vandalism and errant robots?
 * -- A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 05:09, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * many townships have significant roles in history, besides this discussion is just for the townships in Harnett County. PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 14:24, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Paul, can you show some reliable sources that any of these Harnett County townships have anything historically important about them prior to 1880? Thanks!
 * — A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 14:42, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Regardless of that(i don't have time t the moment) what we should do is merge the townships to their respective towns. PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 19:11, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Paul, it’s probably infeasible to merge NC townships to NC towns. NC cities and towns have grown over 150-200 years such that city lines cut across township lines and vice versa. There’s no relationship that I’ve seen other than for one township overlapping with the original county seat. Usually when townships were drawn, there was just one municipality. Now there may be 5-10 in some counties. Some municipalities such as Kannapolis and Locust spread across 2 counties. These townships lines have little connection to contemporary geographic reality. Call some North Carolinians if you know any. Or raise the question at the NC Wikipedia (that’s probably easier).
 * — A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 21:13, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I largely agree with A.B.. To put a finer point on it, the townships were devised as divisions of counties, not as provincial outskirts of municipalities. Some were also drawn to encompass areas that had no towns and still have no towns (there is no "town of Sixpound" in Warren County's Sixpound Township), because many counties were and still are very rural places. Your merge suggestion seems to confuse these places' purpose at their inception. -Indy beetle (talk) 03:40, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * These are the Townships & Towns that I feel should be merged:
 * {| class="wikitable"

!Township !Respective Town/Community
 * Averasboro Township
 * Averasboro(Allready Merged)
 * Anderson Creek Township
 * Anderson Creek, NC
 * Barbecue Township
 * Barbecue, NC
 * Johnsonville Township
 * Johnsonville, NC
 * Lillington Township
 * Lillington, North Carolina
 * }
 * PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 03:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Lillington Township
 * Lillington, North Carolina
 * }
 * PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 03:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * PaulGamerBoy360 (talk) 03:59, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Relisting comment: Final relist. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 21:12, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * If anything, it would make more sense to merge the townships to the parent county article. I would stress two that there is zero inherent legal relationship between a municipality and a township. This is not the Northeast US. Selectively merging townships to community articles simply because they share a name seems a little arbitrary. And what exactly is there to merge? "Here is a bigger place which is not the place you are reading about, though the place you are reading about happens to fall inside of it. Here is how big it is and how many people it had in the 2010 census." We don't merge articles on non-notable political constituencies or fire districts downwards into the communities that fall within them simply because the larger districts exist. And that is why !votes are leading toward redirect and delete. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:23, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Delete - This is a ridiculous but natural result of the "legal recognition" requirement in GEOLAND - we have to play at being lawyers (and not just any lawyer: 19th century North Carolina lawyers) to work out what the status these places had, which is definitely not notable in any other sense or under any other standard, means in terms of notability on Wikipedia. There is nothing to say about these places, most people in them don't know what they are. GEOLAND was only ever supposed to give a presumption of notability, and in this case the presumption has been decisively rebutted by simply referring to the total lack of coverage for them. FOARP (talk) 11:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Delete presumption of notability is not borne out by sources that exist. Fails GNG (sources above are not reliable nor establish notability for our purposes.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 18:16, 23 October 2023 (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.