Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avounbaka


 * 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. For a very short article (which basically gives the location and says that Avounbaka is a populated place) there are some interesting issues here. First, precedent is clearly in favor of keeping settlements, past or present, even when the sourcing is thin and where a subject with a similar amount of sourcing might be deleted as non-notable. This includes small populated villages and hamlets, but it does not usually extend any named feature that may appear on a map, such as a farm or a camping site (both of which arguably could be called a "populated place"). In order to receive the favorable treatment that settlement articles usually receive, it is important that the place is verifiably a settlement, and not just a farm. To determine whether the evidence presented in the article is sufficient to verify a settlement, we need to examine the online maps. Some testing of the website for sites near my own location (Haugesund in Norway) showed that these maps do indeed display the location of several "populated places" that are no more than farms. Therefore, I find that the evidence of Avounbaka being a settlement is insufficient.

With this in mind, the arguments presented in the nomination, and Unscintillating convincing. Unscintiallating has also pointed out the location of Avounbaka has not been provided with precision. I have considered the merge proposal by Orlady, but I feel slapping "Avounbaka is a populated place on the northern coast" onto the Malo Island article would be unnatural, and highlight a possibly insignificant feature unduly (readers may ask "What is so special about Avounbaka that it warrants coverage in this article, while the other tiny locations don't?"). For that reason, I am calling this a delete unless and until evidence is presented that shows that Avounbaka actually is a settlement of the type that we generally keep. Sjakkalle (Check!)  16:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Avounbaka

 * – ( View AfD View log )

"Populated place" in Vanuatu, at least if the article is not wrong. I have seen notability conditions are fairly lenient for "Populated places", visiting Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes and Notability (geography) (an essay) before acting. However, I don't think this article passes Notability tests since :


 * in its present state, it is sourced by only one document, the database of GEOnet Names Server. A cursory search did not show me any source independent from this one or Wikipedia ;


 * Articles_for_deletion/Common_outcomes insists on keeping cities and villages as long as the article topic's existence is verified through a reliable source. First, a "populated place" with no hint of the population may be too small to be even a "village" as meant in this policy page. A more important question is the reliability of GEOnet Names Server, whose methodology is not known (at least by me). I have found while searching before opening this AfD the following PROD-ding of a clearly fictitious article based on this data bank : see King Arthur Court, Tennessee ;


 * Notability (geography) recommends keeping any article about a place which has legal recognition, but there is no hint of such recognition for Avounbaka. For non-officially recognised populated places, this essay recommends : a named subdivision that takes up part of a county, but has no formal legal boundaries, will be notable if evidence can be shown of substantial non-trivial information about that subdivision. We have no hint of any "substantial non-trivial information" being available somewhere about this place ;


 * I had an opportunity last year to try to write a few sentences in articles about Vanuatuan places. This short experience brought me to consider that, with possible exceptions for special places, written sources simply don't exist about a generic village in this country. French Tourist (talk) 13:22, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oceania-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 16:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - I think it is really hard to determine whether places like this exist when you are dealing with lesser developed nations like this. The official government census (seen here) does not mention any locale that goes by this name, but I don't know how detailed it is and if it is completely representative of geographic locations in the country. I think the fact that it is in the GNS, is enough to warrant a keep...it is definitely a reliable source, coming from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency a worldwide leader in cartographic information, just as we keep unincorporated communities in the United States I think this is worthy of a keep as well. - Marcusmax  ( speak ) 00:25, 15 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Merge and redirect to Malo Island - I don't know much of anything about Vanuatu (other than the fact that several apparent diploma mills seem to do business there), but as a general rule I don't think that Wikipedia should be creating and maintaining articles about places anywhere in the world when the only thing that can be reliably said about those places is "The name and coordinates appear in a U.S. government database, where it is identified as a populated place." In this case, the place isn't even visible on online satellite maps -- both Bing and Google show nothing but cloud cover at the supposed location of Avounbaka. Instead of creating articles on the basis of less than a shred of information, the purported existence of places like this one can be documented in articles like the one for Malo Island and the pages can be redirected. The article also could list Abounatari, Aravida, and the other Malo Island place names that appear on online maps and presumably are also listed in the same database where Avounbaka was found. --Orlady (talk) 14:38, 15 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete Alternate names appear to be Abounavahé and Abounavahe.  References:
 * http://nona.net/features/map/placedetail.2464815/Avounbaka/
 * http://www.fallingrain.com/world/NH/13/Avounbaka.html
 * The reason for deletion is that I cannot find any maps that do not put this village under water which means that all of the sources are actually derivatives of the one database. And as per WP:Editing policy, the absence of information is preferred to false information.  I found two sources for the elevation, one put the village at 3 m, the other at 56m.  IMO, a keep is preferred to a merge, the organization of the encyclopedia here is already well-factored.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:03, 19 February 2012 (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.