Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Baker and Howland Islands


 * 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   keep. A possible move can be considered, but is an editorial decision. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 02:19, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Baker and Howland Islands

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Delete possibly speedy per A3 for lack of content or WP:Listcruft. This article is a two-item list with each island linked and no other info. These two islands are not a geographic grouping and have NEVER been administered as a group. They are both part of the larger political territory of the United States Minor Outlying Islands and they are also both part of the larger geographic grouping of the Phoenix Islands. (They actually are the intersection of those two categories, 1 and 2). There are a few web sources that refer to these islands together discussing possible nuclear testings or their discoveries, but these appear to be casual rather than formal linkings. Baker Island and Howland Island each cover their topics well. The article is only linked in Wikipedia once to a list of geographic pairs and a Google search only showed this article exclusively linking the two islands together. The Talk page is blank but the edit history shows a series of disputes over the purpose of the article. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:12, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Oceania-related deletion discussions. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:12, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: Notice provided to the creator of the article at User talk:Ross Rhodes. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:12, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - Although the two islands are themselves notable, I am not convinced that the coupling of the islands is notable; I can't find any reliable sources which deal with the two islands together as a single entity. Thus, an article of the two together is not notable. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 19:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Redirect see comment below to Office_of_Insular_Affairs Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.  The US DOI considers the two islands as a single refuge.  There may be a better redirect target though.  --Tgeairn (talk) 06:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment/Redirect That's interesting. Whereas the Insular Affairs section of Interior you linked to considered these two to be a refuge, another division of Interior (Fish and Wildlife Service) considered these two islands plus Jarvis Island to be a National Wildlife Refuge. Whatever the islands in that Refuge, I agree that the later monument would have subsumed it so no objection to the redirect. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:23, 18 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep A search on Wikipedia shows that these two islands are in several places referenced as a group.  They are further identified as being the last to bring in the new year, the entirety of US possessions in UTC-12.  They are 24 hours behind the Wake Island Time Zone.  The Howland-Baker EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) is a 400-mile diameter area protected by the US Coast Guard, and was in the news in 2005.  Howland-Baker EEZ has 425,700 km2; and by comparison, Texas has 696,000 km2.


 * Searches on Google show eight different names being used, below are those names and examples of references using that name:
 * Baker and Howland Islands
 * http://www.doi.gov/oia/Islandpages/bhpage.htm
 * Howland and Baker Islands
 * http://www.doi.gov/oia/Islandpages/bhmain.htm
 * Howland & Baker Islands
 * http://oos.soest.hawaii.edu/pacioos/outreach/regions/howland.php is a quality treatment of the combination of islands
 * This source references a 25 Megabyte pdf, http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2005/1286/
 * Baker & Howland Islands
 * http://wlol.arlhs.com/index.php?mode=zones&zone=BAK.
 * There are also hits on "Baker and Howard Island",
 * "Howard and Baker Island", and
 * "Baker & Howard Island".
 * Howland-Baker EEZ
 * http://worldmaritimenews.com/archives/5468
 * So there is a long list of sources available. From Wikipedia's viewpoint, this article is a part of the gazetteer.  There are certainly some overlapping designations here, but deleting this one will not improve the encyclopedia.  And redirecting it would be massive confusion given the multiplicity of names already shown above, the unique characteristics of the time zone, and the specificity of the EEZ.  Without duplicating the detail at Howland Island and Baker Island, I'd suggest improving the article by adding references and with a See also section to these other more-established groupings including United States Minor Outlying Islands, Office_of_Insular_Affairs, Phoenix Islands, Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and Wake Island Time Zone.  Unscintillating (talk) 21:37, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Question: Thanks for taking the time to research this and for pointing out the time zone; I added it to the article as the first official linkage. Not sure readers would look to a combined article to discuss contiguous Exclusive Economic Zones looking at other shared EEZs like Kingman/Palymra, Hawaii/Midway, or Bassas/Europa. If there are multiple things that link just these two islands, I would withdraw my nomination whereas with only the time zone I would considered that best handled in the time zone article.


 * Certainly there are a ton of potential sources just like a Google search for "Los Angeles and San Francisco" will have a ton of hits, but the results connecting the two all seem informal (even the government ones listing urban centers in California) or non-defining (e.g. a study of Chinese immigration to both cities, comparison of school districts, etc.) so we use those sources in separate articles rather than creating one for the two cities together. Other than the time zone, were you able to find any significant content that would best be listed in this article (rather than the individual islands or larger groups)? RevelationDirect (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Even if we build consensus that the title of the article should be changed from Baker and Howland Islands to Baker and Howland islands, I think there is plenty of reason to keep this as a separate article, even if only to organize the multiplicity of names for the concept. Since you've mentioned cities, a related concept is Minneapolis-St. Paul and Twin cities.


 * But rather than parse these details, I think the EEZ overwhelms the case, the 200 n-mile radius for either of the two islands overlaps with 80% of the EEZ for the other island, thus I think no government agency is ever going to factor the Howland EEZ from the Baker EEZ. This is an enormous area whose economic potential is unknown.  This one EEZ is 4% of the total U.S. coastline (475,000 km2 out of 11,300,000 km2), larger than that for the Republic of South Korea or Cuba.


 * The "Geologic setting" section from http://oos.soest.hawaii.edu/pacioos/outreach/regions/howland.php could be paraphrased to add relevant material to the article.


 * Here is another reference that groups the two islands:
 * http://mvguam.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=398:court-sets-hearing-for-marshalls-201&catid=1:guam-local-news&Itemid=2
 * Unscintillating (talk) 01:01, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I read through | the source you provided (took a bit to download) and and the upshot on pp23-24 is that the only immediate mining potential is on and immediately offshore of the islands themselves (viz phosphates, sand, gravel, and coral) which would conflict with their protected status per the study. (Iron depsoits on a few seamounts are also mentioned as an intermediate possibility but no energy resources are identifed.) We'll have to agree to disagree on the value of this exclusive economic zone and whether it justifies a stand-alone article. RevelationDirect (talk) 09:41, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I respect the fact that you've downloaded that 25 megabyte document and provided a balanced report. I think the point remains that this is a large area 2/3rds the size of Texas that will continue to be of substantial and enduring interest to people all over the world, including cartographers, geologists, tsunami warning systems, the fishing industry, sea captains, judges enforcing boundary disputes, and to conservationists.  There is a satellite NSS-9 overhead.  Allow me to mention Seward's Folly, regarding the purchase of Alaska in 1868, which our article has this quote:

The New York World said that it was a ‘sucked orange.’ It contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct. Except for the Aleutian Islands and a narrow strip of land extending along the southern coast the country would be not worth taking as a gift…
 * Unscintillating (talk) 16:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The [PacIOOS] mentions that Winslow Reef is "on the southeast boundary line of the EEZ". This led me to a UNESCO document in which Figure 1 has a map of the adjacent EEZ's.
 * We have two reliable maps, one from PacIOOS and one from UNESCO. IMO a gazetteer entry needs one reliable map and one reliable fact.  We have multiple news sources reporting both an incident and a court case a year later regarding a border crossing of the EEZ, and geologic analysis.  I think we can mention that this is the last part of the US to bring in a New Year, as this can be derived with analysis that only requires a high school education (thus it is verifiable).  NSS-9 is worth mentioning along with this EEZ being in the band near the equator that allows satellites to remain above in geosynchronous earth orbit.  This EEZ should be mentioned in the Winslow Reef article.  As of right now I agree with renaming the article to Baker and Howland islands.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind that Winslow and the rest of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area is in Kiribati. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind that Winslow and the rest of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area is in Kiribati. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment - Given the excellent research above, there appears to be a real argument for Keep & Rename. The issue remains that the islands form a combined group of only 855 acre of uninhabited land (in contrast, Central Park covers 805 acre and has 38 million visitors). Not that size really matters, but having three articles (each island, plus this one) for such a tiny area may be excessive. While size of the landmass isn't an argument to Delete or Redirect, I wonder if there may be a benefit to somehow reduce these three articles to one or two. If we combine all three at Baker and Howland islands, much of the content at Baker Island and Howland Island can be combined and the additional information that covers both can be added. --Tgeairn (talk) 19:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I am changing my response to Keep/Rename to Baker and Howland islands. --Tgeairn (talk) 19:08, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I just re-read both articles to see how easy a merge would be. Although they read very similarly (discovery, guano mining, colonization, WWII, natural protection) the specific content barely overlaps.  (One exception is that they the guano was mined in both places by the same company.) RevelationDirect (talk) 19:50, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Nomination Withdrawn Unscintillating, I'm glad you've shown far more interest in this nomination than the article itself has in it's tortured 4-year history. Rather than focus you entergies here, I much rather you spend your time improving the article maybe by focusing on the EEZ. (No objection to a speedy rename with a lower case "I" or of admin leaving open for that outcome.) RevelationDirect (talk) 19:39, 20 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.