Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Devil's Tower 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   no consensus. There doesn't seem to be much interest in outright deletion, but I'm not seeing a strong consensus about what to do with the content. So no prejudice towards the opening of a merge discussion. Mark Arsten (talk) 15:39, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Devil's Tower Road

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This article was proposed for deletion by User:Drmies at Template:Did you know nominations/Devil's Tower Road. I have no opinion on the proposal, but am putting the article up for AFD in order to test its notability before continuing with or closing the DYK review. Gatoclass (talk) 11:27, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Drmies' statement at DYK - "But there is, in my opinion, a big problem with the article itself. The most substantial and best-sourced part of it deals with the tower--for the rest, the road as a road has only generated coverage because of the redesign; it's the equivalent of BLP1, in a way, and sources do not substantially discuss the existence, history, meaning, etc. of the road. Note also that all the newspaper articles and websites that cover this issue is very, very local, and consider that Google Books, for example, offers nothing substantial on this road. In my opinion, this is a candidate for AfD (or merge into Devil's Tower) more than for DYK" Statement copied by TheOriginalSoni (talk)


 * What, no headnote pointing to Devil's Tower Road? &#9786;  Uncle G (talk) 11:56, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of United Kingdom-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions. Necrothesp (talk) 15:12, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The problem is that this is two articles in one. The "early history" section is about Devil's Tower (Gibraltar), and contains content that that article sorely needs.  The "recent history" section is about construction work relating to Gibraltar International Airport which would improve the "new road access" section of that article.  And these are mixed together in an article on a road.  Would that the effort that went into this had gone into putting that writing into the actual articles on those subjects that we already had!  Uncle G (talk) 17:25, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Drmies (talk) 17:58, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep per WP:SK#1 – the nominator fails to advance an argument for deletion. Warden (talk) 15:36, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Invalid !vote. There is already an argument for deletion by Uncle G above. Moreover, there were arguments for deletion by Drmies, which were not copied by the nominator here. I have copied those arguments here. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 04:49, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You're putting words in people's mouths. Uncle G doesn't say we should delete anything but instead seems to be suggesting that we have material for two articles here.  User:Drmies agrees with Uncle G and talks of merger too.  We still don't have any editor making a clear proposition that the article be deleted and AFD is neither cleanup nor a guessing game.  My !vote stands. Warden (talk) 14:37, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The article should be deleted since there is no evidence whatsoever that the road is notable as a road in its own right. Drmies (talk) 14:24, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Courcelles 04:16, 26 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep per WP:GNG. The nominator rationale is unconvincing, as the biographies of living people policy doesn't apply to non-living things such as roads (duh). Notability deliberately isn't concerned with the reasons why reliable sources note topics, only that they noted them. Diego (talk) 12:02, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You need to read what Drmies said again, more carefully. Xe used BLP1E as an equivalent situation, pointing out that this is a road that isn't notable in itself, but that is merely (and literally) tangential to actual notable subjects.  It isn't actually discussed as a subject on its own merits, but only in respect of other subjects that it is merely one facet of, such as the plans for the road access to and around an airport, which logically belong in the article on the airport (especially since this wouldn't even have been the road under one of the plans). Uncle G (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you Uncle. Of course equivalent is the keyword here: a misreading of my words only obfuscates the argument. The bit about the reasons why reliable sources note something is odd: I'm not interesting in attempting to perceive intentions of pieces of writing, which would be an impossible thing to do. My point is that none of the sources discuss the road as a road: they mention it incidentally. It's a simple fact: not all roads are notable. You know, the house I live in was formerly owned by Wayne Greenhaw, and thereafter by Karen Riley and Richard Lee Young (these are valid topics). That doesn't make the house notable, let alone the street I live on--but it seems that my equivalencies are unequivocally rejected. In short: this article is not about the street. It's about a couple of things that are on the street, and really just one. Drmies (talk) 14:24, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep The AfD process is not a notability test; notability would be though. The article is well written, well sourced by reliable independent sources, and has enough material to warrant a standalone article. Furthermore, per WP:ROADOUTCOMES, "An article that explains the social, cultural, historical or political context of a road in depth is more likely to survive AfD than one which merely describes the road's physical characteristics." Mkdw talk 01:48, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you meant by "the AFD process is not a notability test", when deletion policy clearly includes under "reasons for deletion" Articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP and so forth). Gatoclass (talk) 14:31, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think he's referring to your words that you're "putting the article up for AFD in order to test its notability". So far nobody really has stated or believes that this article's content should be completely deleted by lack of notability; thus, a merge discussion at Talk:Devil's Tower Road would be more appropriate. Diego (talk) 14:58, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well actually, Drmies described it as "a candidate for AFD" so I took him at his word. But thanks for the explanation. Gatoclass (talk) 15:34, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * A notability test would be you going through the points of WP:N and checking whether the article met the requirements. You 'test' the article against the policy. As you pointed out, " whose subjects fail to meet ", which in order to fail must have undergone a check or test prior. If you have no opinion on the article and have not done the steps required in WP:BEFORE, then you should not be nominating the article for deletion. If, Drmies felt the article should be deleted and had done all the checks and tests required in BEFORE, then he should nominate the article and provide his reasons here for why the article should be deleted against which policies. The AfD process is for editors to discuss their findings from their own examinations and tests of whether the article meets the notability and other pillar policies of Wikipedia. Mkdw talk 20:41, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for the explanation. In response, I should clarify that I don't nominate articles here just on someone's random comment, in fact I did look through the article myself in response to Drmies' comments and felt his concerns had validity. At the same time, I could also see some valid reasons why the article might be kept, so when I said I had "no opinion" I meant I was undecided. Because the Gibraltar articles have attracted a degree of controversy at DYK, I felt the best option at that point was to put the question to the broader community rather than deal with the matter "in house". Gatoclass (talk) 13:56, 28 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep -- This is the second recent nom on a road in Gibraltar. It has adequate content to my mind.  In view of the way this started, I see not reason to criticise nom, except that perhaps he should exercise some independent judgment before accepting the comments of others.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:25, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * For the record: I haven't yet come up with a satisfactory solution to the problem that I described above.  It's useful content in the wrong place.  Uncle G (talk) 22:29, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think, the reason the problem you proposed hasn't been addressed by the other editors is because they don't necessarily see it as problematic. Invariably in an encyclopedia about everything, you will have overlap information. Many articles deal with the overview. If the sections were titled differently they would have sub-articles headings. Mkdw talk 22:58, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This isn't overlap or indeed overview. This is talking about the redevelopment of an airport and the history of a ruin instead of having content about the actual subject.  And clearly two if not three people above have seen the same problem, which is in truth a fairly obvious one.  It's a classic case of trying to make a non-subject into an ostensible subject by tangent, and some of the more difficult to deal with fallout from the whole Gibraltarpedia fiasco that rewarded editors for creating new articles over contributing to existing ones on the actual subjects.  Which is why it has languished so long (three months) at DYK review and finally come to AFD when the DYK people couldn't work out what to do to address the problem.  I always try to give opinions at AFD that are what I would do with my tools, on the grounds that one shouldn't opine what one doesn't want done or is unwilling to do onesself.  And I simply haven't worked out what to do here, and what I'd do with my tools to fix this.  But the problem is quite apparent, simply from reading the article alone, even if one hasn't done, as I have, further background research to see if the world documents this road as a specific topic in itself.  Uncle G (talk) 10:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the best outcome would be to merge the Devil's Tower (Gibraltar) stub into this one. The works on the road seem enough to define a topic; by merging it with the buildings and monuments on the road, you create a broader topic containing all the related available content. Diego (talk) 11:32, 28 December 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.