Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Largest village in England


 * 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. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 00:54, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Largest village in England

 * ( [ delete] ) – (View AfD) (View log)

Thge page is currently a largely uneferenced and poorly written/presented mess, and the references that do exist are of questionable quality, where you cannot tell who the person is that is making the claim (or in the case of the one or two independant news sources, where they are repeating the claim from). But that in itself is not a reason for deletion, the question is: is a 'list of places claiming to be the "Largest village in England"' something with inherent encyclopoedic value? Given the fact the article pretty much explains why anybody can claim it, and anybody else can refute it, and given the fact we have Fordwich and Manningtree, both smaller than any village on the list and both claiming to be towns, I have to say that even if the list were perfectly complete, and reliably verifiable to the people/authority making the claim, this list would still be pretty much pointless, being both a collection of trivia, and something that turns Wikipedia into a soapbox/POV battleground/free advertising host for any passing soul who has heard the claim made. MickMacNee (talk) 03:53, 16 June 2009 (UTC) Delete per the first paragraph of the article itself, reproduced here for your reading pleasure: "Many villages claim to be the largest village in England. This title is essentially a meaningless one, as it cannot be verified because of the lack of a common definition of a village, the absence of any particular benefits associated with the status, and the vagueness of 'largest' (population or area?)." which says it all. Vague criteria for inclusion leads to POV articles, which are a Bad Thing™. pablo hablo. 09:04, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions.  -- TexasAndroid (talk) 04:50, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete unless the concept of "Largest Village" has been discussed in third-party sources, otherwise it's original research. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 06:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete I made several attempts to improve this page last year and gave up in the tide of unsupported dubious claims and general lack of cohesive source references. It just ends up as a meaningless list that grows and grows. Until a sensible definition of "largest village" is agreed this article is a nonsense 21st CENTURY  GREENSTUFF 09:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Redirect to London ;-). Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 16:16, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep given the large number of settlements that claim it, it is something with encyclopaedic merit. Yes the article is currently a mess, but that is not a reason for deletion. Perhaps merge it with a list of smallest and largest towns and cities in the UK to form a List of largest and smallest villages, towns and cities in the United Kingdom or something (I'm sure someone could find a better title than that!). Thryduulf (talk) 19:22, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That would be brilliant, once there is an agreed definition to distinguish villages and towns, and an agreed measure of size (surface area, population, aggregate mass of population etc). I have a rather large hamlet. pablo hablo. 19:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't see what number of claimants has got to do with it. If anything, if there were only three genuine bona fide claimants, that list would be worth more to an encyclopoedia imo than a list that only exists because a bazillion places claim the title, because it is essentially meaningless. Mergeing wouldn't fix the inherent pointlessness, it just makes it another article's problem. MickMacNee (talk) 19:42, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The trouble is that the majority of settlements listed on the page have nothing to show for the claim other than the fact that a wikipedian said so once. Those that do have a claim appear to be little more than incidental mentions in articles, usually a local paper. If this article must stay (and I still don't think there's any non-trivial coverage to warrant this), the article will need to be fundamentally re-written as a list of settlements claiming to be the largest village in England, with the list whittled down to only those settlements whose claims have been covered in reliable independent sources, as per the general notability guideline. Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 19:48, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep -- The article raises a number of POV issues, but that is inevitable due to the nature of the subject. The problem is that there is no clear answer to "What is a village?".  The article is not (as alleged) wholely unreferenced as population figures are taken from 2001 census.  The question is an intersting one, and the article fairly sets out the various claims.  I am not convinced by the cities and towns sections: these would be better having separate articles.  The smallest village would be particularly difficult, as there were a handful of parishes with no population.  There must be several with just one farm.  How few houses do you need to make it a village?  Peterkingiron (talk) 18:18, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - article has sources, thereby meeting general notability guidelines, and describes a legitimate topic that is covered. Sure, it may need cleanup. The best way to deal with this is to add a cleanup tag and the rest is up to future editing. Sebwite (talk) 04:00, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It has about two reliable sources, for single claims only. The rest are extremely amatuer websites. There are no sources that I saw that cover the topic itself. MickMacNee (talk) 11:58, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep It can be empirically observed that if there is no definition of village, then defining villages is problematic. To talk -about- such problems in an article is not original research. To talk -about- the fact that there is no accepted definition of village is not the same as stating a definition of village when there is no accepted consensus. Statements that the article is faulty because such and such a village does not belong in the article, however, -are- original research (for what that is worth, as they are outside of mainspace), as their criteria are not generally accepted. They are falling foul of the problem itself, blind to the lesson given in the very article. Is it really the business of those for whom a little knowledge is a dangerous thing to see to it which knowledge is presented by Wikipedia? Anarchangel (talk) 22:34, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Wha? We don't have articles such as Discussion of the vagueness of the definition of a village in the UK. At best, and if it could ever be sourced, that constitutes barely a paragraph or two in village. This article purports to be a list of the largest villages, and as you seem to recognise I think, its actually pretty pointless doing that. MickMacNee (talk) 05:40, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Try entering 'The problem of' into the search field. Need it be said that you are inventing an agenda for the article? I would be happy to assist with a title that matches its content more fully, such as perhaps 'Claims to the title of largest village in England' or 'Defining the largest village in England'. The article attempts to rise above and stay neutral in the matter: "This title is essentially a meaningless one, as it cannot be verified because of the lack of a common definition of a village, the absence of any particular benefits associated with the status, and the vagueness of 'largest' (population or area?)". It is not the article that is irrelevant, because of the lack of a definition of village. It is the disputes over which 'village' is largest that are irrelevant. The article is quite clear in showing this. Showing an irrelevance is not in itself irrelevant. I really can't make it any clearer than that. Anarchangel (talk) 13:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Since when did querying an unsourced claim constitute original research? Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 13:24, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * See your (perhaps unintentional) straw man, and raise you a specific argument. I was not referring to anything you wrote, if that is what you were thinking. Rather, I was referring to the nominator's "...given the fact we have Fordwich and Manningtree, both smaller than any village on the list and both claiming to be towns, I have to say...", which utterly misses the point of the article. Anarchangel (talk) 13:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep It is an interesting geographical article for English village statistics. Ricky@36 (talk) 13:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * 1. See WP:INTERESTING. 2. There is not a shred of evidence in the article that this is a complete work, so its value for statistics purposes is utterly useless. Maybe you have confused it with a proper list of villages ranked by population, but this article quite clearly is not that. MickMacNee (talk) 15:55, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I prefer "keep" but the most important is to provide reference notes for the data Ricky@36 (talk) 04:08, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Suggestion. Since 1) most of the keep !votes seem to be based on keeping sourced information, 2) Most of the verifiable information is on what a village actually is (and not that much on what the largest village is) and 3) we don't have any other articles about villages in England or the UK, would it make sense to move this to an article about villages in the UK/England and include the few source claims to largest village in that article? Chris Neville-Smith (talk) 07:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep but Rename. For example, Large villages in England. --AuthorityTam (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2009 (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.