Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional counties (3rd nomination)


 * 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. Given that the first AfD was 12 years ago (a lot has changed about our view of notability since then) and the second one had far smaller participation than this one, I didn't give much weight to, "we've already kept this twice" arguments. But, even with that, I still can't quite get to a consensus for deletion. Basically, the delete side is saying this is poorly sourced trivia/cruft, and the keep side says this is a useful navigation aide and the sourcing is sufficient to meet WP:NLIST. Some people suggested a merge, but others argued that you can't merge unsourced material. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:27, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

List of fictional counties
AfDs for this article: 
 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

A completely reasonable redirect to Fictional location, proposed earlier by was reverted by. The content here is trivial and unverified, with the majority of entries having no independent notability and certainly no secondary sourcing. Drmies (talk) 14:47, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 14:55, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 14:55, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. 7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 12:01, 31 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete Possible sockpuppetry involved in this page's current status aside (who on earth is !?), this page is nothing but unsourced fancruft. In the previous AFD there were only four keep !votes, of which two were classic ILIKEIT and a third was HELIKESITANDIAGREE, which IMO is "No consensus" at best. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 15:15, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hijiri88, this is not the place for casting aspersions and making vague accusations of sockpuppeting. Either go to ANI with that, or drop it here. Do not make any such accusations, or you will be the one at ANI. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you were the one behind that super-suspicious account that kept reverting me, or if it was someone else, or if it was just some new user engaged in extremely questionable behaviour. The latter seems quite unlikely. Either way, I was not the one to bring up the possibility that you were the one who reverted my redirecting of the article, and I don't appreciate you choosing to go out of your way for the sole purpose of making this personal -- when a suspicious new account has been the article's sole defender for the better part of a year, that is very relevant when it comes to AFD. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 16:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment: The AfD discussion was less than two years ago and was a unanimous Keep. — Toughpigs (talk) 15:16, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * An AFD cannot, by definition, be a "unanimous Keep". If we threw out the weird ILIKEIT and HELIKESITANDIAGREE comments, it was at best 1 for deletion and 1 for keeping. Add me onto that pro-delete count (I was aware of the AFD at the time but stayed away because one of the ILIKEIT !voters was engaged in a harassment campaign against me at the time and I decided not to stoke the flames by chiming in) and that's 2-1 in favour of deletion/redirecting. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 16:23, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep as per previous AfD. Also please refresh your familiarity with WP:LISTN and our accepted practice for notability of lists and particularly the sourcing requirements of bluelinks in list articles. No-one is against adding sources here, especially not for the entries which aren't linked. But this is no reason to delete the whole article. Nor is it an excuse, per WP:PRESERVE, for the immediate blanking of all the unlinked items. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:29, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Your arguments are a bit yawn-inducing, so I'll respond with an equally yawn-inducing truism: redirection is not deletion. Feel free to work on an actual article in your userspace. Drmies (talk) 15:51, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Bluelinks? There's only a dozen in there. PRESERVE is really just another excuse. If you want this preserved, do the work. Drmies (talk) 15:55, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete - These kinds of lists are very ill-defined for inclusion criteria and full of trivial information. The potential to list fictional items is near infinite. If you reduce it to actual articles, then you're left with a tiny, pointless list. TTN (talk) 17:57, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * "ill-defined for inclusion criteria "?  "fictional counties" seems pretty clear to me. Which ones do you think are dubious? And why would such dubious entries (if they exist) affect the list overall?
 * "full of trivial information" Such as?
 * " If you reduce it to actual articles" So you're claiming that the county of Midsomer needs to go, because the article is on the TV series of Midsomer Murders instead? Do you doubt that Midsomer, a fictional county, is actually part of that? Andy Dingley (talk) 18:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * In terms of what is included in the article, there is no established threshold. Is it all fictional counties? Is it fictional counties mentioned in a reliable source? Is it fictional counties mentioned in a blue link series? Is it blue links only? In terms of fiction, blue links only seems to be the only objective criteria of importance. Otherwise, you have an unwieldy, near infinite list. Trivial information is that which does not fit an established inclusion threshold, so, in my opinion, most of this list. TTN (talk) 18:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about inclusion criteria? (which are obvious) notability criteria? (which don't matter, that's fundamental for our list practice) or else verifiability? Now, yes, WP:V does require us to achieve verifiability for anything challenged (nothing here has been challenged, just a handwave to delete the whole list). But none of the entries here look particularly dubious or challengeable, nearly all are bluelinked to a fictional work (for which we've long accepted transitive sourcing on list articles) and there is no reason why the particular county has to itself be a bluelink. If sourcing presents itself, everyone would welcome that being added. If there are any which actually appear doubtful, then challenge them (still waiting...).  Andy Dingley (talk) 20:20, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * We need to establish inclusion criteria before anything else can be discussed. Do you think that any county that appears in a blue link work on Wikipedia should be listed? I think that's way too broad, but it gives us a starting point for discussion. TTN (talk) 20:56, 23 March 2020 (UTC)


 * KEEP Eight blue link to actual articles, the other blue links just redirects. So its a valid list article, it aids in navigation.  Any entry that is not notable enough to have its own article or a significant amount about it in another article, can be removed.   D r e a m Focus  19:12, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete. Another laundry list of bare mentions, only a select few have articles (and their own notability is questionable). Ajf773 (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete Merely containing a few blue links is not sufficient to "aid in navigation", needs to demonstrate that people need to navigate from one fictional county to another. We get it, authors, filmmakers, TV writers, playwrights, etc make fictional characters who have fictional jobs in fictional places including fictional towns, counties, and countries. But there's no relationship between these places nor coverage of the significance of fictional counties as a whole. Reywas92Talk 21:36, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge and redirect to Fictional location, but just the handful of notable entries: Wessex, Barsetshire, Yoknapatawpha County and a few others, i.e. those that are the setting for multiple major works by important writers. There aren't enough of those for a standalone list IMO. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep We've already discussed this twice before and the result was Keep both times. Starting a third discussion is vexatious per WP:DELAFD, "It can be disruptive to repeatedly nominate a page in the hope of getting a different outcome."  The suggested alternative of fictional location seems quite poor, having but one source and little content for such an ambitious scope.  The page in question is better established, better sourced and better structured.  If it works, don't fix it. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:17, 24 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It doesn't work, so get rid of it. Seriously, Mallardshire? Clarityfiend (talk) 06:51, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * We've already discussed this twice before and the result was Keep both times The first result was more than a decade ago and the second needs to be disregarded as a "keep" result (as opposed to a "no consensus" result) because it was a 4-1 !vote-count and ... well, I was forced to stay away due to James500's harassment, Drmies apparently didn't know about it at the time (my feelings on these kinds of "articles" were picked up from him, not vice-versa, so he definitely would have supported deletion if he had been there), James500 hadn't "retired" in order to avoid a deletion TBAN yet, and one of the others just said he agreed with you. Even disregarding all the other factors, those variable factors reversed, it would have been at least 3-2 in favour of deletion, and you know that (despite WP:PNSD) if someone ignored a 3-2 vote-count favouring keep by refusing to simply count votes and closing as delete anyway, you would immediately file a DRV claiming either that a 3-2 majority means the result should be keep or that such a vote split should default to "no consensus". Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 13:18, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * You are correct that the first AfD is no longer relevant. However, your suggestion that we should disregard the second AfD because, among other reasons, you did not participate... yeah, that's laughable. While I strongly disagree with Andrew's claim that this is discussion is vexatious -- more than enough time has elapsed since the lone still-relevant AfD -- we are not in the business of reinterpreting how prior discussions might have gone in a hypothetical scenario. The prior discussion is valid and not binding, and this discussion should have been opened before anyone tried to redirect the article. L EPRICAVARK ( talk ) 19:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep. I'm afraid I can see absolutely no reason to delete this article. It meets all the criteria for lists. -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * What about all the reasons already given? The near-complete lack of sourcing? The fact that no reliable sources actually discuss the concept of "fictional counties"? The fact that such a concept doesn't actually exist, since "county" is a vague term used in a variety of different real-world countries to mean any number of types of administrative or other divisions? I've seen the Japanese word gun translated "county" and I'm sure there are plenty of Japanese fictional works that describe fictional gun, but they would not have anything in common with either the American or Brythono-Irish counties currently listed in the article. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 13:18, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Which are, strangely enough, called counties in English! I see no counties on the list that are not called counties in English. So your point seems utterly irrelevant, frankly. As to sourcing, published works are sources in their own right. We don't need another source to tell us that something is included in a published work. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Which are, strangely enough, called counties in English! I see no counties on the list that are not called counties in English. ...did you not understand my comment? My point was precisely that since just about everything can be called a county in English, the inclusion criteria are meaningless. (Also, per the recent edit history, the definition of "fictional" also seems to be in dispute, further undermining the inclusion criteria.) Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 15:20, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I did understand your comment, thank you for being patronising. My point is that while many things may be called a county in translation, this list only includes entities that are called counties in English. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:47, 27 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete - From the looks of it, this is intended to be a list of all fictional counties (?!), i.e. WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Definite WP:LISTN/WP:SALAT problems, given unclear inclusion criteria (unless it really is all). Not a source in the bunch, making it a fandom collection of trivia. Lists don't always have to include only notable examples, but most absolutely should, and there needs to be a good reason why we would include all of something (like those reasons in WP:CSC, but certainly not arbitrary whims of the editors absent any sourcing at all). &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 14:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Note One of the "keep" !voters has been engaging in pretty blatant counter-policy edit(-warr)ing on the article itself. This is not an argument for deletion in itself, but it does gel with their apparent lack of understanding of policy demonstrated in their activity in this AFD. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 00:05, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Definition of "fictional"? You have insisted (in the edit summary of the second diff above) that an entry on a placeholder county name used in security simulations belongs on the list because it is "invented". This seems like a questionable inclusion criterion -- every other entry on the list appears to be a non-existent administrative region referred to as a "county" in a work of fiction. If the list has flimsy inclusion criteria like that it can include placeholder names used in real-world simulations, of entities referred to by the already-vague term "county", then that surely counts as an argument against the article itself being kept, as its inclusion criteria are so broad as to be meaningless, no?
 * Moreover, you argued in both the above edit summaries that it belongs in the list because it is "sourced", but hardly any of the other entries (most of which actually are about legit fictional locations!) are sourced -- are you saying that the entries that haven't been covered in reliable secondary sources should be removed?
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 04:56, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Hijiri, I have asked you repeatedly to stop making personal comment on editors rather than on the article or the merits of the AfD. "your slimy indirect harassment". Your reply that to that was another sheer ad hominem.
 * As to the issue here, these are fictional counties, i.e. ones which have been invented for some creative reason, rather than based on concrete geography. We do not filter as to why they were invented. We have novels, TV series, and in two cases the military use of "Redland" vs. "Blueland", except at the county level.
 * Given your past 3RR blanking of the whole article here, last time you tried to delete it you should avoid edit-warring deletions again. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:27, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * ANI As you have persisted in attacking other editors, rather than discussing the AfD, the inevitable AfD filing:
 * Information icon4.svg There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Hijiri88 and PAs at AfD. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:58, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * (1) I'm not going to respond to this repeated attempt to make this personal, except to acknowledge that it exists.
 * (2) That's ... not even the dictionary definition of fictional. If that is your criterion for inclusion, then the redirect should be restored or the article deleted, and everyone agreeing with you on this should be ashamed of themselves for such a blatant violation of our content policies.
 * (3) Yeah, I'm the one who's personalizing this... That's the ticket...
 * (4) Personalizing and overreacting. That's cool, I guess. You wanna focus on content?
 * Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや ) 15:13, 26 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Restore redirect- per Clarityfiend. The current content is indiscriminate fancruft and since there is virtually no sourced content there is nothing that can be merged anywhere. Reyk YO! 10:02, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete / restore redirect. While I sympathise with AD's arguments, the sheer lack of third-party, independent sources for most of these makes this little more than an indscriminate list of possibles. While some of these locations might be article-worthy (e.g.), most of the others are of a pretty much use-once-and-discard variety. ——  SN  54129  12:31, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect in the light of the pre-existing, recent consensus to keep this article, it should not have been redirected without discussion and Andy was correct to restore the article. However, now that we are here, I'm afraid I don't see much that's worth keeping. This does not appear to be a notable topic. The fact that the vast majority of the listed counties are not independently notable does not help me to see why we need a list here. It's certainly not worth a drawn-out fight between established editors. L EPRICAVARK ( talk ) 19:53, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep For reasons we've twice before discussed and the result was Keep both times. Perfectly reasonable and useful list.  WP:Preserve WP:Not paper  WP:Before  7&amp;6=thirteen (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 21:46, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per our longstanding WP:LISTN guideline. Also Dream Focus points to the many blue links in the article which also supports the navigation aspect of LISTN. Previous AfDs on this list have resulted in keep both in 2007 and 2018, making this nomination somewhat vexatious. Lightburst (talk) 21:54, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect or even outright Delete. About the laziest, worthless, unsourced collection of cruft imaginable. That a few of the entries have enough level of detail to (possibly) justify standalone articles doesn't justify this list. --Calton &#124; Talk 00:02, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep per Andy Dingley, Dream Focus, and Andrew and the second AFD discussion that occurred fairly recently. — <b style="color:#C0C0C0">Hunter</b> <b style="color:#595454">Kahn</b> 04:15, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Weak keep The Delete/Redirect arguments above are reasonable. However, it has been upheld fairly recently (in July 2018 — around the same time as the similar List of fictional towns and villages) without the need for trimming. In its current state, it is well-defined (see County), has enough significant and accurately evaluated entries, contains no original research, and is not wholly indiscriminate, unlike those that got deleted. –<b style="color:#77b">Laundry</b><b style="color:#fb0">Pizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 06:39, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * keep The list is not unsourced (4 sources), and several of these counties have articles in their own right. Dimadick (talk) 10:36, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment 5 8 11 sources. WP:Preserve.  No compliance with WP:Before Fictional locations is an overweaning category, and is not as well sourced as this article.  Fictional cities, villages and counties are not fungible goods.  This article and its list of fictional counties is useful to our readers.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 11:38, 31 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete Insufficient sources supporting notability of the grouping (as required by WP:LISTN). Cheers, 1292simon (talk)
 * Keep - great lead/introduction, useful list, enough sources to show notability. Bearian (talk) 12:39, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep – the content is of general interest, and most of the entries are sourced by references to the works of fiction in which they appear. ---Ehrenkater (talk) 15:32, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Merge prose to Lists of fictional locations because per WP:NOTESAL, this topic has not been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. This is a critical foundation to make the topic remain in perpetuity. I have tried to research for such sources but have essentially found Faulkner's county, and to a lesser extent, Hardy's. The lead section should be merged to the aforementioned article (and more section headings and summary sections created for the other categories). I oppose deletion because if sources discussing this as a group or set do appear at some point, per WP:NOTESAL, those in these groups and sets can be complemented with individual items that have been noted in secondary sources. Erik (talk &#124; contrib) (ping me) 15:37, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Redirect or delete per above comments and nom. It doesn't meet LISTN, and it's indiscriminate cruft violating NOT. Also just because it was kept at AFDs two and ten years ago doesn't mean there is anything wrong with renominating, contrary to the arguments made by ARS block voters. Levivich&thinsp;<sup style="white-space:nowrap;">[dubious – discuss] 17:14, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Name calling and Argumentum ad hominem. I won't descend to your level, or resort to that.  Your record at AFD discussions truly Res ipsa loquitur.  <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 17:21, 31 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Redirect or delete. The topic of the list doesn't have sufficient notability.Scribolt (talk) 17:31, 31 March 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.