Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of regions of Mexico


 * 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. The controlling policy here is WP:V. Content that cannot be verified in reliable sources mus be deleted from Wikipedia. As the nomination points out, and none of the "keep" opinions rebuts, neither the list article nor the articles about the individual regions contain references to reliable sources establishing that these regions exist as such. In other words, we can't determine whether these regions are not just original research by the creator(s) of the articles. Deletion is therefore required by policy. The outcome is however applied only to the list, because the AfD tags have been removed by the nominator from the individual articles.  Sandstein  16:19, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

List of regions of Mexico

 * – ( View AfD View log  Stats )

Not an official administrative subdivision of Mexico. Furthermore no evidence of colloquial use with any set definition. Zero references since the inception of the article in 2011. Kippenvlees1 (talk) 13:25, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:05, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:05, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Mexico-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:05, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

I have added the following region articles to this nomination (see below): — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mangoe (talk • contribs)


 * And yet it would seem to complement Category:Regions of Mexico per WP:CLN. Moreover, Category:Regions by continent and country shows this to be a very common categorization scheme. And there is the massive navbox Template:Regions of the world, where regions like this are again grouped. It's not for us to decide how readers may best find articles -- it's up to them. Keep per CLN. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:09, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Due to the lack of sources, this feels hugely like WP:OR. It's indeed not up to us how readers may best find articles, but categorisations need to be valid ones. There are plenty of valid articles already in Category:Regions of Mexico, like Mexican Plateau and Yucatán Peninsula. As long as nothing on the page is verifiable, I don't think we should offer it on our encyclopedia. - Kippenvlees1 (talk) 15:43, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * If it's verifiable whether an article belongs in Category:Regions of Mexico, why wouldn't it be verifiable whether it belongs in List of regions of Mexico? postdlf (talk) 17:22, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The big verification problem seems to be whether there are well defined "regions" of Mexico. None of the articles on the regions themselves seems to point to an authoritative list outside of WP. Mangoe (talk) 21:14, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * So long as the articles exist we should list (and categorize) them by what they are. We don't need an "authoritative list" if we can verify the existence of each article topic separately (e.g., has Northwestern Mexico been described as a distinctive region by reliable sources, etc.). And with such a large, geographically diverse, and historic country one would expect there to be notable regions that are both officially recognized and those that are unofficial only, with different borders or definitions depending on the purpose or standards applied at different times, just as there are in its northern neighbor ("Mexico has no regions" is a laughable statement, so it's a good thing you didn't make it). postdlf (talk) 22:59, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * This is a keep, in case that's not clear. postdlf (talk) 16:21, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep It functions as a list of articles on regions of Mexico. The regions are notable (maybe with a couple of exceptions). "Region" (or its Spanish equivalent) may not be a term with a legal meaning in Mexico, but it's easily understandable by English-speaking people, and as a common descriptive term is a valid article title per WP:TITLE. It's verifiable if something is a region in the generic sense that we can establish if something is a named area of Mexico. You could attempt to define more rigid criteria if you like, but nothing alters the fact that this is a list of entities which most people would believe naturally belong together. MOS:LIST is purposefully vague about what belongs in a list, and what the function of a list might be, but this fits naturally into the idea that a list can be for navigation, such as an index or outline. --Colapeninsula (talk) 14:16, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
 * question Can anyone come up with some authority showing that this division into regions is real thing? Our articles, lists, and maps show it as a definite organizational level in which each state is assigned to a particular region, and the regions themselves follow the state borders. Having looked a couple of the articles, I see no evidence that this is so: the one reference that seems to be missing in every case is to some external authority which reproduces the list we have here. Without that, the whole scheme seems questionable and subject to deletion. Mangoe (talk) 15:21, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
 * That's a content issue, not a deletion one; a question of how but not whether we should list our articles on regions of Mexico. I suggest WT:MEXICO for answers if you're finding the individual articles also not clear. postdlf (talk) 14:09, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * The question is, "are these real?", to which the answer, were it "no", would bring about the consequence of deletion. I will go to the project in search of answers, and on some level I suppose this is going to be dealt with on a strictly procedural basis and the category kept for now. But the lack of curiosity is a problem in itself, and we aren't going to "improve" matters by carefully cataloging the spurious. Mangoe (talk) 15:41, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * If your position is "all the articles listed here or included in Category:Regions of Mexico should be deleted because there aren't any regions of Mexico", then yes, that conclusion would be beyond the scope of this AFD. And that position, and your complaint about "definite organizational level", would suggest that you've failed to look at this list below the first header titled "cardinal directions". Again, whatever issue you have with the accuracy of that section is a content issue that isn't relevant to whether the list as a whole should be deleted. I'd also suggest you satisfy your curiosity not by focusing on the current state of the articles, but even just by doing some basic googling before proceeding further; Britannica, for example, notes that "Mexico can be divided into nine major physiographic regions", and, under the header "cultural regions", that "Specific cultural areas have evolved in Mexico because of differences in physical environment, ethnicity, and settlement histories, and few of the regions correspond exactly with the country’s physiographic regions." postdlf (talk) 16:16, 29 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong delete. Obviously there's no cited source at all and that is sufficient for deleting this article.  Clicking through a couple of the linked 'cultural resources' shows individual towns without much cultural material to be found, which is dubious.  The list of ecoregions seems a bit better until we click on List of ecoregions in Mexico, which doesn't match up at all, which is another sign of trouble.  More deeply I'm afraid that  has this exactly right.  We have been "carefully cataloging the spurious".  In multiple articles, templates, lists, maps and categories, wikipedia is using an eight-part regional division of Mexico which is... entirely fictitious.  It appears to have been invented by wikipedia editors around the middle of 2009.  If anybody can point to any source at all I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. --Lockley (talk) 06:09, 30 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Expanding the nomination: Based on the discussion above, and on looking at the history of these articles and their Spanish Wikipedia equivalents, it appears that this system of regions is something User:TownDown made up one day over in the Spanish side: some years later User:Hpav7 apparently unwarily copied these into English. There is also a Regiones de México article which is the apparent equivalent to our list article. Hpav7 seems to have gone more or less inactive about three years back; TownDown was blocked on several Wikis and eventually globally for edit-warring and sockpuppetry. The whole thing has spread over various languages who also unwarily copied the Spanish articles. If you look at these you can see that the references don't support this division— where there are references at all. Surely regional boundaries don't so neatly follow state lines on an official (looking) map, to the degree that people think of regions at all. Anyway, it's time for someone, if this is to be kept, to come up with authoritative sources. Mangoe (talk) 16:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment - According to this book, northeastern Mexico is made of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas (pg. 88). I can find individual sources saying that Tamaulipas is in the "northeast", but from my understanding this is not an official division (not that that is a requirement). ComputerJA ( ☎  •  ✎  ) 18:30, 30 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Of course we can have, and should have, a list-article on regions of Mexico.  It is not a tiny place with no notable neighborhoods (which was a valid argument in AFD about a list of neighborhoods in some small Mexican (or Guatemalan?) town a while back).  There exists Category:Regions of Mexico.  See WP:CLN, which roughly is about the fact that if we have a category, then we can have a list-article;  they are complementary. -- do  ncr  am  22:27, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, can we please read the nominations? The presenting issue is that the division into regions-as-distinct-groups-of-states appears to be a notion that appeared on WP first, as the creation of a single user. Nobody is denying that people may think of some regions or other of Mexico, but the way it's presented here is extremely dubious. The category and list depend upon the region articles; indeed, the latter stands in for the overall article in the Spanish WP, so as far as I'm concerned it needs justification in its own right. Mangoe (talk) 23:12, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Can you please read the whole list, the whole corresponding category, and read the whole discussion? Even assuming the eight region articles you've tacked on to this nomination above all merit deletion (about which I have no opinion, as I don't read Spanish), that doesn't take care of the whole list nor its potential; just the "cardinal directions" section. The solution then is to edit this list to remove anything that doesn't belong. Use a scalpel, not a wrecking ball. postdlf (talk) 00:05, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd also say that adding eight articles to a nomination already over five days old is not the best practice for clear discussion and results. Particularly where the articles and the originally nominated list are related but not mutually dependent. You should strike it out and nominate them separately. postdlf (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Too bureaucratic. Assuming the deletions go through, we will then have to repeat this. Mangoe (talk) 02:08, 31 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Procedural close without prejudice to an immediate relisting. The edits to this AfD by have basically rendered this AfD null and void. How is anyone meant to judge a consensus when you - who aren't even the original nominator - have added another 8 articles to this AfD at such a late stage? Exemplo347 (talk) 20:16, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
 * It should be a straight keep on the list, as that part of the nomination has had full discussion, but procedural close regarding the added articles. postdlf (talk) 01:36, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment In this edit, editor Mangoe "reverted" by deleting their addition of 8 articles, and deleted comments by several editors. I reverted that edit.  Hey, I'm not sure what's going on, but it seems possible Mangoe that you want to strike stuff, but don't delete others' edits and don't simply remove stuff which disconnects others' comments from making sense.  It may be that Mangoe is right about something fundamentally here, I am not sure, and it may be that process is bureaucratic, but we have to follow some process to eventually get somewhere. -- do  ncr  am  21:01, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
 * to hell with it It was bad enough to do this all once; I'm not doing it twice. Keep the stupid category, for all I care. Mangoe (talk) 21:04, 2 June 2017 (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.