Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of short place names


 * 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. Cirt (talk) 07:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

List of short place names

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  )

Non-encyclopedic. Wikipedia isn't a collection of internal links. See WP:SALAT for more. Also nominating List of long place names for the same reason. ~DC Talk To Me 23:54, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 00:10, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete these items have an indiscriminate thing in common. there is nothing that relates them other than a short name, which in and of itself is not notable. like "list of cereals whose names contain at least 3 consonants". its interesting, but not encyclopedic.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 00:54, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment: long place names needs a separate afd, i think. that one is even more clear cut. you can set an arbitrary cut off for short names as either 1, 2, 3, or 4 letters, or whatever.subject is still a list organized by an unimportant quality. but what qualifies as long? 12 letters, 10, 20, 100? each language may have standards about what is a long name or word. long is a judgement, like "interesting" or "unusual". the list is fascinating but both indiscriminate and impossible to define, thus unencyclopedic. Mercurywoodrose (talk) 00:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment: perhaps the two articles could be merged (List of longest and shortest placenames)? ~Asarlaí 01:55, 10 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete. This is trivial and impossible to define.  JBsupreme (talk) 05:24, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep both And fix inclusion criteria to have longest/shortest place name by country, with WP:RS, of course.  Lugnuts  (talk) 09:27, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep The nomination does not have a leg to stand on:  "unencyclopedic" is just begging the question and the reference to WP:LINKFARM is inappropriate as lists of this sort are specifically exempted.  The topics are evidently notable - see the book Limits of language, for example.  And there has been no attempt to engage with the topics by discussion at their talk pages which is contrary to our deletion process. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:17, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep I guess that "non-encyclopedic" in this instance is a synonym for "crap that shouldn't be in an encyclopedia", and yet this type of thing turns up in reference books anyway. The nominator is right that this is unsourced, for which there is no excuse, but I've seen these in The Book of Lists and what used to be called the "Information Please Almanac".  People have been writing and reading about unusual place names since the days of H.L. Mencken.  This is an example of where one can objectively describe what makes the name "unusual", with the measure being based on one or two letters in the name.  The reason that someone would consult Wikipedia would be to verify whether there really is such a place as "Å".  Mandsford (talk) 15:55, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep per Mandsford and Colonel Warden. "Unencyclopedic" means nothing unless it is backed up by policy. The list for sure requires better inclusion criteria and some sourcing, but not deletion. -- Cycl o pia talk  18:52, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep the first - "Non-encyclopedic" is just another word for "I don't like it." If a comprehensive, online encyclopedia is not the place for a list of one-and two-lettered real places, then I don't know what is.  Places are inherently notable, and non-random lists of such would thus be notable.  The nomination neither cites direct policy, nor explains logically why it should be eliminated.  This is precisely the sort of thing our core constituency, students at high school and college, would need here, and is commonly kept here by consensus.  Not sure about the second list, which is subjective. Bearian (talk) 19:51, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete. Where are the sources about these short place names? The one Colonel Warden supplies certainly doesn't pass any interpretation of WP:N. The fact that some sources consider very short place names (or very long ones) as unusual is already mentioned in Place names considered unusual, where more info can be included. But this is insufficient to have a separate list for subjects which share only a minor, inconsequential characteristic (the length of the placename has no relation to the actual village, apart from those one or two extremely long ones luring tourists by that amusing characteristic). Fram (talk) 08:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The source I provided is written by an academic linguist and has a section entitled, "Long and short place-names" which covers our topic. Q.E.D.  Colonel Warden (talk) 08:59, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * According to the link you provided, it has a section "common place names", and that is the only page the text "short place names" can be found. Fram (talk) 09:19, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The sources will/should be in the articles themselves.  Lugnuts  (talk) 09:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The facts are as I have stated. You have to use quotation marks to get Google Books to show you the section title in a snippet view and such quotation marks do not seem compatible with our link syntax.  For an example of a source whose content is more visible, please see The Rotarian.  It is possible to find such such in just a minute of searching.  Deletion of articles without making such searches is improper as it violates both our deletion and editing policies. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:26, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It's more visible, yes, but it is hardly "significant" (is the official Rotary publication even a reliablesource for non-Rotary related info?). One line, plus five examples, three of which are not even in our list (T.B., OK, and Ai). Amusing trivia, nothing more. Google books has three books that may contain a similar very short section on short place names (the one you gave above, a book by Julius Nicholas Hook (only about the US though) and Ripley's Believe it or Not. Google Scholar has nothing. So neither the sources presented by others or the ones I could find are sufficient as a justification for this list. Fram (talk) 12:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep as per Colonel Warden and Bearian. I don't see this information anywhere else online (existent pages are copies of this one) and it's not the easiest thing to find in the library. It is encyclopedic, it's not available elsewhere. Does each entry need to be cited if it links to an article that is properly cited? Longest names should be a different article; it's a different linguistic phenomenon with language-specific information. --Sainge.spin (talk) 03:38, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The difficulty of finding it elsewhere isn't really a valid reason. WP:ITSUSEFUL  ~DC  Talk To Me 03:58, 15 January 2010 (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.