Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Monroe, Kansas (2nd 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. and none likely to emerge as it has been nearly a month. Consensus around these places is currently clear as mud. Star  Mississippi  02:08, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Monroe, Kansas
AfDs for this article:


 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Nothing has changed about this except our understanding of the sources and the situation. This is still nothing more than a 4th class post office established in a no longer extant building, with the usual evidences thereof. I will not be surprised if evidence is produced of people "from" Monroe, or things "near" Monroe, but when it comes down to it GNIS no longer lists this place, and I really must insist on direct evidence of a "settlement" before acceding to the existence of this place as a notable thing. Mangoe (talk) 18:09, 12 February 2022 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Less Unless (talk) 07:59, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * ) When the GNIS website was overhauled within the last year, it appears they removed ghost towns from the GNIS database. Just because we can't currently see that information doesn't automatically mean the community didn't exist in the prior GNIS database.  Recently, I have been updating GNIS links for communities in western Kansas (working my way eastward), thus I'm very much aware of this problem. Some obvious notable ghost towns with plenty of other sources were removed from the GNIS list too.  I haven't contacted GNIS yet to ask if they plan to restore this information, but it is on my TODO list.
 * ) The google satellite view shows a nearby "Monroe Cemetery", which is enough proof for me this community likely existed.
 * KEEP • Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 18:29, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The database entry record 482325 said "locale". That does not mean a community.  Please read the GNIS feature class definitions.  "locale" in record 482325 gave zero support from the database for a claim of a settlement, and a "ghost town" has not been removed, since the database record wasn't supporting the claim of a ghost town in the first place.  It was claiming a "locale" and it even tagged it as "(historical)" Uncle G (talk) 22:28, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * GNIS deletes a whole load of dubious locations and this doesn't cause any doubts in your mind that these places may not have actually existed? FOARP (talk) 08:53, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Also, the presence of a cemetery says nothing about the character of the place where those buried lived. Mangoe (talk) 05:20, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 18:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Kansas-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 18:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * keep subject meets WP:GEOLAND. see discussion at previous AFD. The nominator states that the only thing that has changed is "our understanding of the sources and the situation" but doesn't provide what actually has changed or its impact.  Since nothing else has changed, the previous outcome should stand.  Notability is not temporary.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:07, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Wider knowledge of the Reliability of GNIS data is what has changed since 2018. Uncle G (talk) 22:28, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The from 1871–1886, and Lippincott's from the time says:
 * Lippincott's says "post-village" or "post-hamlet" for settlements. "post-office" means no more than just a post-office.  This puts the lie to "is a ghost town".  It never was a town, and no source supports this being a settlement of any kind. Uncle G (talk) 23:51, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There was an operating post office there from 1871 to 1886, and the school district operated from 1873 until 1939. It's a place of note for history.--Paul McDonald (talk) 01:56, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Except that it isn't. If it were, people would be pointing to the history books that it is noted in, like Elizabeth N. Barr's History of Lincoln County, Kansas, which doesn't. Uncle G (talk) 09:28, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete - Since when have post offices been automatically notable? GNIS is also not reliable for whether a place is populated or not - and especially GNIS NEVER had a designation for "ghost towns". There is no actual evidence cited here of the existence of "ghost town" which is what this article is supposed to be about. If people want to make this article about the school district, well, they should go ahead and do so (though there's no coverage really of it), but the existence of a school district does not automatically mean there was a community with the same name. Schools can be anywhere, even outside a community. Obviously Google Maps is not a reliable source, and a cemetery does not automatically presuppose the existence of a community. I feel we're in the same situation we've been in on a few of these, with Keep !voters simply asserting that a community exists or existed based on zero actual evidence of an actual community. If there was or is a community, rather than disparate farms that used a particular post office, then that should be easy to evidence and we shouldn't be using things like the name of a cemetery on Google maps, or the existence of a school district at one point, to demonstrate it. You would expect, as an absolute minimum, reliable and independent coverage about that community in local press. FOARP (talk) 08:44, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Changed to On the fence based on the report of the place having been made an official township at some point (though it's not clear whether this was followed though on). FOARP (talk) 17:23, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That detail is provided below and in the article itself.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:40, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep: I've made some additions including the history of the school, and added an 1883 county map which lists Monroe. I've never been a fan of the mechanical way we seem to use "ghost town" nowadays.  Monroe is probably best described as a former rural community.  Due to the school and post office it had a rural identity as a community separate from other areas, thus the existence of the cemetery and mentions of weddings, funerals, and people residing in Monroe primarily in the 1870s and 1880s.  There's enough to support the existence of this community sufficient to have an article.  I think my view of notability for these articles is more broad than the nominator, who does do good work finding the ones that are truly not notable.  I usually leave those AFDs alone.  Btw, for any interested article creators, I discovered that Abram, Kansas was the original county seat in Lincoln County.--Milowent • hasspoken  17:49, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
 * No, it is not enough. These are all still establishing locations, but none of them say anything about Monroe itself. They are all consistent with it being a 4th class post office and nothing more. Mangoe (talk) 05:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I have to point out that the statement "none of them say anything about Monroe itself" is completely untrue. There are multiple sources providing details and many but not all of those details are in the article. This reference alone contains details, names, and locations of three separate civic events that took place in a short period of time including agreement to float a bond and also mentions the "citizens of Monroe" -- both indicators that the people in the area considered this a community at the time.  While this source is cheesy by modern standards, it shows that there was some kind of interest in the community and multiple families.  And this source provides historical details of the school district including prominent names of individuals in the area.  Other sources include details about its phsysical location and surroundiung terrain.  So YES we have details about Monroe itself.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:36, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Review of the sources:
 * GNIS - unreliable.
 * Kansas Historical Society list of post offices: Is a 404 for me right now. Even if it weren't, this is a one-line listing of a post-office, not significant coverage in a reliable independent source.
 * Lincoln county news - taken at face value this may show legal recognition. The problem is that, even if the report of the formation of a township is accurate, it appears not to have ever been acted on as no such township was ever shown on the map or discussed since.
 * Kansas State Atlas - simply a list of people showing some people as addressed at Monroe. As it was know practise to simply use the local post-office as an address, which the individual may have lived a long way from, this is not proof of a community.
 * Lincoln County Patriot 1874 - Report of a wedding that says nothing about an actual community. This is WP:MILL reportage and not significant coverage.
 * Monroe Notes: these are letters to the editor and/or community notices posted by the people concerned, not independent or reliable coverage.
 * History of Monroe School, Organized in 1873 - For all the talk of a "school district" it is very apparent that actually what is being talked about is a single school-house, with no mention of it being located in a community of any kind.
 * From Monroe - Again, this is a letter to the editor, not independent, reliable, significant coverage.
 * People really should know better than using letters to the editor (that clearly start "Mr. Editor") as source in encyclopaedic articles. For some reason sourcing standards are thrown out of the window in these Geostub cases. FOARP (talk) 15:47, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * FOARP, you are such a buzzkill!! (ETA: please don't take offense at my use of "buzzkill," i tend to get informally excited sometimes, i appreciate everyone's efforts here.) One of the sources I added in the past few hours shows that the county commissioners voted in 1873 to create a Monroe township -- yes, we don't know what happened to it, and its existence must have been brief, but unless you find me a reliable source that says this newspaper report is a fabrication, you are simply discounting everything that has been reported on Monroe as a community. I do not know why you and Mangoe have formed a Bielefeld conspiracy group about Monroe, Kansas, but it is very clear Monroe was a recognized community in the 1870s-1900s.  Letters to the editor are not offered to prove whether some wedding occurred in 1884 or whatever, but simply as examples of people referring to Monroe regularly. I could add 50 more to the article but only used some illustrative examples.  Granted, I know some editors think articles on rural evaporated American communities like this don't really merit articles, but that's a separate debate.--Milowent • hasspoken  16:34, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * More constructive comment perhaps. I just figured out what these "congressional townships" were and No. 12 and 13, 6 west of the principal meridian (which is what the 1873 newspaper reports on), is what Colorado Township is in the 1878 map. So maybe there was a name change at play here.--Milowent • hasspoken  16:41, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Not saying it was necessarily a fabrication, but if this place was ever an official township, where's all the things you would have expected to come with that? If it stopped being a town, then when is that supposed to have happened? Decisions can be taken and then not followed through. Notes about community events are nice and all, but they were the 19th century version of Facebook updates - people just sent notices to their local paper to say they were visiting or out of town or whatever so people could look them up - not independent coverage. On the fence about this one (and have updated my vote accordingly). FOARP (talk) 17:23, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The internet didn't exist in the late 1880s. Many of the references in the discussion speak to verifiability, which is what was demanded.--Paul McDonald (talk) 18:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That's why we look things up in contemporary gazetteers like Lippincott's, which tell us outright that this is a post office. Uncle G (talk) 09:28, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Letters to the editor do not verify anything, as they are not independent of the subject or reliable. The society announcements columns found in local papers at that time (ie lists of “X person is visiting Y”) are also sourced to the people who the announcements are about and have the same issue. FOARP (talk) 21:55, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we will be in perpetual disagreement on this one. I think you're convinced that the source in question is on the same scale as a modern-day letter to the editor; I'm convinced that the source in question is a report written to the editor for publication on the topic of civic matters.  Did I interpret your stance properly?--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:27, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think in either case the situation is exactly the same. Look at the actual news stories published in the same newspapers - you can see that the stories on the front page of these newspapers are not phrased as letters to the editor, and instead are attributed to other news sources or unattributed (and therefore the work of the newspaper staff). The "Monroe Notes" stories are instead simply a letter to the editor from someone who does not appear to have been a professional journalist and not subject to fact-checking of any kind (and describe the people attending meetings at the school-house as of "Colorado township") - it therefore does not matter how you interpret it because it is not a reliable, independent source either way. FOARP (talk) 09:15, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * No, in "either case" the situation is exactly the opposite. It's clear that you hold the position that the sources are not reliable.  I hold the position that they are reliable.  That is why I think we are in perpetual disagreement.--Paul McDonald (talk) 16:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Paul McDonald - I'm honestly confused as to why you would think a letter to the editor (however you want to define that) would be a reliable source? How does it pass WP:NEWSORG when there won't be any fact-checking or editorial control? FOARP (talk) 10:05, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * As I explained above, because I don't think it's the equivalent of a modern-day "letter to the editor" and it's certainly not someone expressing opinions. It's a report that contains facts and details.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:16, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Questions:
 * )What is the relationship between Monroe and Colorado Township? Colorado Township is still a populated (though not legally independent) township within Lincoln county. Looking again at this story, the letter to the editor from Rob Roy describes a meeting of the electors of Colorado township at the Monroe school-house regarding the construction of a railway through the township. On the same page is a "Sheriff's proclamation" announcing the construction of a railway through the town of Colorado by the Kansas Central R.R., that talks only about the town of Colorado. These are obviously the same thing but it is obvious that in 1882 there was no such thing as "Monroe township" as distinct to "Colorado township" and probably, like Milowent says, there is a naming issue here.
 * )Is there really a "ghost town" called Monroe? What source says there is such a "ghost-town"? We have a photo of a single wrecked building and that's it.
 * )What is the relationship between Monroe and the incorporated town of Beverly? Did Beverly simply absorb Monroe? It appears to have done so based on the addresses given south of the Saline river being still in Beverly. This story describes the location of the former Monroe school house only in relation to Beverly, being 2 1/2 miles away from it (i.e., just on the other side of the Saline river, in what now appears to be the town of Beverly).
 * At the very least I'm dubious that this is a ghost-town that we're talking about, rather than farm-land that is just part of Beverly now, and which used to have its own school house but now doesn't. FOARP (talk) 09:59, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * my input: (1) The community of Monroe (including the schoolhouse) was located within Colorado Township.  The 1883 map I put in the article also includes a dot for 'Colorado' inside Colorado township, but most references to Colorado appear to just mean the township generally; maybe the 1873 push was really one to rename the township to Monroe; (2) I don't know what our rules are on the use of "ghost town", it seems to be overused in my mind for former U.S. communities. There's no "ghost town" as a regular person would think of it.  (3) Beverly did not absorb Monroe, but the Beverly zip code seems to cover what is Monroe now, that is a pretty typical thing, this came up when I expanded Bucknum, Wyoming during its AFD.--Milowent • hasspoken  14:33, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Milowent - Thanks for the reply. I think where I'm going with this is that this may actually be better covered under a general article for Colorado township. At least we can show that was (and is) a real thing that was and is legally recognised, without having to infer the existence of a community from things like post-offices, school-houses, and cemeteries, or rely on letters to the editor (which appear to use Monroe and Colorado township inter-changeably) as sourcing. We could do a simple rename to Colorado, and just add a section on Beverly. What do you think Mangoe? FOARP (talk) 10:02, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 17:37, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Elizabeth N. Barr's 1908 History of Lincoln County, Kansas tells us outright (quoting Lincoln County school superintendent Alexander Thaddeus Biggs) that "As early as 1867 or 1868, while still keeping an eye open for Indians, Mrs. Skinner gathered her own children, Everton, Alfred, and Bing, and two Ziegler boys, Eli and Frank, into her dugout and taught them 'without money and without price.'" This isn't a "Monroe school". This is a schoolteacher teaching in her own house near to Monroe post office.  This isn't a school district.  The school districts were numbered, not named. Biggs proceeds to use a lot of numbers recounting the history. This isn't a "historic town" or a "ghost town", because there's no such town in either the history books or the gazetteers.  This was sparsely settled (by colonists) frontier land at the time.  The gazetteer, once again, tells us outright that this is a post office.  This isn't a "historic post office" because it isn't actually in the history books, just in gazetteers.  This isn't a school, because the school was Mrs Skinner's house.  It's a post-office, people, like the one source that isn't being massaged and guessed at for underlying meaning outright says.  Uncle G (talk) 09:28, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I find it rather saddening to see so much effort going into synthesizing something that never was, just for the sake of not deleting another Wikipedia-synthesized "community"/"area", based upon GNIS rubbish and a post office list in its initial revision, using things like the Lincoln County Examiner and the Lincoln County Patriot, discussing things like the Lincoln County board of commissioners, alongside the existence of a source that is a history of Lincoln County based upon information from the Lincoln County school superintendent; when Lincoln County, Kansas stands pretty much empty of anything specific to the county. One would think that the right place to write stuff, and not synthesize, would be obvious.  It's even the right place to mention the post office. Uncle G (talk) 10:04, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Uncle G, nothing has been synthesized and I find your accusation offensive. All sources have been referenced and provided.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:15, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Don't be sad Uncle G! As the primary expender of the effort here, I assure you I enjoyed learning more about the former rural community of Monroe Kansas than anyone not from that area has ever had.  Alas, I am indeed guilty of citing things like Lincoln county newspapers from the late 1800s, and engaging in tawdry pursuits like researching contemporaneous sources of the day!  And regarding the school, there was a school built within a few short years of starting in someone's house.  You disregard that fact in your fervency--there was a real building, the picture i just linked was the one built in 1883 after the prior one was destroyed in a storm.  But it was called the Monroe School for decades, and yes, this name was used in such terrible things as Lincoln County newspapers.  There's no synthesis beyond the normal assembling of sources we do every day.   Now, surely, Lincoln County, Kansas, is bereft of content and perhaps some editor such as yourself will see fit to expand it.  I for one will be content with my work on Monroe whether the article gets deleted or not.  As I have been with countless other articles such as Articles for deletion/Bucknum, Wyoming and Articles for deletion/Poplar, Iowa and Articles for deletion/Barberville, Rhode Island--Milowent • hasspoken  12:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep based on informed, nicely civil discussion above. --Doncram (talk) 16:17, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.


 * Merge with Lincoln County, Kansas: Merge to a new section called "Ghost Towns". The section can then be populated with information from the other ghost town pages which generally have less information than this page. Gusfriend (talk) 06:23, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Why? That's not a reason that's a statement.  See WP:NOREASON.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:01, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep There are a lot of "locations" that no longer exist - towns, countries... There is evidence for this historic locale, and that should be enough. Also, we shouldn't be trying to judge the past through current eyes - someone teaching the children in her barn in a very rural area has indeed created a school and a de facto schoolhouse. That it later got an official designation does not diminish what it started out as. Lamona (talk) 20:33, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
 * We rarely have kept "locales" unless there was a lot of material specifically about them, genreally in the form of articles/books that specifically address them as a subject. Also, "Name School Road" is a very common road name around here, but it doesn't imply that Name was a town or "community" or anything at all. Mangoe (talk) 05:12, 8 March 2022 (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.