Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Omaramba River


 * 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. Surprisingly few people were attracted to comment on this AfD, despite being listed for three weeks. There's a lot of discussion here, but as I read through it all, I can't pull out any killer arguments on either side, so I'm going to call this NC, with no prejudice against a renomination if somebody feels it's worth further discussion. -- RoySmith (talk) 12:39, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

Omaramba River

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Misspelling of Omuramba, and a misunderstanding of the meaning: There is no one specific omuramba (dry river bed) but there are many of them in Botswana and eastern Namibia. Each of them have separate names, and some of them have articles, e.g. Eiseb. Pgallert (talk) 09:43, 20 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep (See below. My initial !vote was Merge): The Omaramba River article was created in 2012‎; Omuramba was created in this initial version, better than its current article, in 2005.  "Omaramba River" was a known river in 1920;  a photograph of it appeared in the Illustrated London News, Volume 67  with caption: "Flood time in Ovambaland: Inundations Caused by the Flooding of the Omaramba River near Ondaga."  There are a number of other Google book references in the 1920s.  And it was photographed in 2014 (} with caption: "Captured below is the Omaramba River flowing through Onguma during the rainy season which finished in April.  This refreshing site is quite a contract to the dry pans experienced during the dry winter seasons."
 * The Omuramba article is confusing, too: at first its wording seems to me to be saying that the Omuramba is one usually dry river bed, and then seems to imply that an Omuramba is any dry river bed in the region.  Would it be correct to change the lede to "An Omuramba is any one of several dry river beds in the north-eastern part of Namibia or the north-western part of Botswana, in the Kalahari Desert." ?  When it rains and these rivers run, perhaps they do not drain into any final destination but rather fade out in the desert?  Or do some of them ever drain into a permanent river or lake?  Are they in one or more Endorheic basins?   Whichever it is, please say so.  I wonder if the region had more moisture than it does now, and if some or all of these did sometimes run into a permanent lake or a river that did go somewhere.  Anyhow the term "Omaramba River" is used in history and recently too, and it is notable by wp:GEOLAND as a river or a former river.  There should be just one article though, and since Omuramba is the older article, merge. -- do  ncr  am  19:29, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't understand this recommendation. Omuramba has a plural. I'm unaware of any proper name that does, so it is a generic term. There is a nice and comprehensive Wiktionary entry about it in German: . Merging a real river into an article on a type of river, does not make sense to me.
 * I also don't understand how an old misspelling can somehow be "knighting" a new misspelling. There was never an Ovambaland (It is Ovamboland), there was never an Ondaga (It is Ondangwa). Why would there be an Omaramba? Furthermore, the river described in the article under discussion, is nowhere near Ondangwa and must therefore be another omuramba. Finally, a lodge web site is no RS for the name of a river.
 * Now, there is a river called Omuramba Ovambo, one of the tributaries to Etosha Pan, mentioned e.g. here: Ekuma River. That might be this river, because if I follow the river south of Tsintsabis (cf article text) on Google Earth it indeed leads to Etosha. This river also crosses Onguma but that reasoning is of course OR. So if we absolutely must keep this article it should rather be moved to Omuramba Ovambo than kept at its old place. And there should be no redirect, because we also do not redirect "River" to anything that has a "River" as part of its proper name. --Pgallert (talk) 14:23, 21 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Let's try to be clear about singular and plural nouns. By "Omuramba has a plural", I read it first to mean that you were trying to say that Omuramba is a plural noun.  But Omuramba says that "An omuramba ... is an ancient river-bed", and you go on to say that because omuramba has a plural, it must be a generic term.  What, pray tell, is the plural of omuramba?  Omuramba?  Omurambas?  I am hoping you know.  Please say, and allow us to tell the reader what is the plural noun term and otherwise to reword the lede sentence of the Omuramba article for clarity.
 * You say that merging a real river (you mean Omaramba River?) into an article on a type of river (you mean Omuramba) does not make sense. Okay then great, we are done.  Please withdraw the AFD.  Because a permanent or intermittent river named Omaramba River really has existed, as shown in sources that appear reliable, such as the  Illustrated London News.  And you clearly do not want to merge;  you don't want modify the Omuramba article to suggest that various rivers/riverbeds may have been termed "Omaramba River" or "Omuramba River", including the one described in the Omaramba River article and mentioned in sources, which I would have been willing to do.  So we really are about done at AFD, I think, and this should be closed Keep.  I change my !vote to "Keep", above, with apology if I am missing something here.
 * A loose end is that maybe the river termed Omaramba River in the 1920's is the river now termed Omuramba Ovambo, so a note about that should be added to Talk:Omaramba River. You or anyone can open a wp:Requested Move there to move/rename it to "Omuramba Ovambo", but that is not a matter for AFD. -- do  ncr  am  05:25, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think you misunderstand me here but that might well be my fault. Omuramba=1 ancient river bed, Omiramba=many ancient river beds. That is right in the Omuramba article in the very first line. But part of the story might also be that you're not trying hard enough. There never was an Omaramba River. Not in the 1920s and not in 2014. It was a misspelling (Omaramba) and misunderstanding (that Omuramba be a proper name), indicated by two things: 1) In the news clip of 1920 virtually everything else was misspelled, as I have pointed out. Therefore there was no native speaker involved, and the London News at that time were thus no a reliable source for a spelling of a river in Africa. 2) A construction like "Omaramba River" or, in correct spelling, "Omuramba River" makes no sense as Omuramba itself means "river". Namely, an ephemeral one.
 * From satellite imagery it is clear that there is indeed an ephemeral river at the described location. 2 photos, unlikely to be fake, furthr testify to that. So we were indeed done if I could move Omaramba River to Omuramba Ovambo... not leaving a redirect and not being able to provide a single independent source confirming the name. But to do that I was neither able (no redirect) nor willing (no reason backed by sources). For the time being I can prove that no Omaramba River exists. That why we're here at AfD. If proper sources can be found I can write Omuramba Ovambo at some later stage. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 21:09, 24 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your clarification about plural. Frankly, the parenthetical expression which you point out indicates the plural form ("An omuramba (pl. omiramba, Herero word) ....") was NOT clear.  If this was a Wiktionary entry then I might have figured that the "pl" was for plural, but I do not recognize that format for Wikipedia articles.  I think I assumed it was meaning something like "plus in Herero, the word is spelled 'omiramba'", while disliking the fact that the article didn't say what language omuramba was from.  Maybe I didn't get it because we don't write encyclopedia articles that way...see car, apple, goose, whatever...I don't see that dictionary definition-like parenthetical being used anywhere.  In these edits, I have just boldly edited the article and moved it to Omiramba.  I hope you will agree this is okay/good.  I think it is far better than the previous version, but please do make corrections if I am still not understanding correctly.
 * You are complaining that an English language term which pretty much translates as "River River" is silly. But that is how the English language often works.  I can't think of other examples just like that but I know that there are.  (And does it matter that omuramba simply is not equivalent to the English word "river" ...according to the article it is a term for dry riverbeds in the Kalahari Desert only, you cannot use it to describe a riverbed in a Mexican desert.)
 * Are you not being a bit petty now, saying you want to delete Omaramba River article and only later, sometime, create an Omuramba Ovambo article, rather than moving it? In the article I believe it will be reasonable to explain that this Ovambo river is likely the one meant by some usages of Omaramba River in the 1920s.  Factual question: is it likely the river photographed in 2014?  And it will be reasonable to create the redirect from "Omaramba River" to there, in fact I feel like promising that I will create it because it is reasonable, if somehow this gets closed with a deletion.  Frankly it would be best to move the article right now during this AFD, then call for closure of the AFD.  There is no reason to delete the edit history, and there is no reason to prolong this AFD.  Another alternative is to redirect "Omaramba River" to "Omiramba" and explain there how the "Omaramba River" term has sometimes been used but is imprecise. Pleae do inform me how I am still misunderstaning anything. -- do  ncr  am  06:39, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, we are indeed getting somewhere. Ja, it might be petty wanting to delete Omaramba River. It is just that the only reference is offline and very unspecific (Namibian Getaway is, iirc, a directory of tourist accommodation some 300 pages thick, and in a different edition every second year). I have a few sources for Omuramba Ovambo, but they do not back up the specific claims of the article here under discussion: barbel fish, location near Tsintsabis, San people, etc. I'm not a fan of creating a new article without proper sources.
 * I can't say to which river the pictures belong, partly because I cannot see them ;) [Google books' access level depends on location; I only see the book cover in your link.] But even if I could see them I probably could not say where they were taken. Flooded rivers are a pretty standard feature during rainy season.
 * Not sure why you moved the Omuramba article to the plural form... Other articles are predominantly at their singular, like mountain, river, etc.? Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 09:41, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete Unaffiliated editor came via Africa alerts; Hope I can help. Google books only has 10 hits for "Omaramba River" and Google Scholar has zero. (Lexis also has zero relevant hits) In addition, most of the google book hits are duplicates of a single mention to a place that had "vast forests" See here, page 18 WARNING-BIG FILE as google only has snippet view of this source. This is a clear delete for lack of "significant coverage" (WP:SIGCOV): indeed, it appears to fail both the significant part as it has no real sources and the coverage part as no sources give more than a passing mention to the place. In addition, the article lacks any real content to merge. The only "sourced" content is tourist promotion. Finally, checking with publications and websites of the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry of Namibia revealed no discussion whatsoever of "Omaramba River". See: here for a report on ephemeral rivers with no mention and feel free to search for the term here and get zero results. Not notable. AbstractIllusions (talk) 12:31, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Africa-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:12, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 05:41, 27 July 2016 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 01:03, 3 August 2016 (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.