Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scottsdale Mall


 * 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 due to lack of non-trivial coverage in reliable sources. — TKD::Talk 10:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Scottsdale Mall

 * – (View AfD) (View log)

Yet another non-notable shopping mall. This page has stayed mostly the same since its inception, with no sources to be seen. Ten Pound Hammer • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 02:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and WP:RS. Nen  yedi  • (Deeds•Talk) 02:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete There is a lack of notability and a lack of sources. --Stormbay 03:57, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete view - notability requires multiple, independent sources attesting that there is something special or different about this mall (i.e. notable) or that something newsworthy happened here. This article has none of these. Simply existing or being a large mall is not enough. Bridgeplayer 04:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep First enclosed mall in the area, recently converted to an outdoor mall. Surely it's notable for people in that area. Also, it has 3,520 ghits. It's a stub, but like tens of thousands of other stubs, it can easily be improved and expanded with proper sources. bobanny 15:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Most of those hits are for an unrelated mall in Canada, or for articles about a mall in Scottsdale, Arizona. I've tried to find more information on Scottsdale Mall Erskine Village, with no luck, which is why I took this to AfD. Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 18:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing lots there that are in South Bend. The local paper alone has 36 mentions, which is more than enough to pass notability guidelines and enough fodder to add reliable sources to the article. Other reliable sources include this and this. The Canadian mall likely has a disproportionate # of hits because I used google.ca rather than google.com. It seems to boil down to a preference of deletionism over inclusionism.bobanny 18:48, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Those are all trivial mentions. Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 20:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete The South Bend paper refs seem to be pretty much "passing reference" or incidental mentions. Not seeing any real evidence of notability to satisfy WP:ORG or even the rejected subject specific guideline WP:MALL. Edison 20:04, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, there’s no Time Magazine cover stories, but that doesn’t mean the coverage is trivial. There’s clear evidence of notability and substantial local notability, despite the lack of dedicated articles on the subject (which aren’t required anyway: “Significant coverage is more than trivial but less than exclusive”). Scottsdale Mall failed, and now the site has been redeveloped as half of a jumbo 900,000 sq. ft. open-air mall development that’s revitalized the retail sector in the area; the economic impact is substantial and apparent. Granted, it would be better to move the article to Erskine Village, and it needs a lot of other work, but there’s definite potential for a legit encyclopedia article here. Here’s an article dedicated to the development of the Scottsdale Mall site. Seems odd to cite a proposal that’s been rejected (WP:MALL) to make claims about notability. Glancing at its talk page, it appears this is part of a larger effort to knock off shopping mall articles. bobanny 22:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
 * More like an effort to keep the more notable ones, remove the less notable ones, and find metrics to delineate the difference. Edison 04:15, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I wasn't trying to imply sinister intentions, just make the process more transparent. There's no hard consensus about notability for malls and, as you indicate, this and many other AfD's are part of trying to build some sort of consensus. People should know that their vote here has implications on Wikipedia guidelines, not just whether or not this one article gets whacked. Lots of editors have expressed concern that the AfD process is skewed towards deletion, and when things like WP:MALL are evoked, with completely arbitrary criteria like 800k sq. ft. minimum for mall articles, those concerns appear to be justified, making transparency all the more important. bobanny 06:14, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment 800,000 square feet is not "completely arbitrary" since it is used in the ISCA definition (see Shopping mall) of a "super-regional" shopping center (in the U.S.). It was not just pulled out of a hat by an editor. The question then is whether being a "super-regional" center gives some presumption of notability, like having played on a professional baseball team does. This by no means requires deletion of regional malls (over 400,000 square feet) or even of smaller ones, but the AFD process seems to be showing that the smaller they are, the more they need to have something else going to show their notability, both because they are important to a smaller and smaller geographic dispersion of shoppers, and because the sheer number of them out there gets larger and larger. There are in the US hundreds of superregional malls and tens of thousands down to the very small ones. There are some inclusionist editors who claim in good faith that all malls (roads, cartoon characters, TV show episodes, local schools, victims, survivors, etc) are notable, and that if verifiable deserve an article, so that Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia: "a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." Others, more deletionist, in good faith say that even some lesser verifiable entities should have therir articles deleted or merged to avoid Wikipedia being  "an indiscriminate collection of information or a trivia collection". This important AFD process is where that crucial balance is struck, every hour of every day. Edison 21:38, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't disagree with most of what you're saying. Size may be a variable determining notability in many cases, but the reason why I said 800K was arbitrary is because the significance of size varies with the size of the population. South Bend only has about a 100,000 people, so a mall much smaller than that figure may be massively significant there, whereas an 800,000 square foot mall might be barely notable in a place like LA if there's nothing special about it otherwise. In some places, there's a lot of opposition and lively political campaigns when a big box-store development is proposed because of it's impact on the local economy and culture, whereas I doubt another Wal-Mart in Dallas would even make the evening news. bobanny 23:03, 18 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment Anything in this article which is informative in the (yet to be written) Erskine Village article can certainly be shortened and merged to it, without a lengthy history of the failed predecessor mall having its own article. By comparison Disneyland has an article and is notable, but that does not mean we have to have an article about the farms that were there before the amusement park was built. Or if a cathedral is built on the site of a predecessor church or pagan tample, that site history can be briefly mentioned in the article on the later, more notable subject. Edison 21:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I can't think of any Wikipedia article that wouldn't be greatly improved with historical information if it's not already present (see WP:HIST). In this case, it appears from the sources that the significance (notability) of this mall largely derives from its failure as the Scottdale Mall and it conversion to an outdoor format as the Erskine Village; it's not just because people like shopping at Target. Obviously this is a phenomenon that others have found noteworthy and isn't limited to Indiana. (Although, it looks like still others find it trivial given that List of shopping malls converted to outdoor format is up for deletion now too). If you're proposing to delete this and create one for Erskine Village, it amounts to the same as what I suggested above by moving this to that name, except with the extra step of having an admin delete this, when it would probably be re-created as a re-direct eventually anyway. bobanny 23:03, 18 August 2007 (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.