Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seven hills of Seattle


 * 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   keep. Cerebellum (talk) 19:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Seven hills of Seattle

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No significant coverage demonstrating notability or even veracity. The only coverage is brief mentions in local travel guides, which is not enough to verify that this is widely recognized concept, nor is the content here significant enough to warrant a standalone article (topic already sufficiently covered in Seattle). Ibadibam (talk) 19:55, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I find somewhat more sources for this, I think. Recent material is mostly travel guides, to be certain (although some of them pay this fairly substantive coverage). But it seems to have been a bigger deal in the first half of the 20th century, with quite a few periodical references, in everything from Christian Science Monitor to Weatherwise to the American Bar Association Journal. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 20:57, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Very interesting! Do you have links? Ibadibam (talk) 21:05, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Comment. The nominator confuses verifiability with notability (if it's mentioned in local travel guides, then it's verified), does not explain why travel guide references are insufficient to establish notability for such a geographic feature, and says there's not enough content for a standalone article but has not proposed a merge target. postdlf (talk) 21:17, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I've added a section link to the main article above. As for verifiability, WP:V is pretty clear that a reliable source must back the content. If the sources for the article under discussion are not reliable, then the article is not verifiable. I contend that travel guides may not qualify as reliable sources for this subject. This is not a geographic feature; it's a romantic interpretation of the city's ambiguous topography, and as such requires reliable sources on the city's history and culture to demonstrate that this interpretation is commonly held. For all we know, the "Seven Hills" idea was coined by a travel writer to begin with, and has been perpetuated by subsequent guidebooks. Hopefully, sources will emerge from this discussion that prove me wrong. Ibadibam (talk) 21:33, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * "I contend that travel guides may not qualify as reliable sources for this subject." Why? Even if it was coined by a travel writer originally, so what? And if it was then "perpetuated" by other writers in guidebooks, then that's not only verification that it's a thing (regardless of whether the "seven hills" are objectively real), but also good evidence that the concept passes WP:GNG. What I find especially compelling (looking just within the current article content) is the fact that a Seattle park has been named after it, which means that it has "perpetuated" into a public institution by an official act of government. postdlf (talk) 21:43, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Strong keep I added a few refs to the article since creating it in 2005 as one of my first acts on Wikipedia. There's at least two Historylink articles and two-three Seattle Times articles using this term. Not quite rising to reliable sources, it's a well known local aphorism with (at least) a park, shoe store, apartment building, restaurant, bike ride, and foot walk named "seven hills". — Brianhe (talk) 23:59, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Great refs! Great also to see a page creator still taking an interest several years later. I think we've got sufficient refs now to rule out deletion, which just leaves the merge question. Can you speak to the motivation to have this as a standalone article? What does this article add that Seattle isn't already covering? And not that it matters, but no other entry on List of cities claimed to be built on seven hills has a standalone list. Is this a particularly important or notable case of "seven hills"? Ibadibam (talk) 00:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Yah I don't prune my watchlist very much. I wouldn't mind seeing a List of hills in Seattle akin to List of hills in San Francisco where we could hang the other various hills and cover the "seven hills" phenomenon as a subtopic. From a uniqueness/historical significance perspective I think Seattle's hills are interesting in that one of them only exists in memory, having been washed away in an early 20th century civil engineering project. But don't know if that alone justifies a standalone article.  — Brianhe (talk) 00:41, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Some others do: Iași, Istanbul/Constantinople, Moscow, Rome. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 02:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions. Northamerica1000(talk) 13:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep Sources included are sufficient to demonstrate notability. Jclemens (talk) 04:46, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep per RS identified above. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2013 (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.