Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/South Central Pennsylvania


 * 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 redirect‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ to Regions of Pennsylvania. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 03:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

South Central Pennsylvania

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The region of South Central Pennsylvania (SCPA) is not verifiably notable because it exists only as a colloquialism at best. It's composition has not been and cannot be well sourced here, and the article as it has been is an assembly of facts about the places that supposedly comprise SCPA, and the majority of these are unsourced. The citations that currently exist only regard a road between Philadelphia (notably never considered SCPA) and Lancaster, a dialect spoken only in specific groups in specific regions of supposed SCPA, and two pieces of media filmed in, but not about, supposed SCPA. Previous versions of the article use an unsourced list of counties and to depict a specific list of counties as being SCPA. After some research I was able to find no consistent pattern of organizations describing SCPA, except that Dauphin and Cumberland counties are usually included. Below is the list of the best sources, in no particular order, I found that could even be used to describe what SCPA is.


 * 1) The Pennsylvania Visitors Network, an unofficial .com site, describes a region named PA Dutch - Amish Country, named in reference to a culture greatly associated with SCPA, which is in the region generally described as SCPA.
 * 2) The Cumberland Area Economic Development Corporation describes SCPA as Cumberland Valley [...] and the surrounding counties
 * 3) The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania names SCPA but describes it as a region further west than most definitions, notably excluding Dauphin and Lancaster, two very important counties to the rhetoric of SCPA.
 * 4) The 2022 Congressional Districts of Pennsylvania are bound by population balance, and the districts are unnamed, but regardless are the most official divisions of regions greater than a county available.
 * 5) The PA Department of Transportation seperates the state into 11 unnamed districts. District 8 bears a strong resemblence to what is frequently referred to as SCPA.

I am aware that much of the above is unfit for use as a citation in a good article. Any additional sources I've found are much more obviously unfit for inclusion in Wikipedia. I make this point to show that material referencing SCPA is very thin on the ground and of what little is available, sources constantly disagree with each other. While the term South Central Pennsylvania is very familiar to residents of the area, it is not identified in any capacity that allows for us to consistently create an article about it. I.e. if we cannot say what is or is not SCPA, we can't say what can or cannot be included in an article by that title. I propose that any sourced facts on this article not already included in the articles more relevant to them, be added to such articles, and that this article be deleted. GabberFlasted (talk) 13:53, 1 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletion discussions. GabberFlasted (talk) 13:53, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 14:02, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The lack of specificity of content diminishes the quality of the article - almost none is actually about the region as a whole, rather a collection of trivia that relates to certain places in the region and which duplicates articles on specific places. Material like "Music in the South Central Pennsylvania region varies from the popular genres such as Rock and roll, Hip hop, Jazz, Rhythm and blues, Country, etc." is astonishingly useless. I'd suggest a redirect to Regions_of_Pennsylvania. Alternatively maybe it can be merged to Harrisburg–York–Lebanon combined statistical area, though that doesn't include Lancaster County. Apparently Southern Pennsylvania redirects to that, but Central Pennsylvania redirects to South Central Pennsylvania, which doesn't make much sense to me... I'd add that congressional districts and numbered DOT regions are entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Note there's also Sports in South Central Pennsylvania: Not a single source describes the region as a whole, why are we really grouping Harrisburg and Lancaster teams and hometowns? Reywas92Talk 15:55, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Redirect per Reywas. There just isn't anything that coherently ties this all together as a distinct topic. –dlthewave ☎ 16:44, 7 May 2023 (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.