Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Târnăveni gas field


 * 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__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ as to whether to keep as is or re-scope and expand. That decision, however, does not require admin action. Star  Mississippi  14:08, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Târnăveni gas field

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

I brought this to AFD because I proposed this for deletion due to how easy it is to demonstrate this subject has no significant coverage. Which is to say, no reliable sources say this natural feature is important. WP:Geoland confers no special status for natural features and they need to meet WP:N to be stand alone subjects. An editor, added some sources that are not significant coverage of the topic and in some cases don't cover the subject at all. In an effort to make the article longer the editor added other subjects that now occupy more space in the article than the original subject. This was because there are almost no sources about the gas field available. The editor then removed the prod tag. None of the current sources on the article, nor any that I can find say this gas field stands out from the rest as particularly important. And, there are no reliable sources that are written specifically about this subject. James.folsom (talk) 19:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and Romania. James.folsom (talk) 19:57, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Keep As I indicated in my summary when I removed the delete template after working on improving this article and saving it from the chopping block, the Târnăveni gas field is a historically significant gas field, which has supplied natural gas to the oldest and largest chemical factory in Romania (the Târnăveni Nitrogen Plant). This is attested in several references that I added, including a CIA report from 1950 dedicated to the factory and the nearby Târnăveni gas field, which supplied gas through a pipeline for running the factory. As I also mentioned in the article, this gas was used to produce for the first time in Romania (in 1922) hydrogen from water and gas. Despite the above (rather ungracious) claim, this is not in an effort to make the article longer, but rather, to add historically relevant context for the nascent natural gas industry in interwar Romania, which by the late 1930s had reached third place worldwide (after the US and the Soviet Union) in natural gas production, with the Târnăveni gas field playing a significant role in the process. Turgidson (talk) 21:40, 27 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Keep - collectively the refs fully support the article. No one ref by itself gives significant coverage. -- A. B. (talk • contribs •  global count)  22:29, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment How do you still not get this, have you not noticed that none of the sources are actually written about the subject of the gas field. Show me which one specifically says this gas field is an important subject. And, wrong individual sources are what confer significant coverage. They do this by being articles written specifically about the gas field without merely mentioning it in passing. OR they are sources that say something like "this is the greatest most important gas field in ...." You may have noticed none of the sources say this. The name of this gas field never occurs in the title of any reliable source. James.folsom (talk) 23:22, 27 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment the nearby chemical operations are more historical and have better sourcing. @Turgidson, why not rename and expand this article to cover them? You've dug so deep into history here it seems a shame to waste the other stuff you turned up. -- A. B. (talk • contribs •  global count)  22:32, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree, the chemical factory deserves an article by itself. It has a pretty fascinating history, starting with production of chemical munitions in WWI (for the Central Powers), and pioneering the development of the Petrochemical industry in Romania in the interwar, its role in the war effort in WWII, its further expansion in the communist era, only to be closed a few years ago. But I spent too much time already trying to expand and source these articles on the Romanian gas fields, with even the first and famous one being proposed for deletion, or arguably the top two ones (here and here) being pursued for deletion, while another one, the Zau de Câmpie gas field article, with 20 references by now, is being relentlessly criticized and eyed for the chopping block. So yes, I may create an article of that sort at some point when I get some free time, but not under these conditions, which are not at all conducive to positive development of Wikipedia content. Turgidson (talk) 23:00, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The cherry on the top being this deletion prod, regarding the onshore gas field with the largest proven reserves in Romania, dubbed by the then-PM as "the most important discovery" since the fall of communism, etc, which was characterized (before my work to seriously research the topic, and expand and improve the article) as "Not sustained coverage, non notable per WP:N" by someone who claims expertise in finding references to articles in this topic, deciding what's notable and what is not, what gets significant coverage and what does not, all sprinkled with snide comments like those here and here. All done with some artificial 1-week deadlines, which first were easy to miss, since I only very rarely edited articles on gas fields before, leading to some being completely gone before I could even look at them, especially with mass prods, ADFs, and deletions going on within dozens of articles at a time. Hardly the way to go, in my opinion. Turgidson (talk) 05:20, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * So I missed one, big deal. It takes more than one anyway. The goal is to discuss the merits of this article. James.folsom (talk) 16:31, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment I was going to let that personal attack go, but realized I should probably explain for the benefit of participants in the AFD. When I start a WP:before on these stubs, I check the given references for significance and remove any dead ones. If none of those references are significant coverage, I also tag the article so that others can review it. I'm not always perfect on getting it tagged, but I try because it's important to alert others about it. Then I do a WP:before myself, if I find anything remotely significant I move on and leave the tag so that others know to evaluate it. If its extremely obvious that there is no significant coverage I wikipedia boldly propose it for deletion. It's not true that this process doesn't have oversight because the tags are publicized and others can double check me. Turgidson has been removing the sig coverage tags inappropriately because he doesn't understand what significant coverage is. Because of this when I was wrapping up on the Romanian ones I couldn't always tell which were left to be checked. I checked all those again, and where the first time I checked that particular one I had skipped proposing deletion because of that source, the second time I didn't see it.James.folsom (talk) 18:53, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment So asserting that I have no idea what Wikipedia policies and guidelines on sourcing are (after 52K edits over 17 years of wiki editing), or suggesting I better try shopping a Romania-related article missing from ro.wiki to see how it fares there (!) is not a personal attack, but pointing that out is? Or maybe pointing out this relentless drive for mass deletions of Romanian gas fields articles, without affording me (or perhaps also other editors who may want to join in) a decent amount of time to assess the situation and see whether they can be expanded and properly sourced is a "personal attack"? Or perhaps pointing out the categorical claims in those many prods that there is no recent mention of the topic (that was in the first batch of prods), only to switch later to there is no significant mention, or no notability, or no mention with subject in the title, etc, which most times turned out to be not the case, after a bit of research on my part? Maybe if you tried once (only once!) to improve one of these articles, instead of constantly criticizing them, you'll get a better appreciation of the work involved in creating such content, and become more open-minded about what "significant coverage" means in this context, where history, economy, geography, geology, technology, politics, etc mix in not always the most straightforward way. Of course, a currently highly productive gas field or oil field opened in the last decade or two will have much more coverage than, say, those Transylvanian gas fields that opened before WWI and had their glory days in the 1930s or the 1950s (when there was no internet, and written mentions from those times are almost always not readily available, at least not through a banal Google search), though almost all those gas fields are still productive to this day. Speaking of wiki guidelines, maybe WP:RECENTISM would be relevant in better assessing the situation. Turgidson (talk) 21:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Comment AB's suggestion is acceptable to me.James.folsom (talk) 23:30, 27 January 2024 (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.