Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tokio, Washington


 * 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. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont)  10:39, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Tokio, Washington

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

I skipped this one initially due to the population claim, but the slightest glance at topos and aerials shows that there is no way that 1,775 people lived in a place where there is a truck stop over by the highway and, yes, a grain elevator by the tracks at the point indicated by GNIS. For comparison, Ritzville, Washington is what a place with that many people actually looks like on the ground. Which is funny, actually, because if you read the start of this heartwarming article, you can see that the byline is "RITZVILLE, Adams County", which by an extraordinary coincidence had, in 1990, a population of 1,725. And furthermore, it turns out that the fire which burned into the 4,500 acre farm and which consumed some 20,000 acres in all "began beside the railroad tracks near Tokio." And that's the only reference to Tokio in the article. I've complained along the way about several examples where the cited sources were significantly misread, but this is on a whole 'nother level of failure. Further searching is clogged to a large degree by the capital of Japan, but what I found was of questionable reliability. It does show up in ghosttowns.com, but what it says about buildings destroyed by the fire doesn't fit all that well with the aerials: there wasn't a cluster of buildings here, only a single structure attached to the oldest grain elevator, the latter still there. There apparently was a school, as there is a picture showing the usual isolated couple of buildings at an undetermined location. Another wiki has an entry repeating the ghosttowns.com info and adding the unsourced claim that it had a peak population of 550, which is not terribly plausible: it's a third the population of Ritzville and would have to have occupied a correspondingly large area. I'm not convinced there's enough to separate this minimal settlement/commercial center/shipping point out from the larger Ritzville area. Everything else in the article is about the truck stop, which is of purely regional interest. Mangoe (talk) 19:56, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Automated comment: This AfD was not correctly transcluded to the log (step 3). I have transcluded it to Articles for deletion/Log/2021 December 1.  —cyberbot I   Talk to my owner :Online 20:07, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Washington-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep: The nomination fairly points out that the article when nominated had a completely wrong population claim in it. I've excised that and started to make some improvements.  A 2012 book notes Tokio as one of the now withered communities of Adams County.  In the early 20th century it did have a rural school.  Another example, among thousands, of a formal rural community in the United States that once had an identity but has essentially disappeared.  Granted we do have stubs on "unincorporated communities" that never really were communities in anybody's mind, but I think this lays outside those problem cases.--Milowent • hasspoken  21:51, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep This is an article that sources can be provided for and with a bit of work would be useful to people. It appears improvements are already being made. Super (talk) 06:06, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep Article contains sufficient references and history to justify its existence. Truthanado (talk) 15:38, 3 December 2021 (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.