Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/West Long Beach, Long Beach, California


 * 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. The issue of merging can be discussed on the article's talk page. Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:09, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

West Long Beach, Long Beach, California

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Article fails to list a single source to indicate notability or a reason why this neighborhood should be listed separately from Long Beach, California as a whole. NJZombie (talk) 23:54, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * delete&mdash;agreed. the very idea of the place would seem to be a reason for this organization to exist, and the article only to promote it. almost certainly an invention of real estate agents. &mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 00:14, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions.  —• Gene93k (talk) 02:07, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. The nominator's argument is more an assertion that this article could be merged into the one for the city as a whole, but the city article is already quite long. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 03:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And this newspaper article is evidence that West Long Beach is recognized as a neighborhood. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 03:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nobody said it isn't a neighborhood. What's questioned is if it's notable enough to warrant having its own article. Just because something exists doesn't mean it automatically deserves an article. NJZombie (talk) 04:18, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. A named populated place with some 35,000 residents is inherently notable. --Lambiam 10:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * sure, but the question is "who named it?" it's not uncommon in for real estate agents to make up a neighborhood name and form an association like the one linked to in the article so they can distinguish between houses there and the ones in the main city.  long beach has some negative connotations, so they might make up west long beach.  can you find sources that discuss the neighborhood qua neighborhood?  that one Eastmain found, a good one, but more a mention than a discussion, is the kind of thing needed.  if this were e.g. west l.a. or south l.a. or east l.a. we wouldn't be having this discussion, or even east whittier.  these are neighborhoods that people have written whole books about, but west long beach doesn't seem to me to even exist as a genuine place beyond just being the west side of long beach.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:32, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Plenty of official sources mentioning West Long Beach. --Pontificalibus (talk) 16:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * All of those examples provided seem to speak of West Long Beach as an informal title for the West side of Long Beach, as Alf.laylah.wa.laylah suggests. A search for West Side Long Beach, another title it's apparently referred to, results in almost 100% real estate listings. It comes across more like a real estate title or a name gangs refer to it by than an official name or border acknowledged by the city or state. NJZombie (talk) 16:58, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) i did something very like that search before i wrote delete above (among other such searches). the links must be sifted, because they're almost uniformly false positives.  just to go over the first page of results: one doesn't have the words west long beach together anywhere on it. two uses phrase "west Long Beach" twice, but lower case west and context shows that they mean the west side of the city of long beach, rather than a place called West Long Beach.  three same thing as two. four this is talking about a parking lot, called the West Long Beach Lot.  It isn't clear from the context whether the lot is called that because there is a place called west long beach and the lot is in it or the lot is called that because it's on the west side of long beach.  five is in a whole different state, and doesn't use the phrase anyway.  the hit comes from "115 Bolstad Avenue West, Long Beach, WA 98631."  this is the 5th hit.  you can see why i don't think that there is any such place, now, maybe?  six another false positive, hits due to "Golden West, Long Beach City."  seven this one is more promising as it actually mentions the name of the putative neighborhood, but it only mentions it in the context of the name of the association that i believe made it up.  it seems to me to lend weight to that view, but in any case, it's not independent, since it's still the organization being mentioned, rather than the neighborhood. eight (i switched the link to the google apps quick view from the actual .doc) is more promising, as it mentions West Long Beach as a discrete place, but only as part of the name of a planned community, so again, i don't know that helps makes a case that this place wasn't invented by real estate agents. nine (also replaced with google apps thing) is about newspaper circulation, not an article.  it might work to show that there is such a place, but it seems iffy.  ten this mentions the "West Long Beach Pumping Plant 1450 W. 9th St. Long Beach 90813"  Clearly states that the plant is located in Long Beach, not in West Long Beach.  The name of the plant is West Long Beach because it's the pumping plant in long beach that's west of the other ones or something.  look at the names of all the other pumping plants on that list and see if a case can be made that they're in existing neighborhoods.  some of them are, sure, but mostly they're named east or west or after the street they're on.  long beach is in the top ten biggest cities in california.  if it really had a neighborhood with 35,000 people in it, we wouldn't be scraping around like this to find mentions of it.  They'd be everywhere.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 17:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Irrespective of who named the neighborhood, the neighborhood does exist, and this name is in use for referring to it (for example, on Google maps, or in news reports: here, and here, where the Councilmember for District 7 explicitly refers to West Long Beach as a neighborhood). It is not an administrative division of the City of Long Beach, but part of District 7, a gerrymander, a map of which can be seen by clicking the tab "Council District Map" on this page. The designation "Westside" (or "West Side") is synonymous with "West Long Beach": they refer to the same well-defined neighborhood, if possible even more ethnically diverse than Long Beach already is, plagued by problems of poverty. "Upper West Side" is also not an officially named neighborhood, and maybe that name was first used by real-estate agents, but if so, so what?  --Lambiam 20:50, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep the nomination falls far short of making a case for deletion - it seems more an argument for merger, which is best handled via the talk pages of the articles rather than through this process. We have many articles on neighborhoods, whether this neighborhood merits a separate one is for the editors of the articles rather than some drive-by malcontents. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 17:42, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * now that is an argument i haven't heard before. "drive-by malcontent"! i'm going to make a userbox for it.  the case for deletion is that some good faith editors can't find any evidence that the place exists.  do you have any?  maybe if some of the "whatever-the-opposite-of-drive-by-malcontent-is" editors who want to keep the article could explain why the place exists, we could all go home.  for instance, belmont shore is a neighborhood of long beach that clearly exists.  West Long Beach, not so much.  by the way, here is a nonpaywalled source for the article that Eastmain found if anyone wants to read the whole thing.  this is the only convincing piece of evidence i've seen yet in this discussion.  if we can find another one like this, i will switch to keep.  i'm really not trying to destroy this article, i'm trying to destroy real estate spamming of wp.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 18:02, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * keep&mdash;Lambiam's sources have convinced me that the place actually does exist, so i am changing my position here. i do agree with the principle that if an inhabited place exists, it's notable. i just wasn't able to find evidence that this place exists.  others more skillful in search have shown me that it does, and hence the article should be kept.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 21:04, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Question. Is this report a reliable source? It was prepared for the Greater Long Beach Interfaith Community Organization by an Associate Professor of Sociology from Cal State in Long Beach. In the searches I've done I've found problems of air quality in West Long Beach to be a recurring theme, and if this source can be used, it is a good reference for mentioning these problems in the article. --Lambiam 21:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * it strikes me as reliable. how did i miss all this stuff?  i'm embarrassed.  i know that all the areas over by the ports of l.a. and l.b. are hard-hit by pollution, and none of the many cities involved seem to take it seriously, so there's a lot of this kind of private/academic investigation going on.  it looks like there's a lot of material from that paper that could go in the article.&mdash; alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 21:35, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. Wikipedia is full of articles on prominent neighborhoods in prominent cities/towns. -- Evans1982 (talk) 07:47, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete all named distinct populated places should have articles. This is not a distinct place, but a vauge locality within a city. North, south , east west , cet=ntral -- all of these prefixes are sometimes defined and meaningful, and sometimes not. This one is not, as the sources indicate--they are talking about no morethan the western part of a city. One characteristic of a defined area is a defined population. The article cannot give any, and resorts to giving the population of a zip code area that's is more or less in the same location. That the term is used in one academic report is not significant--they have to define a study area somehow, and the Western part of a city is as good as any other.  DGG ( talk ) 01:55, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * to illustrate the differences, there is no such thing as " West Brooklyn" as a defined place in NYC, even if one or two people should use the pair of words in an article and capitalize the phrase, and even though there is an actual West Brooklyn Community High School . Ditto for North, and East. But South Brooklyn is real and notable. It goes by reality, not appearances.  DGG ( talk ) 05:47, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep - I was initially going to vote delete on this one; however, some of the more recent sources provided are starting to convince me that the area exists in a notable way. These sources 1, 2 & 3) provided earlier in the discussion seem to indicate that the area is notable and known as West Long Beach. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 16:44, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * i don't understand. you seem to have said delete, but your explanation seems to be for keep?&mdash;alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 16:47, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, thanks for that. That was a mistake, I mean to post keep. I've fixed it now. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 19:28, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. This article seems notable and has strong points. Dontforgetthisone (talk) 17:06, 15 October 2011 (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.