Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wild Cat Branch


 * 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 delete. Despite the long discussion it seems that nobody is actively in favor of keeping this.  Sandstein  14:13, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Wild Cat Branch

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Complete failure of WP:V. Not mentioned in the GNIS under any name. The archived source,, states that it bottoms out in "Judah Creek", which also doesn't exist on GNIS. Checking GNIS topo maps in the townships named in that source shows two streams with completely different names. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Missouri-related deletion discussions. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:08, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete search with my preferred search engine and Google Books turned up no RS results. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him &#124; talk) 01:12, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete as failing WP:GEOLAND without substantial RS coverage. Even WP:V is a stretch. The state historical society cites a master's thesis for where the stream is and how it got its name. I couldn't find anything else in independent searches. • Gene93k (talk) 20:03, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * See Reliability of GNIS data/Ramsay Place-Name Card Collection for context about these theses. The relevant one here is  a.k.a. .  Uncle G (talk) 04:35, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Judah Creek you mean? &#9786;  Ramsay has that located in Saling Township in Audrain and Union Township in Monroe, based upon .  Leech in turn sources Wild Cat Branch to William Vivion, deputy county recorder.  It is definitely verifiable as a name.  Per Reliability of GNIS data/Ramsay Place-Name Card Collection the sourcing to the deputy county recorder's personal testimony indicates that it probably was named that, at least locally, even if the local name from a deputy county recorder in the 1930s cannot be found in a database transcribed (from federal maps) in the 1970s and 1980s.  It's not uncommon for branches to have different names over time, or to have local names different from federal ones. The reason that you won't find it in the GNIS now, as opposed to even a few years ago, is that now the WWW site only uses the non-historic topical subset.  Ramsay stuff went in in GNIS phase 2, and sometimes went in as "(historic)". Ramsay and the theses deal with toponymy.  Whether the named something has substantial historical documentation is a rather different matter, and especially difficult to determine if the name is a "(historic)" one.  Judah Creek is a branch of Allen Creek which is a branch of Elk Fork Salt River, the latter two of which are names that you will find on federal maps.  Allen Creek is now known as either Reese Fork Allen Creek or plain Reese Fork.  But which exact tributary is "Judah Creek", let alone which tributary of that is "Wild Cat Creek", is unclear, especially as my go-to source of information on "(historic)" records on the WWW has decided to let its SSL certificate expire two days ago. Uncle G (talk) 04:35, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I mean, you wikilink Judah Creek like that's definitive, but it's got the exact same sources as this article does, so it hardly proves anything except that we have two articles with the same issues. If we can't know from the sources "which exact tributary" the historical names Judah or Wild Cat refer to, isn't that a clear verifiability problem? And even if you accept that names are verifiable (I don't), they still fail WP:GEOLAND on account of lacking coverage. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 13:55, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I linked to it because it's the very Judah Creek that you quoted, also sourced to Ramsay. So in that regard, yes, it is definitive, because it's the other Ramsay entry that the first Ramsay entry is referring to, given to Wikipedia by one of the GNIS mass-import people.  If you think that we have only two articles, go and read Reliability of GNIS data/Ramsay Place-Name Card Collection and User:Hog Farm/Missouri attention needed and find that you are sorely mistaken.  &#9786;  Whether the names are good depends from the ultimate source, which in this case is the deputy county recorder.  Sometimes it's just some unspecified local person.  Sometimes it's contemporary atlases.  Sometimes it's something else.  If that SSL certificate for https://topoquest.com hadn't expired, it would be fairly easy to get the co&ouml;rdinates out of the "(historic)" GNIS record, which would aid in connecting to the feature.  Uncle G (talk) 16:49, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * https://www.topoquest.com/place-detail.php?id=738696 is back, and it turns out that there are no co&ouml;rdinates in the GNIS record. Marvellous!  So I'm going to raise "especially difficult to determine" to "nigh-on impossible to determine".  Uncle G (talk) 06:05, 17 March 2022 (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.