Wikipedia:Gazetteer

Wikipedia is, amongst other things, a gazetteer; a type of specialised reference work that contains a list of geographic places and information about them.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and a gazetteer
Wikipedia is "the free encyclopedia". But because encyclopedias are a wide-ranging genre, this founding statement allows considerable room for ambiguity and disagreement. The first of our five pillars offers a little more insight into what it means for Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia: [it] combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers. Beyond that, the community have historically found it easier to agree on what Wikipedia is not than what it is. Notably, it is not a dictionary, directory, or "indiscriminate collection of information" (i.e. a database).

The general-purpose gazetteer is one genre of reference work that is widely considered to be part of what Wikipedia is. Historically, a gazetteer was not just an index of place names, but came with a short entry on each place, like an encyclopedia. A gazetteer is therefore not a dictionary, because its subject matter is the places themselves, not their names; nor is a directory, because it should include encyclopedic context. A gazetteer could fall afoul of the consensus that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and indeed some other online gazetteers, like the GEOnet Names Server, have this quality. It is therefore important to clarify that Wikipedia is not a comprehensive gazetteer of all places, but one with defined criteria for inclusion.

Wikipedians began incorporating features of a gazetteer early in the history of the project. Many of the first 100 pages were articles about or lists of countries. This page itself was initially created in 2006 as an outline of articles on places, a predecessor to our geography and places portals. In 2005, it was noted that the convention at Votes for Deletion (the predecessor to articles for deletion) was that "[cities] are notable, regardless of size". By 2008, the idea that "places are inherently notable" was well-established (if not universally agreed upon) and an inclusive essay on the notability of geographic features was created. Since 2008, the first of our five pillars has described Wikipedia as, amongst other things, a gazetteer.

WP:NGEO
In 2012, a more restrictive notability guideline was adopted which stated that "geographical features meeting Wikipedia's General notability guideline (GNG) are presumed, but not guaranteed, to be notable". This guideline also set the current standard that "populated, legally-recognized places are considered notable, even if their population is very low" and "populated places without legal recognition are considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the GNG".

Policies
Notability (geographic features), a guideline, also used to state that Wikipedia "functions as a gazetteer."