Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Multiple-place names

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was Keep, marking, redirecting all subpages to the main marked page. — xaosflux  Talk 03:59, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Multiple-place names


The page says "This page is to provide a common starting point for people looking for the various disambiguation pages involving places with common names", but why would anybody be looking for such pages ? and anyway there's Category:Place name disambiguation pages which is probably a much more comprehensive list of such pages. If this page is deleted then a separate MFD should be started for the subpages (e.g. Multiple-place names (A) which are described as a "a list of lists of multiple-place names". DexDor (talk) 21:50, 13 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support - these pages have long out-lived their usefulness and should be got rid of. S a g a C i t y (talk) 23:07, 13 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Mark as historical, as the pages were once useful; they were made before Wikipedia had categories. Graham 87 10:53, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I can understand a policy/guideline page being of WP:HISTORICAL interest, but this is just out of date self-referential data that clutters up what-links-here lists etc. DexDor (talk) 19:17, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree that WP:HISTORICAL interest doesn't apply here; for some of the lists you will see that I was the last editor. I gave up when it was clear that no-one else was interested. So they have no clear cut-off or any significant value S a g a C i t y (talk) 17:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom --Surturz (talk) 23:53, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete, no historical purpose to warrant keeping, other pages serve the purpose better. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 18:41, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep and mark as historical per . The page has been referenced in numerous discussions as evidenced by Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Multiple-place names. Here are three examples: Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 12, Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation/Archive 13, and Articles for deletion/List of misleading place names. From Policies and guidelines: "In certain cases, a policy or guideline may be superseded, in which case the old page is marked and retained for historical interest." Cunard (talk) 00:15, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The page being discussed isn't "a policy or guideline" page. The linked discussions are from 2006-2007 - an era when (afaics) there had to be an inlink to a dab page to prevent the dab page being marked as an orphan so they have little relevance now (not that I'm suggesting deleting the discussions themselves).  The discussions already contain lots of redlinks. DexDor (talk) 07:08, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the correction. This part of Policies and guidelines is more relevant (bolding added for emphasis): "Essays, information pages, and other informal pages that are only supported by a small minority of the community are typically moved to the primary author's userspace. These discussions typically happen on the page's talk page, sometimes with an RfC, but they have at times also been conducted at Miscellany for deletion (despite the MFD guidelines explicitly discouraging this practice). Other pages are retained for historical reference and are marked as such." I agree that Multiple-place names and its subpages at Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Multiple-place names have little relevance today. But they have historical reference because they were cited in policy, guideline, and deletion discussions nearly a decade over. There's little harm in retaining these pages, so they should be kept by default. Cunard (talk) 00:07, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * There are thousands of pages that are mentioned in discussions that have been deleted (an obvious example being any page that is deleted after an xFD discussion). It's (just) conceivable that someone might find the very old discussions about dab policy interesting and it's (theoretically) possible that such a person may understand the discussion better by seeing these lists, but in the unlikely event that anybody doing serious research into the history of wp wants to see deleted pages they can ask an admin for a copy.
 * These pages (note: although this MFD is just about the index page, the intention is to follow up deletion of the index by an MFD of the subpages) contain thousands of links to other pages and thus appear on what-links-here lists of thousands of pages; unless we occasionally delete such things we will have an ever increasing amount of old wikipedia junk cluttering up the place. DexDor (talk) 07:47, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * in the unlikely event that anybody doing serious research into the history of wp wants to see deleted pages they can ask an admin for a copy – I would rather the pages be preserved rather than deleted. This allows researchers to access the material easily rather than having to waste time asking an admin for a copy. the intention is to follow up deletion of the index by an MFD of the subpages) contain thousands of links to other pages and thus appear on what-links-here lists of thousands of pages – this is easily resolved by blanking all the pages and marking them as historical. An MfD is not needed to do that. Would this be a good compromise? It would ensure that the Special:WhatLinksHere links are not cluttered with links from pages like Multiple-place names, and it would preserve historical information. Cunard (talk) 07:55, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Delete. I don't think the Demotion policy applies here. -- P 1 9 9 ✉ 17:27, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The demotion policy says "Other pages are retained for historical reference and are marked as such." Why does that not apply to this page? Cunard (talk) 07:55, 16 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep and mark as historical. Deletion should almost always be avoided when there's a sensible alternative, and in this case, I think there is one. What really swayed me is that I can't think of a single benefit to deletion. I can't necessarily think of any great harm that would result from deletion either, but this isn't some silly user page; I need more than just "we don't use this anymore" before I'll endorse deletion. --BDD (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2015 (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 page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.