Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a gazetteer

Purpose
This essay has come out of a number cases over the past year, most notably: This is an essay summarising various arguments from the following AFDs/AN/Talk page discussions:
 * This AFD discussion regarding the deletion of Mazraeh-ye Dariush Baharvand Ahmadi, a place listed as an Iranian ābādī in the 2006 Iranian census (this is in fact one of many hundreds of such AFDs processed over the past year)
 * This AN discussion regarding the deletion of thousands of articles whose notability was demonstrated solely by their being listed as ābādī in the 2006 Iranian census.
 * Another AN discussion on the deletion of thousands of Azerbaijani geostubs sourced only to GEOnet names server, essentially a gazetteer.
 * Talk page discussion at Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) regarding an amendment to clarify that Wikipedia does not "function as" a gazetteer but instead has "features of" one
 * Various discussions by the California GNIS clear-up team on the team talk page, whose task is made much more difficult by the idea that GNIS, a gazetteer, is suitable sourcing for articles

Basically the intent is to provide a clearing house/collecting point for common issues seen particularly at AFD related to gazetteers and gazetteer-like sources. FOARP (talk) 15:02, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

"Legally-recognized" "places"
It might be worth mentioning that settlements themselves do not generally hold legal recognition (other than if being a settlement makes it legally recognized) but the municipality or district etc of the same name (sometimes it is prefixed or suffixed with "City" or "Town" etc) for example Tumeltsham is both a settlement with a population of 774 and a municipality with 1587. Many times population data for settlements are provided and this would IMO be enough in its self to meet WP:GEOLAND even if its not an administrative unit. Kersey, Suffolk is both a village and civil parish (municipality) that also includes Kersey Tye, Kersey Upland, Wicker Street Green and William's Green but since those articles contained no content other than location they were merged, similarly Stanwix Rural is a parish civil (municipality) which does not have a settlement of the same name but does include other settlements like Brunstock that was formerly a township that had a stated population and thus would probably pass GEOLAND. With regards to NOTGAZ it may be worth noting that in cases where no content other than location is given it doesn't qualify as significant coverage, for example this gazetteer entry gives no information other than the location while this one gives a stated population for example in these entries only those that give information beyond location would be considered. With ābādī and similar it might be necessary to provide some exclusion criteria but otherwise the only exception listed is census tracts which are arbitrary areas.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 22:14, 26 January 2022 (UTC)