Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allen Shop Corner, Virginia

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 Procedural close. WP:BUNDLE suggests using bundles cautiously (sample quote Inappropriately bundling articles can cause a confused process or "trainwreck". Or to put it more succinctly, if you are unsure of whether to bundle an article or not, don't.). It is expected that AfD participants be able to verify the notability of any given article and those advocating delete suggest that they have not verified that all articles should be deleted. All of these may indeed not be notable but 85 simultaneous nominations, whether in a bundle or individually, is not an effective way of determining that lack of notability. No prejudice to selected articles (in other words not all of them initially) being immediately renominated individually or in a smaller bundle. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:20, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Allen Shop Corner, Virginia

[Hide this box] New to Articles for deletion (AfD)? Read these primers!

(View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

Similar to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Acors Corner, Virginia, these are mass-produced from the GNIS, a listing in which is not automatic notability. These are not communities, rather locations of people's homes. See topo where Allen Shop Corner and Carlton Corner lacked a notable concentration of population. See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dabney Estates, Virginia. Reywas92^Talk 21:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Reywas92^Talk 21:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Virginia-related deletion discussions. Reywas92^Talk 21:07, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or merge ONE line of text. TuorEladar (talk) 21:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Gwaltney Corner, at least. I haven't been able to go through all of these, because there are a lot of them, but Gwaltney Corner sticks out as being an actual place. First of all, it's recorded as the closest community to Snow Hill, a house on the National Register of Historic Places. Second of all, it's consistently used as a location in news reports. Here's an article about local hog farms. Here's an article about a dump site being developed there. Here's an article about a local highway project. Additionally, an aerial view does show a small but clear concentration of homes.

I'd say to procedurally keep the others unless this nomination is drastically reduced. It's unreasonable to expect !voters to evaluate the dozens of articles in this nomination, at least one of which is clearly more than a corner with a single home, and all of which seem to be included on the basis of being stubs with "corner" in the name. Even if you want to debate the individual merits of some of these "corners", if that needs to be done at all, it invalidates the premise that these are all single people's homes and not communities. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 23:32, 4 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gwaltney Corner struck, though here's a topo showing how sparse it was; clippings certainly use it as an identifiable site on the map but not necessarily establish notability. Perhaps the creator should have "evaluated the ~~dozens~~ hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles" before mass-creating them, but now it's my WP:BURDEN to verify that. I certainly encourage this to be relisted or considered a WP:SOFTDELETE for anyone to recreate should better sources exist. Reywas92^Talk 00:28, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gwaltney Corner wasn't even part of a mass creation. I created that article specifically because it was the location of a historic site, which I figured was evidence enough that there was an actual community there. The other Virginia articles I created around that time were about communities with post offices, which meant a government source other than the GNIS verified their existence (and which I still consider legal recognition). And based on a quick spot-check, quite a few of these articles aren't one-liners and weren't created by the same user. I'm still not sure what the basis for lumping them all together is, aside from them all being stubs with "corner" in the title. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 15:42, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And I did look at these, and those that aren't one-liners are two- or three-liners which are not and were not notable communities. The basis for grouping is that none show evidence of notability in archive searches or current and historical maps; none have post offices. Do Willy Dick Crossing, WA and Susie, WA automatically need their own articles because the GNIS "legally recognized" them? Reywas92^Talk 20:23, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The historic site Snow Hill (Gwaltney Corner, Virginia) is about two miles away and although the NRHP does use Gwaltney Corner as a landmark, it's a stretch to say that it lends any notability or demonstrates the existence of a community at that location. –dlthewave ☎ 16:42, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all. I've spot-checked enough of them to feel confident that these are non-notable. Just the usual click-bait website entries for realtors, etc. GNIS is not reliable indicator of notability. The USGS Virginia Geographic Names catalog lists these as "locales", not populated places. Glendoremus (talk) 04:47, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural keep, around 85 locations in the one afd! i know we're all meant to be social isolating and may have more time to wikipede but this is ridiculous! just entering each name into, say gsearch, and newspapers.com will take an hour let alone actually going thru the results, lets say ... 10 hours (excluding coffee/toilet breaks:)) for a superficial analysis, suggest nominator withdraws, breaks them up into manageable lots, say 1/2 dozen for each afd and releases each separately every couple of days.... ps. i note that one has been taken off the list after this afd has been up for a couple of hours, does this suggest the time it might take to seriously consider each/ reflect the lack of WP:BEFORE carried out? Coolabahapple (talk) 05:06, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- How many lots do you want? 400? Where was the BEFORE when OVER 2,500 one-liners were mass-created within seconds of each other? I absolutely did enough BEFORE on these to tell you that "is an unincorporated community" is only true to the extent that at least one person has lived at these sites at some point in time. Maybe. Glen Roy Estates, Virginia? A single mansion. Barker Crossroads, Virginia? Just a intersection of two roads. Rio Heights, Virginia? A small subdivision. The Country Store, Virginia? Who knows, it's not even on topo maps. And I stand by the one struck being a "Corner" site, not its own notable community. The GNIS is not verification that an entry is a notable community, if it is a community at all. The WP:BURDEN to verify these claims is not on me. Reywas92^Talk 08:23, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Wikipedia is a gazetteer-Thank you-RFD (talk) 15:21, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia "combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." That means that we cover geographic topics. That does not mean WP:Notability or WP:Verifiability is thrown out the window. That does not mean that we must have individual articles for every single entry imported en masse from a database. Reywas92^Talk 19:25, 5 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural keep A (better) WP:BEFORE is required.Djflem (talk) 20:05, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Djflem I have gone back and provided links to my before searches. Reywas92^Talk 21:21, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural keep This is a bit overwhelming. I was able to look at about 10 of the entries and most were clearly not notable, but not all. Different editors hunt down obscure sources in different ways, but it is a time-consuming endeavor, and lumping such a plethora AfD's together undermines the integrity of the AfD process, while a more staggered approach to AfD submissions affords editors time to search out sources to establish notability. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Puritan, Colorado is an example. One thing we all have a lot of these days is time, so let's not rush this and throw some babies out with the bath water. Magnolia677 (talk) 14:13, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Magnolia677 I have now provided links to my searches, none of which the creator ever did. It undermines the integrity of WP:Notability, WP:Verifiability, and the encyclopedia when pages are mass-produced from a single database source that does not establish that a place is even a community, less a notable one. I don't see a single "baby" in this lot. Some embryos perhaps, but anyone is welcome to recreate them should they be adequately gestated with coverage. Reywas92^Talk 21:21, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reywas92, we all know you don't see any of these places as notable, otherwise you wouldn't have nominated them all for deletion. Duh. Just let others have their say and wait for a consensus to be reached (and don't bugger around the original text after others have started commenting). Thanks! Magnolia677 (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Shady Grove Corner, Virginia is mentioned in various sources [1][2][3]. Located there is Shady Grove Church and cemetery. The church was notable during the Civil War, and is mentioned in many sources [4]. This source uses "Shady Grove Church" and "Shady Grove Corner" interchangeably. Magnolia677 (talk) 16:37, 8 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural keep Simply too many locations to process. Some very well may be non notable, but probably not all as the users above note. Try spacing out the noms instead of all at once. Also we don't need to nominate 20+ locations per day as it is cumbersome to review them all. Just because it has "corner" in its name does't meant it isn't a real settlement, although many of these are undoubtably little more than crossroads. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 00:07, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You think this is too many to process? Stop whining about 20+ nominated a day (it's actually been far, far less Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Geography) until you contribute to sifting through the 30,000+ articles in Category:Unincorporated communities in the United States by state. Maybe it wouldn't be so cumbersome if so many weren't mass-created with zero review whatsoever in the first place. I and others have been spacing this out and working on this nonsense for months now and you're just complaining about procedure. Reywas92^Talk 01:22, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Excuse me, WP:AGF Reywas92. I'm not whining, just pointing out that this is a mass, mass nomination of stubs. Of which, I wholeheartedly agree there is a lot of junk. And I don't support the creation of one-lined stubs about a particular crossroads. Some editors above have demonstrated at least 2 and probably several more of these communities are, in fact, notable. And I take it that your suggestion to sift through 30,000 articles was facetious, as many of these articles may be stubs but have at least a few refs. Hell, I just expanded a CDP today that had one source. And I don't have an issue with you spacing it out, as my guess of 20+ a day was just that, a guess, influenced by the 80-some here. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 03:01, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry for getting testy, I know you are working in good faith, and this is an unusual nom. But I fixed the category link and that's not entirely facetious; I know the number of those that are one-liners is much smaller, but several states like VA have huge numbers. CDPs are a different case since we know at least the state's statistical entity found it identifiable enough to have the census count it with defined boundaries. Reywas92^Talk 04:08, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural delete - These were all mass-created from the GNIS database with zero effort to verify or establish notability; we're being asked to put hours of WP:BEFORE research into articles that were made in a matter of seconds. Best to just TNT the whole mess. If folks are interested in finding sources and building viable articles, they can keep a list and create articles one at a time with sufficient sourcing to establish notability.

In my spot check, the few "corners" that had any coverage at all were simply mentioned in passing as landmarks, not distinct communities of any sort. –dlthewave ☎ 01:34, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's at least enough to demonstrate it may have notability, rather than nuking everything. And I don't have an issue with selectively nominating these substubs. For an example of a "corger" that is a recognized community, see Ludwig's Corner, Pennsylvania. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 03:01, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but I've looked at these and they're not recognized communities. I did exclude Nancy Wrights Corner, Virginia and a few others since I found a few sources on it. Ludwigs is identifiable on the map. Like there's nothing to nuke...and anyone can recreate. An WP:ATD is redirecting to the county. Reywas92^Talk 04:08, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As an editor who has created hundreds of stub US (and Canada) settlement articles, I have always been reluctant to create articles relying solely on GNIS (though two of my articles, Giveout, Idaho and Comical Turn, Idaho, were recently deleted). I also gave up on creating Great Good Place, Delaware because I simply could not find any sources to support its existence except GNIS and a map. User:Reywas92 and other make a good point; most of these corners have nothing to indicate anyone ever lived there, and GNIS clearly mislabeled a "locale" as a "populated place". For example, at Shady Grove Corner, Virginia I spent an hour searching for sources and the best I could find was a few passing mentions, a notable church and cemetery, and a blog stating it was named after an early-1800s farm. Wikipedia was a different place when many of these articles were created, and the threshold for notability was not so stringent. But hosting articles about places that aren't really places does not benefit the users of Wikipedia. I guess I'm still cheezed I wasn't notified when my articles were nominated for deletion, so I at least could have had a second look for sources, but I'm beginning to see the value in redirecting many of these places to the local county. It seems clear this AfD is not so much about the notability of these places, but about the best way to remove them. Magnolia677 (talk) 11:02, 9 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Pollards Corner - Pollards Corner should be deleted because of no notability or significant coverage. Koridas (Speak) 16:51, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all the GNIS items fail our inclusion guidelines and the nominator has saved us all time. Nominating these one at a time just to avoid offending the sensibility of some editors is nonsense. WP:GEOLAND is our SNG and these items not only fail GEOLAND but they also fail WP:N Lightburst (talk) 23:09, 10 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Some of these are notable though. Dahlgrens Corner, Virginia for instance was the site of a famous raid during the civil war. Several others above have been sourced as well. If we delete these all, it would be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. So it's not just a matter of offending someone's sensibility, rather a matter of making sure we do our due diligence which is impossible if there are so many to sift through. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 00:05, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  Yet when you expanded this article, you failed to correct the massive error that this is not and was never a community! The source Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide says "There, at a junction even today known as Dahlgren's Corner, Pollard laid an ambush". The other source never uses the name "Dahlgren's corner"! Stevensville, Virginia mentions this event, having been the nearest actual community to the location of Mr. Dahlgren's death. This article is the bathwater, still containing false information! Reywas92^Talk 02:56, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  And yet is is considered to be a community [5] and is marked on Google Maps, unlike some of the other "corners". Even if it's not a "community" as such (though folks nearby might say they live there), it's still notable as the location of the famous raid. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 14:44, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - How dense can you be? These websites make the same negligent import of data the creator did! Our favorite industrial railroad spur Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Susie, Washington is also falsely called a "populated place" on home(nota)townlocator.com and marked on GMaps! The raid itself it notable, not the damn road junction. Reywas92^Talk 16:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all because they were mass-produced and fail GEOLAND. No prejudice against anyone re-creating any of these that actually meet N. But we shouldn't go through them one-by-one to determine if they're notable. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 01:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural keep – Nominate separately or in much smaller batches, to better enable users to perform source searches to assess. That is, unless we want to risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater, potentially blindly deleting geographic locations that may actually notable (e.g. Shady Grove Corner, Virginia, Gwaltney Corner, Virginia [struck in the nomination, but the AfD template remains in the article]), all in one fell swoop. I also disagree with the use of spot checking here as has been stated above in the discussion. This method could lead to some potentially notable places slipping through the cracks, making the encyclopedia inferior. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:48, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- So we're not at all concerned about hundreds of literal falsehoods misinforming our readers making the encyclopedia inferior? These "babies" are swimming in a sea of junk, not a tub. Reywas92^Talk 03:01, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

At less than 0.005 of all WP articles theres probably no need to panic. Coolabahapple (talk) 06:18, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
and just because they are "one-liners", a statement you have made above on numerous occasions, doesn't mean they are not notable. Coolabahapple (talk) 06:22, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It does mean they're not "babies", that they're someone's valuable hard work it'll be so so sad to lose wah wah wah. It's not my WP:BURDEN to prove a negative. If it's so few articles maybe you shouldn't panic about them being deleted then? Why have individual AFDs at all? one wrong article is only 0.00000016% anyway! Reywas92^Talk 16:09, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, DING!!! and another locality has been removed from this afd..... Coolabahapple (talk) 06:25, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Nope, still just one. Gwaltney Corner's not notable. Reywas92^Talk 16:47, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - Gwaltney Corner was removed for several days, in which several people commented on the overall notability of the articles, until you just added it back. If you think that one's not notable, have a separate AfD about it instead of trying to cram it back into another one at the last minute. TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 18:22, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    - Whatever, struck for now then — Preceding unsigned comment added by Reywas92 (talk • contribs) 19:21, 11 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Comment these are probably all correctly deleted, but since one was called into question, the entire nomination unfortunately collapses. I'd recommend detailing before searches for each article on a user page, as there are simply too many GNIS stubs to process right now - I'd be much more confident supporting a mass deletion if I could see how these had been checked. SportingFlyer T·C 21:32, 12 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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.