Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tippett, Nevada

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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 keep‎. Liz Read! Talk! 06:37, 15 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Tippett, Nevada

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

Tippett, Nevada (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

The few sources that cover this location in detail [1][2] describe it as a sheep ranch that included a stagecoach stop, general store and lodging. This really doesn't amount to significant coverage, they don't describe it as a community and there's no official recognition that would meet GEOLAND. –dlthewave ☎ 17:58, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment - Google Earth shows that today, this is just a spot on a rough dirt road. There's a farm nearby. Nobody else lives within several miles.
--A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 12:08, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 21:30, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. Demonstrably a populated place (one Lincoln Highway guidebook gives the population as 10, which probably undercounts the effective population, as newspapers show quite a few folks who were "from" or "born in" Tippett; like many fourth-class post office communities, Tippett would likely have served as a locus of identity for the surrounding area). Has significant coverage with many encyclopedic details in Romancing Nevada's Past (Shawn Hall, Univ. Nevada Press, 2016) and probably also in The Lincoln Highway: Nevada (Gregory Franzwa, 1995, appears self-published but by an unquestioned SME in Lincoln Highway history). Widely covered in ghost-town blogs, although probably few of those are RSs. I think this meets the WP:GNG: there is ample material from which to build an article that provides encyclopedic value to the reader. But in any event, as a bona fide populated place with a significant form of government recognition, it passes WP:NGEO. -- Visviva (talk) 01:17, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    While not IMO essential to the question, the following White Pine News clips might be useful in getting a sense of the community once here: (1) a front-page story on an obscure battle over control of voting and mining in the Tippett district, (2) a description of the star routes serving Tippett and neighboring communities shortly before the post office was snuffed out, (3) a report on mining prospects in the Tippett district, (4) a representative Tippett society column. There may be nothing let of Tippett now, but this was no mere mapmaker's fancy. -- Visviva (talk) 02:01, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    A more rigorous policy-based rationale for my !vote follows:
    First, the rules: Under WP:NGEO, Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, while Populated places without legal recognition are considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the GNG. Thus, even where a community has received no legal recognition at all, the GNG provides a path to presumed notability. And the GNG of course requires that the article subject has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, where "significant coverage" must be sufficiently on-topic and detailed that no original research is needed to extract the content. Therefore, regardless of legal recognition, a community is presumed notable (i.e. suitable for a stand-alone article) if it is the subject of significant coverage in independent reliable sources.
    Next, the sources. We have an information-dense paragraph (looks like 50-60 words) with fairly dense information in this Lincoln Highway book from Stackpole Books, and a full two-page profile in this book published by the University of Nevada Press. Numerous more glancing but informative mentions can be found in other secondary sources, such as this 2013 Lincoln Highway article in Nevada Magazine, and this 1916 Lincoln Highway Association guidebook. An early cross-country travelogue devotes two (small) pages, about 100 words, to a description of the Tippett community and its "interesting lot of people".
    Conclusion: Even without considering the questions of legal recognition, self-published sources, or contemporary press coverage (all of which would weigh, if at all, further in the article's favor), Tippett merits an article under the GNG because it has been the subject of coverage in independent reliable sources, and that coverage is sufficiently detailed and on-topic that no original research is required to extract the content. -- Visviva (talk) 05:39, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Visviva above. We're just trying to meet WP:GEOLAND here, and notability still exists even if the settlement does not. Came across this report that mentions the post office as being a recordkeeping house. AviationFreak💬 19:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - probably a section of the country, not a town.
Nothing in the Online Nevada Encyclopedia. It does not have specific articles for towns but is mostly historical. The Las Vegas newspaper archives from 1909 to 1927 have nothing:[3]. (After 1927, I got 1800+ hits; I went through the first 100 and only found Tippett used as a last name.)
Visviva's first article talks about Tippett as a "district" of White Pine County, not a town. It spells it two ways: "Tippitt" or "Tippett". It says that county officials voted to merge it into the Pleasant Valley district. Article 3 about mining once again uses the word "district". These hard rock metal ore mines take up a lot of space and aren't something normally found in a town (there are a few exceptions). Article 2: old-time U.S. rural post offices are not proof a town once existed -- they could just be a low volume "distribution node" of sorts in someone's farmhouse or store.
I think Tippett was a section of a very large county, not a town.
Here's the Google Earth link for the USGS coordinates in the article. Please look at it.
I'm really trying but coming up short. I still say delete.
--A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 20:50, 6 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think I may not have been clear as to my intention in providing those links in my self-reply: I was trying to provide a taste of the various goings on at Tippett, not to use those particular clippings as a basis for notability.
To my misfortune, I am prone to focusing on the arguments that I find most interesting, which are usually much more tendentious than the boring arguments that actually have a chance. In hopes of fixing my blunder, I have added a more formulaic policy-based rationale as a second self-reply above. In sum: my arguments about NGEO are beside the point because this (former) community passes the GNG -- and does so, ironically, thanks in part to the fact that nobody lives there anymore. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a ghost town!
(But since I can't help myself, I'll add that I think it speaks volumes to a little-considered aspect of Wikipedia's systemic bias that we don't yet even have articles on open-country community or fourth-class post office, institutions without an understanding of which it is almost impossible to make sense of the lives of the majority of US residents in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Imagine a world in which any contact with the outside world (including newspapers) comes through the post office, which is also the only place you are likely to meet any neighbors who live beyond hollering distance. No surprise that these places became the locus of identity for the communities around them, the place people were "from", even when no commercial center developed. And no surprise that, as here, these places often became centers of political activity (as Tippett for example came to serve as a voting precinct, seat of a mining district, seat of a school funding district, and site of mass meetings). I might try to build a userspace essay on the subject since this sadly seems to come up with some frequency lately. To leave rural communities -- which are quite different from small towns -- out of our coverage would be to abandon a vast swath of documented human experience for no particular good reason, which to my mind is entirely contrary to our mission. But, again, no matter how much this argument interests me I don't think it really has any bearing on the outcome in this particular case. The GNG suffices.) -- Visviva (talk) 05:48, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz Humbug! 02:33, 10 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

--A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 05:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per Visviva and others. Okoslavia (talk) 05:34, 13 July 2023 (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.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tippett,_Nevada&oldid=1165442963"