@ Hog Farm I still do a lot of genealogy and have an interest in the Miller surname. So, I've been trying identify him. A Tex Miller definitely had a "boiling point Garage" according to news articles. I've been trying to find a census record for him. A name and a location is generally all one needs to tell someones life story. But, I can't find him so I think Tex is a nickname. So, I started searching SoCal newspapers for "Tex Miller", and there is a guy who was from Texas going by the name Tex miller(this suggests both the possibility it's a nickname and the origin of the nickname). Additionally, there was a Miller in the census records who was from Texas. He is purportedly, a former notable football player turned boxer. He only fought two fights and quit boxing in 1928. This is about right for him to also be a garage owner in 1931.
Maybe that helps you? I continue to look, so if you found anything further let me know. James.folsom ( talk) 00:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
James.folsom, I am alarmed by your attack on the Georgia unincorporated communities articles. Especially considering you are from the South, please be aware there is a Wikipedia:Systemic bias, in which the South is underrepresented on Wikipedia ("As a result of systemic bias, Wikipedia underrepresents the perspectives of people in the Global South, people who lack adequate access to the internet or a serviceable computer, and people who do not have free time to edit the encyclopedia.")
Please stop trying to remove and/or redirect the articles of populated communities. ("Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low.") – Gilliam ( talk) 05:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Why are you removing the information on census-designated places from community articles? They're generally meant to represent a community that isn't legally incorporated, and even if their boundaries change, they're still a government-recognized count of a community's population. TheCatalyst31 Reaction• Creation 02:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
You must run this by WP:USCITIES before you proceed any further with your changes to articles. Note that it has been brought up in the past, with no consensus to change the status quo. Ken Gallager ( talk) 02:54, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Hello, James.folsom,
I see you are participating in AFDs these days. If you are arguing for a Move, Merge or Redirect, you need to specify what target article you want this action directed toward. A closer can't decide on their own what your intentions are, that's what is called a "super vote" and is highly discouraged. A closer just assesses the discussion, they don't come up with original solutions on their own. So, please be specific and not vague in your argument. Other editors might agree or disagree but that's why it is a discussion. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 03:14, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Foster Dwight Coburn, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:
Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) ( talk) 22:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Just curious, how thoroughly did you search for notability? I found plenty of results and even tossing out non-sognificant mentions there are several e.g. here [1]
Respectfully, RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 12:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Separately, I’d like to ask that you make a bulk AfD with all the Romanian ones and rescind the PRODs. Verifying notability, even cursorily with a web search, would be somewhat time-consuming and it’s getting late/early in my time zone.
PROD requires that the nom have verified notability and other concerns thoroughly, as there is potentially little to no peer review involved.
I also would note that someone bothered to add them all to Template:Resources in Romania.
Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 12:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
”None of them are notable, they are gas fields for gods sake. There is no difference between them and a rock quarry, or a poultry farm.”There’s a lot more money in a gas field than a barn full of chickens or a pile of rocks. And at a time when Europe is short on gas, there’s probably a lot more interest. — A. B. ( talk • contribs • global count) 19:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
The AfD on that one just closed and I noticed that I missed a response from you that I would have replied to. Apologies for missing that. As you make a good general point, I'll reply to you here. Because in general I agree with you - GEOLAND guidelines and the consensus that Wikipedia is a gazetteer encourage thousands upon thousands of permastub articles. Although the philosophy is that one person creates a stub and other editors improve them, this doesn't happen because the fire hose of creations are beyond the large but finite pool of editor's capabilities. Policies that were designed to facilitate the expansion of the encyclopaedia may not be appropriate any longer. And the concept that it is both encyclopaedia and gazetteer is not widely understood, and may not be the best approach. So I understand the frustration.
Those, however, are meta questions. At that AfD, kvng had pointed out that school districts are there in the notability guidelines, and my point is that the page met them. It was a keep, even though I would agree there are better approaches. There are more egregious examples of this "loosy goosy" approach though. Such as the 600 articles on Samsung products under discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products?. Or the guy who added an almost blank stub for every Irish churchman in history. Or many many more. AfD is a lot of work, and allows a trickle of deletions while a river of permastubs keep coming in. That is Wikipedia. It is like fixing "citation needed" templates whilst keeping an eye on the growth of them. A sisyphean task. I wouldn't have said all that at AfD - it is all meta. I would, however, have made a couple of points:
So yes, on philosophy, I expect we agree. If you want to get there, don't start from here! Cheers. Sirfurboy🏄 ( talk) 08:32, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
There's a whole Hell of a lot of background Wikipedia history when it comes to schools and school districts. This précis doesn't do it justice, but very briefly: Some (U.S.) people many years ago originally thought that having an article on every (U.S.) school would suck in editors; it definitely sucked in a lot of school children who went on to write about their teachers and other schoolchildren; an enormous tidal back-and-forth happened at AFD to the extent that there were entire factions of editors who rote-contributed to AFD discussions of school articles; a later compromise to stop this included the idea of having articles on the (late 20th century consolidated) school districts.
Of course, none of this took into account that historically there were a lot of tiny rural school districts in some rural parts of the U.S. before consolidation happened. A lot of this had nothing to do with how possible it was to actually write in accordance with content policy, either; it being a way to settle what had become an extreme factionalistic tug of war. And non-U.S. editors, whose education systems don't work like the U.S. and some of whose schools have centuries-long individual histories, looked on with reactions varying from amusement through befuddlement to despair.
I should add one more piece of history: The idea that the GNIS mess or other mass creations was in line with the "policies that were designed to facilitate the expansion of the encyclopaedia" is wrong. Mass creations were suspect from the start. Back when Rambot ( talk · contribs) was creating articles for Census-Designated Places, which is nowhere near as many articles as the GNIS importers created years afterwards, there were even then discussions on the mailing list and elsewhere about mass-creation leaving masses of boilerplate never-actually-going-to-attract-people bare-statistics-only stubs around. (Citizendium adopted a very different inclusion requirement, maintainability, in part because of the Wikipedia experience of hundreds of thousands of articles that no-one maintained.) There were people who expressed doubts that this sort of thing would work, even for articles where there was more than just a database of names and coördinates for the statistics.
One thing to consider, in hindsight, is how much damage was done by Wikipedia mass creations. The CDP articles didn't do really any damage, and ironically some of them still stand with just the census data today; but the school articles attracted a lot of BLP vandalism, and the GNIS mess articles propagate(d) outright falsehoods by the thousands.
Uncle G ( talk) 20:44, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
As noted before, I don't have the access to newspapers and suchlike. So Lena Park, Indiana ( AfD discussion) is awaiting the attention of the newspaper searchers. Note that the 1 newspaper article so far is the WWW site's cited source. Uncle G ( talk) 19:38, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
@ A. B. obviously didn't bother, to do any research before choosing Dettol as an example, You would have found that it's a household word for over 2 Billion people and probably rakes in more cash than your sewage treatment plants or your gas fields combined. And actually is historically relevant. Also, I didn't write that article. I simply split up the original Dettol article to separate Dettol the antiseptic liquid from Dettol the hugely propular brand name. James.folsom ( talk) 01:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
@ Hog Farm I still do a lot of genealogy and have an interest in the Miller surname. So, I've been trying identify him. A Tex Miller definitely had a "boiling point Garage" according to news articles. I've been trying to find a census record for him. A name and a location is generally all one needs to tell someones life story. But, I can't find him so I think Tex is a nickname. So, I started searching SoCal newspapers for "Tex Miller", and there is a guy who was from Texas going by the name Tex miller(this suggests both the possibility it's a nickname and the origin of the nickname). Additionally, there was a Miller in the census records who was from Texas. He is purportedly, a former notable football player turned boxer. He only fought two fights and quit boxing in 1928. This is about right for him to also be a garage owner in 1931.
Maybe that helps you? I continue to look, so if you found anything further let me know. James.folsom ( talk) 00:55, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
James.folsom, I am alarmed by your attack on the Georgia unincorporated communities articles. Especially considering you are from the South, please be aware there is a Wikipedia:Systemic bias, in which the South is underrepresented on Wikipedia ("As a result of systemic bias, Wikipedia underrepresents the perspectives of people in the Global South, people who lack adequate access to the internet or a serviceable computer, and people who do not have free time to edit the encyclopedia.")
Please stop trying to remove and/or redirect the articles of populated communities. ("Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low.") – Gilliam ( talk) 05:09, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Why are you removing the information on census-designated places from community articles? They're generally meant to represent a community that isn't legally incorporated, and even if their boundaries change, they're still a government-recognized count of a community's population. TheCatalyst31 Reaction• Creation 02:41, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
You must run this by WP:USCITIES before you proceed any further with your changes to articles. Note that it has been brought up in the past, with no consensus to change the status quo. Ken Gallager ( talk) 02:54, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Hello, James.folsom,
I see you are participating in AFDs these days. If you are arguing for a Move, Merge or Redirect, you need to specify what target article you want this action directed toward. A closer can't decide on their own what your intentions are, that's what is called a "super vote" and is highly discouraged. A closer just assesses the discussion, they don't come up with original solutions on their own. So, please be specific and not vague in your argument. Other editors might agree or disagree but that's why it is a discussion. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 03:14, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Foster Dwight Coburn, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:
Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) ( talk) 22:18, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
Just curious, how thoroughly did you search for notability? I found plenty of results and even tossing out non-sognificant mentions there are several e.g. here [1]
Respectfully, RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 12:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
Separately, I’d like to ask that you make a bulk AfD with all the Romanian ones and rescind the PRODs. Verifying notability, even cursorily with a web search, would be somewhat time-consuming and it’s getting late/early in my time zone.
PROD requires that the nom have verified notability and other concerns thoroughly, as there is potentially little to no peer review involved.
I also would note that someone bothered to add them all to Template:Resources in Romania.
Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier ( talk) 12:18, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
”None of them are notable, they are gas fields for gods sake. There is no difference between them and a rock quarry, or a poultry farm.”There’s a lot more money in a gas field than a barn full of chickens or a pile of rocks. And at a time when Europe is short on gas, there’s probably a lot more interest. — A. B. ( talk • contribs • global count) 19:18, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
The AfD on that one just closed and I noticed that I missed a response from you that I would have replied to. Apologies for missing that. As you make a good general point, I'll reply to you here. Because in general I agree with you - GEOLAND guidelines and the consensus that Wikipedia is a gazetteer encourage thousands upon thousands of permastub articles. Although the philosophy is that one person creates a stub and other editors improve them, this doesn't happen because the fire hose of creations are beyond the large but finite pool of editor's capabilities. Policies that were designed to facilitate the expansion of the encyclopaedia may not be appropriate any longer. And the concept that it is both encyclopaedia and gazetteer is not widely understood, and may not be the best approach. So I understand the frustration.
Those, however, are meta questions. At that AfD, kvng had pointed out that school districts are there in the notability guidelines, and my point is that the page met them. It was a keep, even though I would agree there are better approaches. There are more egregious examples of this "loosy goosy" approach though. Such as the 600 articles on Samsung products under discussion: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Do we really need over 600 articles on individual Samsung products?. Or the guy who added an almost blank stub for every Irish churchman in history. Or many many more. AfD is a lot of work, and allows a trickle of deletions while a river of permastubs keep coming in. That is Wikipedia. It is like fixing "citation needed" templates whilst keeping an eye on the growth of them. A sisyphean task. I wouldn't have said all that at AfD - it is all meta. I would, however, have made a couple of points:
So yes, on philosophy, I expect we agree. If you want to get there, don't start from here! Cheers. Sirfurboy🏄 ( talk) 08:32, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
There's a whole Hell of a lot of background Wikipedia history when it comes to schools and school districts. This précis doesn't do it justice, but very briefly: Some (U.S.) people many years ago originally thought that having an article on every (U.S.) school would suck in editors; it definitely sucked in a lot of school children who went on to write about their teachers and other schoolchildren; an enormous tidal back-and-forth happened at AFD to the extent that there were entire factions of editors who rote-contributed to AFD discussions of school articles; a later compromise to stop this included the idea of having articles on the (late 20th century consolidated) school districts.
Of course, none of this took into account that historically there were a lot of tiny rural school districts in some rural parts of the U.S. before consolidation happened. A lot of this had nothing to do with how possible it was to actually write in accordance with content policy, either; it being a way to settle what had become an extreme factionalistic tug of war. And non-U.S. editors, whose education systems don't work like the U.S. and some of whose schools have centuries-long individual histories, looked on with reactions varying from amusement through befuddlement to despair.
I should add one more piece of history: The idea that the GNIS mess or other mass creations was in line with the "policies that were designed to facilitate the expansion of the encyclopaedia" is wrong. Mass creations were suspect from the start. Back when Rambot ( talk · contribs) was creating articles for Census-Designated Places, which is nowhere near as many articles as the GNIS importers created years afterwards, there were even then discussions on the mailing list and elsewhere about mass-creation leaving masses of boilerplate never-actually-going-to-attract-people bare-statistics-only stubs around. (Citizendium adopted a very different inclusion requirement, maintainability, in part because of the Wikipedia experience of hundreds of thousands of articles that no-one maintained.) There were people who expressed doubts that this sort of thing would work, even for articles where there was more than just a database of names and coördinates for the statistics.
One thing to consider, in hindsight, is how much damage was done by Wikipedia mass creations. The CDP articles didn't do really any damage, and ironically some of them still stand with just the census data today; but the school articles attracted a lot of BLP vandalism, and the GNIS mess articles propagate(d) outright falsehoods by the thousands.
Uncle G ( talk) 20:44, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
As noted before, I don't have the access to newspapers and suchlike. So Lena Park, Indiana ( AfD discussion) is awaiting the attention of the newspaper searchers. Note that the 1 newspaper article so far is the WWW site's cited source. Uncle G ( talk) 19:38, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
@ A. B. obviously didn't bother, to do any research before choosing Dettol as an example, You would have found that it's a household word for over 2 Billion people and probably rakes in more cash than your sewage treatment plants or your gas fields combined. And actually is historically relevant. Also, I didn't write that article. I simply split up the original Dettol article to separate Dettol the antiseptic liquid from Dettol the hugely propular brand name. James.folsom ( talk) 01:14, 2 February 2024 (UTC)