Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)/Archive 13

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 Archive 13 Archive 14

Russian Selo - another case of census data not actually being a list of legally-recognised, populated places.

This was flagged up by Mangoe in a recent AFD and I thought it worth discussing here. The Russian word Selo can be translated both as "village", "hamlet", and "rural locality". Typically these are governed by a selsoviet which governs multiple neighbouring selo - as such, unless it happens to be the base of the selsoviet, a selo does not have it's own layer of administration. Selo are thus often just statistical counting-units. Often these selo have very small populations - possibly just 1 - and are in reality single buildings/farms.

Based only on an analysis of the mass-created articles for selo in Kolchuginsky District, these selo appear very similar to the Iranian abadi that we have had so much trouble with under the GEOLAND standard. This extends to:

I do not think we should be creating articles about what are ultimately just non-notable statistical artefacts, not actual communities. Russian Selo should be added to NGEO, alongside Iranian Abadi as an example of something that does not get presumed notability.
I've also got to say that there is something ikky and potentially dangerous about us giving an individual article to what in reality is just someone's house, indicating (with the distance calculated...) that they live alone, a long way from potential help (e.g., Novino). FOARP (talk) 08:37, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't see what the problem is, the Russian government says these are legally-recognized ρ𝓸𝐩ᵘ𝕃𝓐Ŧ𝐄𝒹 ρ𝓵άℂє𝓼 so therefore they are deserving of standalone articles. 330 such creations in one day is also fine because the community decided that any daily/monthly/yearly limit, or requiring a non-primary or non-database source be used as the basis of a mass creation, was unconscionable. JoelleJay (talk) 03:16, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
(Obviously I do support adding selo to the list). JoelleJay (talk) 21:44, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
😢 — hike395 (talk) 08:13, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

I would support adding selo to the list of not-acceptable places in GEOLAND. — hike395 (talk) 08:16, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

  • Also - it turns out, that also similarly to Iranian abadi, there are a substantial number of selo that have no population. According to a USDA report:
"As of the end of 2012, there were 153,100 rural settlements in Russia, of which only 133,700 settlements were permanently inhabited. In 73 percent of rural settlements the number of inhabitants is less than 200, and settlements with over 2,000 inhabitants comprise only 2 percent of the total."
This is another data-point that casts doubt on the idea that all selo should have presumed notability. FOARP (talk) 09:54, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Support specifically mentioning selo as disallowed. Mass-creating bad articles like this is and continues to be disruptive. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 20:17, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

comment I will say in all fairness that the reason why the locations are so bad is because the data itself is imprecise. The numbers are given only down to minutes, so N-S the variance could be over a mile (less for E-W). That said, while I wouldn't necessarily say these should be excluded on principle, they need more justification than just DB listings. Mangoe (talk) 02:51, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

  • Moreso than many other countries, the Russian countryside has been severely depopulated over the last century. Most of these places which have small or zero populations now are old villages with substantial histories, preserved in the name and boundaries of the administrative selo. So, for example, the ruwiki article on Dubki tells us that it had a population of 427 in 1905, and has a sourced, 385 word section on its 400+ year history. Litvinovo was a centuries-old independent village with its own school, library and post office before being absorbed into the urban area of Kolchuginsky in 2005. Metallist is not a factory but a village of more than 400 people, again with its own school, medical centre, etc. Its name comes from the state farm that founded the village—the Soviet Union being fond of names that referenced industrial labour—it's not a description of what's there. There may be some value in merging the articles on villages and the administrative units named after them. But this is not an abadi situation: the major problem there was that Carlossuarez couldn't read a word of the Persian sources he was using, while the creator of these articles is a native Russian speaker (unlike anybody who's commented so far here or in the linked AfDs, AFAIK). You can't judge the enduring notability of a place by just looking at contemporary statistics, maps and satellite photos. – Joe (talk) 05:43, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
    • Then the native speaker could spend another 20 minutes giving any sort of that historical context and sourcing in the articles they are creating, instead of spamming contextless stubs. If there's a better article on ruwiki, why is that not being translated over? It's not too much to ask, since Wikipedia is apparently being used as their therapy regimen anyhow. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:25, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      Personally I think we should be grateful that Nikolai has done so much to expand our coverage of Russian geography, rather than demanding he do even more. I definitely think we should refrain from using the mental health issues he has bravely disclosed on his talk page as ammunition in an attack on his work, and am disappointed to see a former arb doing so. – Joe (talk) 15:14, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      I have refrained from naming the author out of sensitivity to their condition. However, Wikipedia is not therapy is a long standing principle. FOARP (talk) 16:04, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      Personally I think we should be grateful that Nikolai has done so much to expand our coverage of Russian geography, rather than demanding he do even more. I don't think that is an accurate way to interpret the statement; I see the statement as saying There are minimum standards for articles for them to be a net benefit to the encyclopedia, and if an editor wants to create an article they should bring them to that minimum standard.
      Personally, I agree with that statement; just because Wikipedia is WP:VOLUNTARY doesn't mean we have to accept all volunteer work. BilledMammal (talk) 16:19, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      Of course not, but we should have a good reason for not accepting it. I've explained above that the supposed problems with these articles disappear with some cursory research. What we are left with, for what feels like the hundredth time, is a small group of editors who simply do not like stubs about places and will say or do anything to try and get rid of them. I am this close to filing an arbitration request about it. – Joe (talk) 17:37, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      I eagerly await the compelling evidence you'll bring up in such a filing. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 18:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      And just to highlight this - none of the problems with these articles were actually rebutted.
      For example, the “rebuttal” of Metallist being an Agro-industrial concern is that it was established as a branch of an Agro-industrial concern. The “rebuttal” of Litvinovo not being a separate village (let alone two independent villages) was that it is not an independent village. The “rebuttal” of Dubki not being two villages was a word-count of the history of one of the supposed villages that is “Dubki”.
      Just being a selo does not mean it is inhabited - and possibly has never been inhabited. There was no attempt at justifying the article that is palpably about the area around a school, or the duplicate articles. FOARP (talk) 23:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      It's impossible to engage in a good faith discussion with you on this topic, you again and again shift the goal posts. You claimed, based on a naive reading of its name, that Metallist was not a village but a metalworks. I showed that it is a (substantial) village and its name has nothing to do with industrial activity, past or present. You claimed that Litvinovo was merely a neighbourhood, I showed that it was physically and legally an independent settlement as recently as thirty years ago. You claimed that Dubki was merely a "counting unit", I showed that it is a settlement which we can demonstrably write a substantial encyclopaedia article about, because ruwiki already has. I'm not going to go through each and every example you've raised and prove notability, I don't have to. What I've showed is that you are cherry-picking and misrepresenting these articles to fit your preconceived conclusion that selo are "statistical artefacts, not actual communities", when in fact every single one is an actual or former community (yes, including Shkolny). – Joe (talk) 04:32, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Shkolny is a community? Really? Indulge me here and defend that statement. FOARP (talk) 05:00, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Look at a map man. It's a village, there are houses, there are people. It was named after a school, so what? The village I live in is named after a rock, it doesn't mean it's a rock. Maybe you'd find it neater if it was counted as part of the nearby villages Esiplevo or Sloboda, so what? The Russian government disagreed. – Joe (talk) 05:38, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Firstly, but very importantly, the Russian government should not be directly making decisions about what Wikipedia does and does not cover without any filtering or checking.
      More basically, you're starting from the basis that selo map on to anything else but the census. They aren't administrative bodies, so why would you assume that? The address of the school is given as being in Esiplevo, so at least from a postal point of view there is no "Shkolny" as such. The Russian language article also describes it as being part of Esiplevo.
      I'm not sure what you are talking about "moving goal posts" - my arguments haven't changed. I just don't believe that you have actually rebutted the basic problem that when you see selo having no-one living in them and still being selo, this means that selo are not "legally recognised populated places", because they don't have to have a population to be included as a selo on the Russian census. Taking the example of Szkolny, it appears to have never had more than a handful people living it, so I am totally confused why you think that the presumption for selo should be that every one of them was once a genuine community even if they are not substantially populated now.
      Similarly for Litivinovo I don't see the justification for an independent article (much less two just because it has two selo!) - simply having had a school/post office ain't it because these things are notable either. It's part of the local town and should just be covered there. The duplicates are far from limited examples - they apparently exist in every rural district of Russia because, again, selo aren't required to be real communities. A word-count on Dubki's history demonstrates nothing - the content appears to be a copy-paste from clerical sources about churches that are not clearly within the actual village but are in other villages (particularly Троица), and again does not explain why we should have two articles about Dubki just because - again for statistical purposes but not obviously for any other purpose - it is divided into two selo. FOARP (talk) 19:22, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Joe Roe, are we confident that these low-population selos always represent depopulated former villages? While I respect the value a native speaker brings to the table, that is not always sufficient - Just look at the number of American geostubs that were created by native speakers but turned out to be utter bunk. "You can't judge the enduring notability of a place by just looking at contemporary statistics, maps and satellite photos" goes both ways: Are we sure that these were all properly vetted given the high creation rate and lack of sources beyond the census? If these are indeed all notable places, that's great news, but I want to be sure. –dlthewave ☎ 22:57, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      I would just like an explanation of why, if a settlement can consist of multiple selo - and this happened numerous times in just one district - we should act as if a list of selo is a list of settlements?
      Since, according to the USDA, there are some ~20,000 selo that have no population (and may never have been populated? Or only briefly?) we also have to ask why they should be treated differently to abadi that had exactly the same problem?
      Joe has leaned heavily on the supposed ancient nature of these “villages”. It has to be pointed out that Russia is every bit as much a settler-colonist state as the United States, particularly in Siberia and the far east. Much of this activity was actually quite recent (see e.g., the Stalin-era movement of populations). It is very reasonable to say that the same issues apply to abandoned selo in remote areas of Russia as to the “ghost town” California stubs supported only by GNIS. FOARP (talk) 23:34, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
      These articles aren't about Siberia. Vladimir Oblast is part of the medieval core of Russia, prior to its colonial expansion eastward. – Joe (talk) 04:23, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Yet we have, even here in this discussion, a “village” (in reality a State Farm/Agro-industrial operation) that was relatively recently established as an off-shoot of one elsewhere within Russia. FOARP (talk) 05:04, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      And Milton Keynes was relatively recently established as an offshoot of London. Is that "settler-colonialism"? Is population growth new to you? – Joe (talk) 05:31, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      If Milton Keynes established a New Milton Keynes somewhere else as a branch-operation, how would you characterise that? FOARP (talk) 05:42, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Milton Keynes is a terrible example here considering that it has no trouble passing GNG, as it has been written about extensively. Mangoe (talk) 05:01, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
      @Dlthewave: Not always; most are just current, populated villages. My point above is that we have no reason to doubt the notability of these articles, because apart from some minor duplication due to overlapping administrative units, the supposed problems listed by FOARP are all bogus. A selo (rural locality) is a legally recognised populated place in Russia, and as such meets our current policy WP:GEOLAND. I know that you and others would prefer to see this replaced by a coverage-based standard, but you haven't succeeded in forming a consensus for that yet. Until you do, you cannot go around attacking editors simply because they are working toward the current standard and have created a lot of articles. – Joe (talk) 04:44, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      How on earth can a selo be a “legally recognised populated place in Russia” when ~20,000 of them exist and are unpopulated? As discussed, these are not administrative units - that is the selsoviet above them. When a selo has a population of 1, who exactly is supposed to be the administrator living in that selo and who is it that they administrate? FOARP (talk) 04:52, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      Do censuses normally continue to "count" depopulated locales as "legally recognized populated places" indefinitely? JoelleJay (talk) 05:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      You’re assuming that something is a “legally recognised populated place” just because it’s a line-item in the census. Since they count their population even when it’s zero, the “populated” part at least is apparently missing. I would argue the “legally recognised” part is also not there: just counting the population living somewhere in a census does not require any form of legal recognition of it. You’re probably tired of me repeating this, but: my house is on the census, and is populated, so does that make it a GEOLAND pass?
      I don’t dispute that some of these selo are independent communities. The issue is that enough clearly aren’t (not least the ~20,000 unpopulated ones) that a presumption of notability is not appropriate. FOARP (talk) 05:31, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      You know that I'm not assuming this.
      My question was meant to get at whether something can be designated a selo when it had never had a population, or if the selo designation is just retained indefinitely even after becoming depopulated. If it's the former then of course no one should be creating articles based on a list of selo, but I think Joe is assuming the latter is the case. In my opinion even if they were all populated at some point, that doesn't mean they were "legally recognized" as communities in the way intended by the guideline. JoelleJay (talk) 17:55, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
      Sorry Joelle, I had you mixed up with Joe.
      I don't doubt they were (nearly) all populated at some point. I guess like you I don't think that means they were all populated for a substantial amount of time or had sufficient population to be any kind of genuine community. FOARP (talk) 19:21, 1 October 2023 (UTC)
      Depopulation. I've already explained this above, and you know full well that WP:GEOLAND encompasses former populated places. I'm tired of pretending that you are here to discuss in good faith. – Joe (talk) 05:27, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
      If the issue is depopulation then what’s needed is a showing that Russia’s low/no population Selo (which lets emphasise can still be Selo when no-one lives in them) all used to be substantial communities - but this is not in evidence. Selo were not required to have a church or other centre that might guarantee a fixed population at any point in their establishment. Selo are not units of governance or administration.
      The situation only gets worse when we look at Siberia, the far north etc. FOARP (talk) 05:39, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
  • Oppose adding selo to the blacklist per Joe Roe. GEOLAND is meant to include depopulated former villages. James500 (talk) 13:52, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
    And what if these selo were never actually a populated village? What if they only ever had a transient population manning a railway station (see below)? FOARP (talk) 12:26, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
    A selo traditionally possessed an church, which implies that there was a congregation. A selo that possessed a church was certainly a village. A change in the definition of "selo" would not justify adding selos (and especially pre-1917 selos) per se to the blacklist, especially if the change effectively consists of substituting a soviet cinema or school for the orthodox church: [1]. James500 (talk) 01:19, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
But we can see from the below (and from the Shkolny case) that many, many selo never had any kind of administrative centre (at least not one within them) or substantial population. The definition you are using is more appropriate of the selsoviet which at least would have an administrative centre, not the selo. FOARP (talk) 03:04, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
No, the evidence is that if a place was considered to be a "selo" before the October Revolution, then that selo actually was a village with an adequate population. Therefore pre-1917 selos should be presumed notable. It may well be possible to push that date forward. As I have explained below, your alleged railway stations may generally just be settlements named after the railway station they contain. For an English analogy, Oxford was named after a ford that was used to drive oxen accross the River Thames (see History of Oxford#Medieval period for etymology). In any event, there is no evidence that any railway station was classified as a selo before the 21st century. James500 (talk) 17:32, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
But many (the majority?) of selo in the Russian census are new units! The very fact that you have to argue that only the pre-1917 one should be presumed notable necessarily means that selo as a whole should not be presumed notable! FOARP (talk) 20:13, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Russia has numerous selo that are simply railway stations

And the reason this can be said is they are literally named after the number of kilometres they are along a particular railway line. The populations given for these "villages" are consistent with the staff of the railway stations, some have a population of zero. Most are in reality part of a nearby village as can be seen from their addresses. See, e.g., the following -

I could just go on but they number in the hundreds and I think the point is made. Each of these is a selo. This is again very similar to the abadi and GNIS cases. FOARP (talk) 12:21, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Jesus Christ. JoelleJay (talk) 17:34, 2 October 2023 (UTC)
"123 km (Russian: 123 км) is a rural locality (a passing loop)" is an interesting way to word things. Razezd 15 km helpfully links "passing loop" to Village#Russia, rather than passing loop. CMD (talk) 02:09, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
😢
— hike395 (talk) 03:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
hike395 - Quite. And these are just the ones that are easily identifiable by name. Just looking at the map I see hundreds more which are railway stations but which the creator did not bother to note were railway stations/passing loops. See e.g., our article on Shomyrtly, and then look at its actual location - clearly just a railway station, but described as a "village" here on Wikipedia.
There are tens of thousands more selo that could be added as articles but we do not have any articles for yet. We definitely should NOT wait for them to be transformed into misleading, inaccurate, and non-notable articles like the one for Shomyrtly - it's time to act before another Iran/GNIS cluster-&*^% is created that will take years and years to clean up. FOARP (talk) 07:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
As far as I can see, you have produced no evidence that any railway station was classified as a selo before the 21st century. In particular, Shomyrtly appears to have become a selo in 2005. I have examined the articles on the Russian Wikipedia for the articles you have listed. I am not satisfied that they actually are railway stations (as opposed to being settlements named after railway stations, which is not the same thing).
Generally, these places generally appear to have streets. Railway stations do not normally have streets, which implies that these are not railway stations.
Specific examples: The population of 2647 km appears to have been the farmers who inhabited a dispersed settlement of farms. 18 km appears to be a settlement, originally for the workers of a pioneer camp and now for summer residents, named after a railway station. 6 km, Vologda Oblast appears to be a 1km long dispersed settlement located next to the railway line. 8-y km appears to be a depopulated village, which formerly repaired river traffic, and provided medical services etc. 15 km, Kemerovo Oblast,  123 km and 115 km appear to be settlements for the families of railway workers who built and maintained the railway. 53rd km appears to started as a farm that was expanded into a settlement when a weapons installation of the air arm of the Pacific Fleet was established there. James500 (talk) 17:29, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, but this really does show the extent to which you simply refuse to accept that anything is wrong here. That some of these only became “villages” recently, whilst still having populations consistent with the staff of the railway stations they blatantly are, is a reason why Russian selo should not be equated with villages since the designation is simply given to railway stations.
The “streets” are simply roads (actually, dirt tracks in many cases) on which the station is located, the number of which is counted using an algorithm. A “dispersed settlement” is basically not a settlement - it is a census-taking unit. Dormitories/camps for workers are the definition of a non-permanent settlement. Ditto barracks and military camps. FOARP (talk) 20:09, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
  • I am really amazed that (i) most participants in the discussion do not know what they are talking about; (ii) nobody bothered to notify Wikiproject Russia or at least leave notices to active members. Well, in Russia legally there are several types of rural localities which include selo, village (this is different from selo), settlements (not to be confused with urban-type settlements, which are urban localities), stanitsas, khutors, railway stations (which are not stations proper but settlements serving the stations) and some more. Historically, selos were the biggest ones and before 1917 always had a church. There are some with the population over 10K (in fact, everything above 3K is reported on the national census directly). Most of the rural localities in Russia are in fact not selos but villages. There are probably some exceptions, since the type of locality can change (for example, several urban-type settlements were for some tax reasons declassified to selos in the last 10 years), but as a rule smth with the name 17 km can not be a selo. It most likely would be a railway station. Again, possibly there are some exceptions, but I would say every selo has secondary sources sufficiently describing its history. (Can not say the same about villages in Russia). Pinging Ezhiki who knows more but sadly has not edited in the last three weeks. No opinion on mass creation.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:42, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
  • You say all this, but (picking one at random) 17 km, Sakhalin Oblast is a selo according to our article, and wasn’t populated when it received the designation in 2004, nor in 2010, before finally having a population that of exactly 2 people counted at it in 2020 (a population consistent with the staff of the railway). Talking about the pre-1917 status misses the basic point that the status continued to be given to many new locations afterwards. FOARP (talk) 03:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    I said there are exceptions. 147 km is not a selo, despite being in the list above. Razezd 15 km is not a selo. You statement that everything in your list is a selo is just incorrect. Shomyrtly is not a selo, never been one. Ymblanter (talk) 05:53, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    And of course 17 km is not a selo. Ymblanter (talk) 05:59, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    You’re skirting the issue: there are places in Russia that became selo when no-one was living in them. 17 km, Sakhalin Oblast is one of them. That there are other categories of rural settlement in Russia that are also non-notable (but which we have hundreds/thousands of articles for justified by GEOLAND) is beside the point. FOARP (talk) 06:05, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
  • @User:Ymblanter: I apologise if I have made any mistakes. I am going to withdraw from this discussion and leave it to people with more expertise. James500 (talk) 21:09, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
    Actually, I think you made some effort to understand the subject, which is to be commended. Ymblanter (talk) 21:11, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
    Just popping in for a quick comment in response to Yaroslav's ping. There are "passing loops" which are indeed rural localities and not just railway passing loops, and there are "passing loops" which are indeed just railway passing loops. Same goes for a variety of other railway terminology-looking terms. How to tell the difference? The ones classified as proper rural localities would always be (or have at some point been) included into the list of actual inhabited localities (available from both government official (primary) and from academic secondary sources, if one cares to look), and the ones which are just generic railway features would not be. The former are inherently notable under the geonotability criteria (or at least were at the time when I was creating them), and the latter are not (although might of course still be notable for other reasons, outside the scope of this discussion). I am not aware of any federal subject which indiscriminately and automatically classifies all railway stations on its territory as inhabited localities. Bottom line: just because a place is called "XXX km" does not automatically mean it's just a generic point on a railway. Figuring out which is which requires effort. Only a handful of "xxx km" in the range between 1 and 10,000 should have an article, that's for sure, and I can vouch for every single one I personally created. Hope this helps.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 4, 2023; 21:27 (UTC) 21:27, 4 October 2023 (UTC)
    Help me out here: you’ve !voted keep on the AFD for 17 km, Sakhalin Oblast. It had no population when it was made a “village” in 2004. It had no population at the next census either. It finally had a population of two recorded in 2021, a number which is consistent with it simply being a railway station with a staff of two. The area given in official documents for this “village” covers only the railway station.
    Why should this kind of location be given any presumption of notability when it didn’t need to be populated to designated as such or to keep the designation? FOARP (talk) 03:35, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    Again, you equate a selo with an Iranian abadi. This is incorrect and shows that you do not understand the structure of localities in Russia. You can of course make a point that none of the rural localities in Russia are notable, well, go ahead. Ymblanter (talk) 05:56, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    So do you care to comment on 17 km, Sakhalin Oblast or do you have nothing to say about it? FOARP (talk) 06:08, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    I am sorry but this is not the tone I am going to discuss anything. I remain convinced you do not understand what you are talking about, which is clearly demonstrated in this thread. Have a nice day. Ymblanter (talk) 07:25, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    So nothing to say about this selo that became a selo when it had a population of zero. Nor about 8-y km (another new selo with zero population)? Nor about Mekimdya (another zero-population selo)? How about Cherendey which became a selo in 2004 according to RU Wiki, when it had a population of zero? And Seyat, which according to RU Wiki has never been populated on the census? And Vorontsovo, Sakha Republic, which has never had a recorded population according to RU Wiki? Are these not selo? Exactly which part am I missing here? FOARP (talk) 08:02, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    I think the main reason for confusion here is that you think that this place was first classified as (="became") an inhabited locality (a selo) in 2004. That is not the case. 17 km had inhabited (rural) locality status since at least 1948; the term "station" in Sakhalin Oblast can refer to a bona fide generic railway station, yes, but also is a type of a rural locality (along with "selo", "village", and "settlement"). It was not that a random empty railway station was elevated to an "inhabited locality" in 2004 (which would've indeed been odd); it's that an already existing inhabited locality (which happened to have no population at the time) which was previously classified as "station" was reclassified as a selo, along with dozens of other inhabited localities across the oblast (five settlements and another "station" under jurisdiction of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk were reclassified as a selo by the same law, as a matter of fact). It's not at all the same as "creating" a new selo where none existed before! Once you wrap your head around this quirk of terminology, it makes perfect sense why NGEO very much applies to 17 km, but would not be applicable to, say, nearby railways stations (but not inhabited localities!) of 10 km or 19 km.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2023; 16:53 (UTC) 16:53, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    I'm just kibbitzing here, but I would point out that the etymology of place names isn't especially good indicator of the status of a place. For example, neither 100 Mile House (incorporated) nor 150 Mile House (unincorporated) is actually a house (or a mile marker), in spite of the word choice aspect of the place names. Newimpartial (talk) 17:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    It's not mere etymology, it's the official legal classification (with "legal recognition" being one of the criteria required by the NGEO guideline). Not every railway station is an inhabited locality; only those officially recognized as such are.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2023; 17:22 (UTC) 17:22, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
    "it's that an already existing inhabited locality (which happened to have no population at the time)" - well, that's certainly not a contradiction in terms right there, is it? FOARP (talk) 09:02, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Astonishingly, I've just realised that over a week and sixty comments into this discussion of articles written solely by Nikolai Kurbatov, including a proposal to specifically exclude them from the notability guideline, nobody has bothered to notify him of it. I've done so now. – Joe (talk) 09:17, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

We're dancing around the point here quite a bit

I've complained several times along these discussions about the lack of clarity surrounding the terminology here. But really, here's the issue I keep coming back to: regardless of what the terms mean: when it comes down to it, these places appear to consistently fail GNG, notwithstanding the issue of how we characterize them. We keep being dragged back to this notion of the GEOLAND guideline as being a rule which trumps GNG and requires us to include these places in spite of the reality that we can't say anything substantial about them. I see a number of problems with this, which I am tired of reiterating. But for the sake of argument, can someone give a justification for including articles on each of these places without resorting to the language of the guideline? What I'm seeing here is that these places look like the places we have deleted in large numbers particularly in the US but also in other countries where there have been systematic reviews. So why keep these? I don't think the fact that they are legal classifications or constructs is good enough. Mangoe (talk) 05:43, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

A large percentage of selos are notable directly according to GNG. Since people above cherry-pick articles, let me cherry-pick some here: Staraya Ladoga, Palkino, Kholmogory, Kichmengsky Gorodok. It is just so many of them that people who work on improving the articles and finding sources (like Ezhiki and myself) cannot catch up. However, other rural localities in Russia, such as villages, rural settlements, or indeed railway stations, IMO, can not be presumed notable, and should be organized into lists (NOT mass-deleted), until shown to be notable individually. Ymblanter (talk) 06:55, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
The corollary to this is: we also shouldn’t be creating any more of these micro-settlement stubs.
Unfortunately Wikipedia has only a few ways of enforcing this - either on a conduct level, or at a guideline/policy level. Making it a conduct issue means intense drama such as we already saw in the C46/Lugnuts cases. On a policy level, all the mass-creators need to do is point to GEOLAND as a full, no-further-discussion-needed justification of what they’re doing. Anyone who doubts that this is how GEOLAND works at present need only look into the below discussion to see someone doing exactly this. This is also how GEOLAND works in AFD after AFD.
As for making things into lists - that’s great, but GEOLAND is then used as a justification to delistify. We saw exactly that with the mahalle/neighbourhood articles that Lugnuts created and which there was a consensus at AFD to redirect. - all since resurrected “because GEOLAND”.
I don’t know. I’m tired of discussing this and I’m sure all of you are tired of seeing me post about it. FOARP (talk) 08:24, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
May be you should accept that there is currently no consensus in the community to deprecate GEOLAND. Ymblanter (talk) 08:48, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
I see plenty of consensus that it doesn't work - even your own comment above that "other rural localities in Russia, such as villages, rural settlements, or indeed railway stations, IMO, can not be presumed notable" is evidence of that since everything on that list can theoretically be a GEOLAND pass - the issue is getting the proposed change right. We saw this with NSPORTS, which was debated over and over for years and years before it finally changed. All the same I don't see the point in making any new proposed changes to GEOLAND itself (sources that grant a GEOLAND pass is a different story) this side of the new year and am not going to try.
I've got to say the way some people acknowledge that GEOLAND is problematic and then act as if it were a sacred text that can never be changed gives me whiplash. It's a guideline, one that clashes with policy, and guidelines change all the time. We've already changed it in recent years after the Abadi, GNIS, and GNS cases. In fact a simple comparison of NGEO 10 years ago and NGEO now shows a whole raft of changes, including:
  • The guide used to say that populated places were inherently notable.
  • The guide used to refer to Wikipedia's supposed "Gazetteer function" - a maximalist claim that would have us having dictionary-style entries on every named geographical entity.
  • Simply being featured on a map or directory used to be something that could establish notability.
  • More restrictive guidance has been introduced for roads, railways, etc.
Like I said, I don't see any point making any new major proposal on GEOLAND this side of the new year, and any change would have to be work-shopped on this page first anyway, but GEOLAND can be changed. FOARP (talk) 09:27, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
GEOLAND is supposed to represent the consensus that is already there. That is how notability guidelines are supposed to work: we don't have to retread arguments over certain classes of things because there is general agreement. That is why the language of GEOLAND describes the typical outcome of discussions on places. And yet, the fact that we keep having these arguments over and over is manifest evidence that whatever such agreement there ever was is gone. And frankly, in my experience a very large part of those who agree with the guideline do so because it looks reasonable on the surface and they don't know any better. In discussions over US places we have seen a steady stream of people come along and invoke GNIS as a notability-creating authority, so that telling people to go read WP:GNIS has become routine in AfDs. And that's the pattern that shows up in the changes FOARP has listed above: when specifics have to be discussed, GEOLAND tends to yield, and we see a new exception carved into it.
Which leads me back to "cherry-picking". AfDs, by their nature, have to look like cherry-picking. People only nominate articles which they think can be deleted, after all, and the much larger class of those which seem likely to survive a discussion go unnominated. In the case of GNIS, most entries classified as "populated places" are probably notable settlements, but plenty of them aren't or for that matter aren't settlements at all. It's looking as though the situation with the Polish entries are going to be the same; the situation with the Russian entries is less clear but it's likely that, in the course of translation, there are some that should be deleted because of errors at various stages in the process, including the designations of the Russian government. It really doesn't matter that some or even a substantial majority of these articles are accurate and concern notable places; the history of these databases is that they do have errors or have entries which are misconstrued, and therefore yes, they aren't so reliable that the mere existence of an entry is sufficient evidence that the data is good. Mangoe (talk) 21:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
And mass-creating articles from databases where most of the entries are notable is not a good way to build out these topic areas. Often they get skipped over rather than deleted during article expansion campaigns, and deletion requires massive amounts of work searching for sources. When they do get deleted, they leave behind numerous mentions in other lists, articles and templates which are very time-consuming to track down and remove, if they ever end up being addressed at all - closing admins do not have the time to do this work and noms are often unaware that it needs to be done. If the closing admin has simply unlinked them, they're practically impossible for others to track down. It's better to slow down and take the eime to ensure that we're only creating articles about notable places instead of indiscriminatey mass-creating based on unproven sources. –dlthewave ☎ 15:54, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
I would actually challenge the premise here, or leadt want to shift the focus. It seems to me that two cases are being conflated: where we have articles created for places that either haven't verifiably existed or aren't verified to meet specified criteria (like having been populated or officially recognized) and a different case, of articles created that do vetifiably meet these critetia but don't meet some higher standard of Notability.
Creating articles of that first class is a drain on the resources needed to build an encyclopaedia, but I don't believe that creating articles of the second class does so - in fact, there has been consistent, substantial support for creation of articles of the second class each time I've seen the community's views about this tested. So any discussion of this that obscures this distinction strikes me as unhelpful in addressing the actual problems the project faces in this area. Newimpartial (talk) 16:42, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
100% agree on this point with @Dlthewave. Today I've been looking at the Polish Geostub articles that Kotbot created (which are ridiculous). One example is we had three different articles for essentially the same place (Łuknajno-Leśniczówka, Łuknajno Lake and Łuknajno, Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship - all the same place referred to in different ways) - a human being who wasn't just robotically going through a directory would realise this and merge them to get an article that actually had some content, but since they were created in 2008 nobody was motivated to fix them, and actually their existence probably de-motivated anyone to fix this issue. I've now done the merge (except for Łuknajno-Leśniczówka which is pending at AFD) but sheesh.
Take another example: Ktery A, Ktery B, and Ktery SK - Ktery SK doesn't exist as far as I can see, and I can't think what "SK" could stand for in this context (it could be something to do with railways?). Ktery B is Nowe Ktery (New Ktery) on the map, whilst Ktery A is just Ktery, which we have no actual article about because it wasn't an item in the list but is actually the place that exists in real life. A human, writing normally, would realise this, but not a bot or a human acting like a bot.
Take another example: Wały A and Wały B - the addresses in the locations on the map say only Wały, and so does the sign on the road into town. There is no real-life Wały A or Wały B, but they are divided in that way in TERYT, the Polish version of GNIS, and in Polish census data, so that's what they're called on here. But the real place called Wały? The one that isn't a line-item in some directory that was never intended to be used in the way Wikipedia uses it? That doesn't get an article, but it probably does get confused people asking where Wały A and Wały B are and why Google Maps displays their town in a weird way.
And this is leaving aside obvious hoaxes that Kotbot created like Zielony Gaj, Mrągowo County, which doesn't exist anywhere but on here (and on Google maps, because they scraped data from here).
I don't see anyway that this mass-creation could be anything but a drain on the community. Every one of these one-sentence stubs is the subject of repeated gnoming edits, not least because many of them included spammed inaccurate information about what the German place-names etc. were that had to be removed en masse a couple of years ago. The alternative to them being created en masse is not them not being created, it's them being created more slowly by actual humans to make actual articles, without first having to clear away the nonsensical bric-a-brac resulting from bot creation. FOARP (talk) 17:23, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

The more I think about this the more that I think that what's really needed is a workable guideline/policy against mass creation of stubs. I've always thought that the best was to describe/creates things like that is to look at mainstream views/common sense or mainstream practices and put those into words. For example, under ngeo a small village/town is not excluded on notability grounds and per the unwritten factor, is very enclyclopedic. There are about 1.6 million of those in India and China that don't have an article. Let say the an editor created one of those the is a bit more developed than just a stub. It would probably be kept, and supported by most of the folks here. Besides the reasons already described in the paragraph, there are these two more:

  • an editor has invested some real time in this article....maybe at least a 1/2 hour in the one article. And that matters to the community. And it also means that (by most definitions) that it is not a part of a mass creation binge.
  • While it's not fully recognized that a stub us usually near-worthless (like someone setting a windshield wiper on the floor and saying that that they created an automobile that just need finishing) folks nevertheless give it extra brownie points for being more than a stub

If an editor just created one stub on such a village, such would probably also be widely accepted, including by most folks here. It meets the SNG and if there is any downside, it's low impact.

If an editor did a mass creation of stubs, such would probably be widely rejected.

Note that the difference in outcomes / degree of acceptance had nothing to do with the notability criteria....it was the same for all of them. Besides the notability criteria being not relevant to the difference, it seems that the community will not agree to a significant tightening of NGEO. So IMO what is needed is a clear guideline or policy against mass creation of stubs. While this is a wiki-wide measure, I think that it is particularly relevant to geo (and perhaps we should take the lead)) because of there being millions of additional villages etc. that meet the current SNG. Targeting situations which are both mass creation and stubs IMO would make it likely to pass. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:40, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Too bad the community decided any curtailment of mass creation was an assault on the Purpose of Wikipedia... JoelleJay (talk) 17:51, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Snark I know, but for the record the real issue was the community didn't make decide much at all on mass-creation. Just loads of digital ink thrown at the screen for little outcome. FOARP (talk) 18:03, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
Despite best efforts (which I applaud), that was framed in a way destined to fail. IMO a proposal for a guideline that discourages mass creation of stubs has a good chance of succeeding, and geo is that area that needs it the most. Note that "mass creation of stubs" discourages only joint occurrence of those two things. And the proposal doesn't include the poison pill of of trying to implement remedies. "Discourage" is influential without the poison pill of trying to be explicit/prescriptive/ specify remedies. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:26, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

"distinguished"

The guideline says "aggregate sources tell us nothing about why a particular object is distinguished". The definition of distinguished at Websters doesn't make sense in the context of, say, a barren rocky island. They don't win prizes or achieve things. It merely exists. If those rocks caused a shipwreck that was notable, does that make them "distinguished rocks"? It sounds.. odd. -- GreenC 18:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

IMO its more the British use of distinguished than the American one but yes it doesn't appear to be the best word to communicate what we're trying to communicate. Perhaps someone went to a thesaurus because notable was used too many times? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:34, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Synonymous terms for "notable", like distinguished, see WP:The problem with elegant variation, are dangerous in documents like guidelines. It's self-referential, notable because it is notable. -- GreenC 19:36, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(geographic_features)/Archive_13&oldid=1195874067"