Wikipedia talk:WikiProject California/GNIS cleanup task force

Just how many of these articles are there?

It's kind of scary that the guy who created all these WP:GEOLAND-failing articles has an edit-count so high that the article-creation counting tool can't actually count them. We know it's probably ~3 thousand or more for California alone, but just trying to scope it out globally we're looking at maybe ten thousand or more? FOARP (talk) 10:06, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

I think the international sources may not be as bad as the GNIS. His Iran articles at least have a census number so they're all legitimate currently existing villages for the most part. US-wise, Category:Unincorporated communities in Virginia, Category:Unincorporated communities in New Jersey, Category:Unincorporated communities in West Virginia, and Category:Unincorporated communities in Kentucky total for 8,300 articles, and there's another 200 at Wikipedia:WikiProject_United_States/The_50,000_Challenge/State_by_State_Totals#Great_Lakes_Region(a few of which you can see I've already gotten rid of. NJ has a lot of neighborhoods, and the folks there seem fine with redirecting those to the township, so that could be easier. Reywas92^Talk 19:07, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Sheesh, even just on basic maths, with 500,000+ edits you get roughly one edit every 18 minutes of every single day for 17 years for this guy. What were they thinking? I guess a lot of this must be Bot edits. EDIT: or maybe they were actual manual edits, according to this their total number of articles is 83,000+. Probably a very large percentage of these have the same problem we're dealing with here. FOARP (talk) 10:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

It is a mess for sure but it does make an individual and Wikipedia article count look great right? -- Otr500 (talk) 03:40, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Right. Wiki was a different place back then, for sure. If this were happening now we'd be looking at a desysop/sanctions. I mean, they averaged ~5 edits for each page they created. FOARP (talk) 12:32, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Let's just redirect the lot

As Otr500 indicated on my talk page and I've done for a number of places individually, the best approach is to just redirect all of these rather than continuing to flood AFD – there's hundreds of articles (and man-hours) to go on this. I think the best target is List of places in California or (the much less complete) List of ghost towns in California. This can be done quite easily with WP:AWB, we just need to have a single list: I've started that here, and you're welcome to help by copying places in from the county navbox templates. There's also Category:Unincorporated communities in California and Category:Former populated places in California. From this anything someone wants kept can just be removed from the list – or AWB can also auto-skip anything that contains "post office" or another phrase, and every save still has to be done manually so we can see which pages have content beyond the usual couple lines. Other thoughts?

By the way, a useful tool is to have redirects colored differently from direct article links. You can do this on your .css page like I have at User:Reywas92/vector.css with .mw-body-content a.mw-redirect {color:#115fcc}. Cheers, Reywas92^Talk 22:42, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

@Reywas92: Are the other editors on your talk page members here or did you ping them also? I think it is a good start and a viable solution. If there is consensus that an historical post office be considered as some evidence, there was a community at some point, I suppose it could be excluded. Lacking verification for a stand alone article I would think this a good enough reason to redirect as indicated above or to the county article. As stated: If "someone wants kept can just be removed from the agreeable list. Otr500 (talk) 03:36, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Note: I just read this page (after the fact) and see there is broad support for more of a mass solution. Otr500 (talk) 03:45, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I think there's an issue even with redirecting these to a list of communities or ghost-towns, since many aren't even that. Carlos has waived their right to be notified about PRODs on California GNIS stubs so that does make things a bit easier as you don't need to notify their page on each one. FOARP (talk) 12:29, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I use Twinkle so notifications are done automatically, but the issue goes beyond our own time and effort but to administrators' time cleaning up expired PRODs: see User_talk:Reywas92#Mass_PRODs. I've successfully prodded almost every former settlement that does not have a GNIS entry or content beyond the passing mention of "a place" or a post office in Durham, with about 240 deleted in the last couple weeks, but there's still a lot of current places to go, not to mention the thousands in other states. Twinkle also has an Unlink tool, so we could easily remove links to a page after it's redirected so the redirect wouldn't actually be used. Reywas92^Talk 20:09, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm aiming to PROD every place on the list of California ghost-towns that was started by Carlos, uses only GNIS/Durham, and doesn't pass a quick search. His 2009 methodology seems to have been to call places he couldn't find any evidence for being an existing town a "ghost town" or a "former community". The result is counties in California where the number of "ghost towns" greatly exceeds the number of existing ones. I'm also in favour of a mass-solution because at least 9/10 of these articles (and probably more like 99/100) are pure garbage. FOARP (talk) 22:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Otr500, Reywas92 - OK, so if we're going to do this I guess we'd need an RFC. Redirect would leave the edit history up so arguably if anyone wants to re-establish these pages they can. Doing this bit-by-bit runs into the "Google is your friend" problem (people just say "you should have googled, I see loads of hits!" and deny the PROD for that reason, when none of the GHits actually make the article a GEOLAND pass). FOARP (talk) 15:20, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Yet another way for GNIS to have made our work difficult

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Animpayamo, California. The GNIS cite for the lot is

Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Bulletin 30 - Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Edited by Frederick Webb Hodge, part 1 published in 1907, part 2 published in 1910. Use either code US-T142/B30/PT1/1907/p# or US-T142/B30/PT2/1910/p#. B30/pt1/1907/p58

which as you might imagine is not the most accessible document out there. Searching seems to pull up a lot of people who copied the material as a chunk. There are obvious political issues in this because the likely result that we can't write about a group of NA villages because there's just not enough info on them is going ruffle feathers. But I don't know what else to do beyond setting up a double-standard. Mangoe (talk) 18:11, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

I have library access to an ebook of this. The entry for Animpayamo says "A former village of the Kalindaruk, a division of the Costanoan Indians, connected with San Carlos Mission, Cal." The same book is a major reference for List of Ohlone villages, and I believe a merge/redirect there is appropriate. Reywas92^Talk 19:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

That was in part 1 which Netherzone found freely available with part 2. The part 2 source gives more than 30 all connected to this mission and is incorporated into the link already at List_of_Ohlone_villages#Monterey_Bay_area. Listing them there is definitely more reasonable. Reywas92^Talk 19:21, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Delete (EDIT: or merge per Reywas). We can't even verify this place existed, how are we supposed to have an article on it? With any other article creator at least we might WP:AGF that they had gone to the source matter to confirm, but not with Carlos because we know he wasn't doing that. The political stuff doesn't matter and I'm going to be disappointed in editors who try to bring it up. FOARP (talk) 19:16, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I ran in to this source with Keuchishkeni, California, which probably isn't even in Modoc County. This source lists many, many locations, I have no idea if they are notable. If we were writing a Modoc-language wikipedia, then perhaps some of these locales would be notable. However, I'm unsure of their notability today. BTW - Gudde has some hits for Animpayamo. What a mess... 00:17, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

My honest view on this is that if we have an article that is 1-2 sentences, one of which says "Its precise location is unknown", and one of the two sources for which is GNIS, then that's a prime target for deletion. We basically don't know where that place even was and there's no way it's going to pass WP:GEOLAND since there's no evidence of legal recognition and not the at least two instances of WP:SIGCOV needed to pass WP:GNG. FOARP (talk) 12:16, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Permit me to whine about the opposite issue for the moment

I'm going through the Monterey County unincorporated places, and while there's plenty to delete (not to mention that long list of NA placenames we're hanging fire on), I'm now running across the opposite issue with some of them: they ought to have non-stub articles written on them, but because someone ran in a bunch of stubs, everyone seems to be assuming the work is done.

Take Jolon, California (pronounced "Holone", FYI), which claims to be an existing unincorporated settlement. GMaps shows an Episcopal church and, some small distance away, an isolated house. Well, that house happens to be NRHP-listed, and there's another NRHP site less than a mile away. It turns out that Jolon was once a sizeable town until it got bypassed, first by the railroad and then by the highway. There's a lot of history here, but nobody bothered to write it until now. So I'm working on both the NRHP sites, and then will rework the main article into a history of the ghost town (for that is what it is).

Meanwhile, we have Fort Romie, California, which has a tiny hint of its true history: it was the most successful of three US Salvation Army colonies, a project of theirs which is worth an article unto itself. But again, laid in as a stub, so.....

I'm just about ready to propose a ban on stub articles. From what I can see, they delay writing articles more than they promote doing so. Mangoe (talk) 15:30, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I do not think it is whining to discuss important aspects concerning Wikipedia. I am all about history, and the preservation of it, so I fully support historical articles but stubs created by a GNIS source that simply notes a coordinate is not encyclopedic. The fact that it is known there are "mistakes" on the GNIS site are also a concern. It should also be noted that the site is no longer maintained and information is allowed to be updated by users.

This mostly dictionary information could be listed on the county or parish article which would be content and not notability related. If someone finds other sources on one of these locations then an article could be created and it could de-orphaned at the same time. Otr500 (talk) 14:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

My basic view on this is that sooner or later some local historian will write the articles as they need to be written, though I think it's quite possible that the presence of a stub (particularly an incorrect stub) dampens the enthusiasm of such historians. Meanwhile the 1/2-sentence GNIS-sourced micro-stubs are an actual threat since the (wrong) information in them can take on life outside Wiki leading to citogenesis. FOARP (talk) 16:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Similar issue with Iranian stubs created by the same author who made the majority of the stubs we're dealing with here

See here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mazraeh-ye Dariush Baharvand Ahmadi. FOARP (talk) 09:54, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

A quick fix for Springs

• Waring, Gerald Ashley (1915). Springs of California. U.S. Geological Survey Water Supply Paper. Vol. 338. U.S. Government Printing Office. doi:10.3133/wsp338.

As I just noted at Bonanza Springs, California (AfD discussion) there's an easy cleanup route for a whole bunch of "Springs" articles using this, just changing "unincorporated community" to "set of springs" and citing this. At least then the stubs aren't wholly misleading, and people can worry about notability later (although most of the entries in Waring 1915 seem fairly substantial). Hog Farm, how many articles are there if you filter for the "Something Springs, Californa" ones? Could we make a reasonable list? Uncle G (talk) 01:28, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

• I can try to make a reasonable list. I'll divide it into two categories - the short stubs and then ones like Scovern Hot Springs, California that have been expanded. Hog Farm _Talk 01:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Uncle G: - List is at User:Hog Farm/springs. I only pulled from ones in Category:Former populated places in California and Category:Unincorporated communities in California, so ones not in those categories won't be included. About half already have significant content. One or two already cite Waring. A couple appear to be literal springs, a number are old resort sites, and Soda Springs (near Burbeck), Mendocino County, California is related to the railroad somehow. A decent amount that will need some research. Hog Farm _Talk 02:12, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
    • I'm fixing the first sentences from "unincorporated community", citing Waring to replace the GNIS reference for it, where I can. Uncle G (talk) 07:53, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
    • I've been through them all, now, marking the ones not in Waring and ones where the articles need further attention. Uncle G (talk) 17:44, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
      • From a spot check of some of the ones that need further attention, a number are sites within national forests - possibly Forest Service campsites. Will need some more research. Hog Farm _Talk 18:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Resorts in Lake county

• {{Lake County, California}}
• Hoberg, Donna (2007). Resorts of Lake County. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738547985.
• Enterprise, Lake County, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Sunrise Vista, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Riviera West, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
  • c.f. Riviera Estates, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Finley, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Glenhaven, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
• Glenview, Lake County, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I have been through the unincorporated communities in Lake County that are still on the template, and cross-checked them against the book. These are the ones that I could not find as resorts. Uncle G (talk) 17:56, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

It is possible to finish one!

Just finished cleaning up Mono County. I didn't need to make a list article: merging and deletion appeared to be adequate. — hike395 (talk) 15:08, 29 January 2024 (UTC)