Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)/Archive 14

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

So, at this point in the above RFC I think it is worth noting a few things:

• I make it 20 agree !votes versus 17 disagree !votes. That's either weak consensus in favour of the standard not being fit for purpose, or (more likely) no consensus on whether it is fit for purpose or not. For any other major notability standard on EN WP I would expect a WP:SNOW consensus in favour of the standard being fit-for-purpose, but this one does not get that.
• We and our readership deserve better than a standard that hundreds of thousands of articles are based on, but for which there isn't even a recent consensus in favour.
• The 37 !votes cast in this RFC also represent a higher level of community participation than was involved in the original discussions which brought this standard in to force. In the first discussion that was five !votes only, and in a second discussion only 29 support/oppose !votes were cast by my count. No-one can say this wasn't a high-participation discussion.
• I think this provides a decent basis for workshopping further changes to this standard and presenting them eventually in a multi-option RFC similar to WP:NSPORTS2022. Changes were suggested which even a number of those in the disagree camp were in favour of (e.g., national guidelines, "cities, towns, and villages") which would stand a reasonable chance of passing.
• I don't think there's any need for a formal close because I think everyone agrees what the most likely outcome would be (no consensus) though I'm not going to stand in the way of anyone else doing so.

FOARP (talk) 12:22, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree with your points above. However, how we agree on a policy is another thing. As we know Legally recognised just cannot be proven without a complicated table of the legal recognition for each country, which as the discussion states is impossible because of the complex nature within just one country.

Therefore we need to make a decision. Are Cities and Towns notable? Yes they are and most would probably meet GNG anyway. Villages - this is a big issue that seems to be a sticking point. My personal opinion is if a village can be proven to exist by reliable refs then it should exist on Wikipedia. Hamlets - well i think unless they meet GNG they should have pages redirected to the lowest government area page and the data merged there. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 13:57, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

The problem is how you define those? In The UK a town has a market, a village has a church, and a hamlet has neither of those. What about suburbs or subdivisions, housing estates etc., they are not towns, villages, nor hamlets but are considered to be covered by NGEO if they have 'legal recognition'. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:26, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I can name towns that dont have markets in the UK. The best way is to use multiple sources that show what the status is. Local government areas should be also notable, but wards should need to meet GNG, which is the generally acceptable standard. Housing developments should meet GNG, which is what we do now. Most suburbs were former towns or villages and can easily be covered. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 16:58, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

>Housing developments should meet GNG, which is what we do now

I have seen housing developments be kept as suburbs based on 'legal recognition' (a census tract). Traumnovelle (talk) 18:49, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Which is why this should be changed! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 10:39, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Which housing development are you referring to? SportingFlyer T·C 18:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Northpark, New Zealand

Its a housing deveolpment from the 1990s, is not gazetted (basically any settlement from the 80s and earlier is gazetted), and possesses no form of governance. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

As you know, I disagree with your take there. SportingFlyer T·C 23:33, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking about definitions and I think we could maybe get some inspiration from Italian Località:

centro abitato – a group of houses with roads, squares or other small gaps between them, and public services or establishments where residents congregate for religious, educational or business purposes or for obtaining provisions

With a few tweaks this could perhaps be a reasonable universal definition for the type of settlement that could be considered notable while excluding things like remote post offices or farmhouses, though getting good sources for what might be a place of business might be tricky Giuliotf (talk) 20:55, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

How would this definition apply to a (permanent) military base with on-base housing? To a monastery? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I think there are a few things that are important to note here that I personally took from the discussion above:

• Countries do things differently, while it might not be possible to create a table for every country, it might be useful to create some general guidelines for the most common types of cases:
• Countries that have nested divisions going all the way down are quite straight-forward (e.g. Italy is divided into Regions --> Provinces --> Comunes --> Frazioni and Localita, where Comunes generally represent one or a small cluster of settlements). In cases like this we can simply say that that n-level divisions and above are presumed notable, while those n+1-level divisions and below are presumed not notable unless they are shown to pass WP:GNG. These divisions cover the entire territory and subdivisions can be re-directed to the next lowest level division with an article, this way links in articles that list e.g. places where people were born would still work. Obviously different countries do things differently, and the level we would consider notable would vary from country to country, but I'm sure we can come up with a guideline about what level would be presumed to be notable (e.g. the level of subdivision which has its own elected body/mayor, population level or something like that, this would need to be workshopped along with Wikiprojects for different countries to come up with a robust general guideline)
• Countries, like the UK and US where things aren't typically divided based on sensible human geography (e.g. parliamentary constituencies/local council wards in the UK being drawn to ensure a more or less equal number of people living in each one, meaning that recognition is likely to be inconsistent). Dealing with such systems is a mess, and I don't have a good suggestion for who to write a guideline to address all this, other than two say I think have two different general guidelines for these two types of systems seems to be a good middle ground between having just one guideline and having one guideline for every jurisdiction.
• We need to make a guideline about what the minimum sourcing needed to prove that a place exists and that it meets whatever other requirement we set on notability. This needs to be quite detailed because what is good for one country might not be good for others, for example The Burkina Faso census that was used to bulk create articles on villages in Burkina Faso lists population by village, which could be a reasonable barrier to show that these places merit inclusion, whereas the Sao Tome and Principe Census, that has been cited in some articles, lists Localities which don't necessarily appear to match villages seen on a maps e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bom Viver
• Obviously this should only be a workshopping phase and any proposed new guideline would need to go for a vote to the wider community, probably in multiple parts given how long a complex a good guideline is likely to be.

Giuliotf (talk) 18:32, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

One helpful step might be to put a floor under it: If the "populated, legally recognized place" is a place with its own local government, similar to what would be expected from an Incorporated town, then that definitely counts. Places without this (e.g., Neighborhoods of San Francisco, ghost towns, clusters of buildings in a rural area) may or may not count, but places with this always should. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

The issue is just that the different level of authority some countries. Where I live towns do not have their own governance, but historically rural districts of only a dozen people had their own independent government. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:20, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Where you live, what's the lowest level that does have an independent local government for a place with, say, 5,000 people who live inside a few square kilometers? What entity decides, e.g., whether the town park will get a bench for older people vs a playground for children? Who decides whether to put up an extra sign about speeding on a small side street? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Ok so you want to abandon the presumed notable standard entirely? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:01, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, yes, I think this is getting closer to the original intent of legally recognized. It perhaps might not be universally applicable though, but as you suggest, it may provide a base level for settlements that are likely to be notable.

Also, any update to this guideline needs to more clearly distinguish between settlements (or whatever term of art we might choose) and administrative divisions. The former are recognizable and stable population centers while the latter are often arbitrarily defined and named areas (and in many cases, are subject to redefinition following political or administrative whims). To be clear, such administrative divisions often are notable, but under differing criteria than settlements. older ≠ wiser 12:40, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree that we should have a separate rule surrounding settlements and administrative divisions, as I have mentioned this at the previous RFC and at the village pump. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 17:01, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

To be clear, while many cities may also function as administrative divisions, they are primarily and more conventionally recognizable as population centers. older ≠ wiser 13:36, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Is that easy to distinguish at a general guideline level? Our US city articles for example are often administrative divisions rather than distinct population centers. CMD (talk) 13:04, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

While many US cities (such as NYC, for example) cover very large areas and grew by incorporating numerous other population centers, they are nonetheless clearly recognizable as population centers with a distinctive organic history unlike a say a rural township where someone drew some completely arbitrary lines on a map and gave it a name. Are there cities you can name that would not be recognizable as a distinct population center? older ≠ wiser 13:17, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Sure: ghost towns. There are parts of the US plains states that have fewer residents now than they had back in the frontier days (back when only non-Native people were counted). Some small towns have basically dried up and blown away.

@Chipmunkdavis, I think the problem we've always been dealing with is that it really isn't easy to write a description that includes all the variations and makes sense to people who don't know anything about local governance. Imagine trying to write something that covers both the US model of an incorporated city/town/whatever (when I was a young, I once saw a sign on a highway for a "city" with a population of six – but administratively, it really was "a city") and towns in Europe where a different model is used, and towns in the ancient world, where we might struggle to say what "government" even looked like, or to differentiate between a single large farm vs a village. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing Ghost towns (and other sorts of historical settlements) should have separate criteria from currently existing settlements. older ≠ wiser 12:31, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't necessarily disagree that they "should", but the second sentence of NPLACE says they don't currently: "Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, there's no question many of them could be notable. And likely for many of them there is nothing more to say about them than that they were reported to have existed at one time according to source(s). Getting agreement about notability for current populated places is elusive; I think trying to address abandoned places with the same criteria would unnecessarily complicate things. older ≠ wiser 02:56, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

@Bkonrad I strongly disagree that there should be a difference in notability policy between current and historical settlements, or between current and historical administrative divisions for that matter. Per WP:NOTTEMPORARY, the notability of a topic is not limited based on its current status or the recency of the sources. In some cases, more RS exist for more recent topics so they are more likely to be verifiable in relation to any criteria of notability. However, I don't see that as justification that it should be made "artificially" more difficult to demonstrate the notability of inhabited places that no longer exist, for whatever reason.

For example, I live within convenient day trip distances of the Lost Villages under the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It seems absurd to me that those places would have become of any less encyclipaedic interest because they were evacuated and flooded to create the Seaway.

Also of course, regardless of notability criteria, it is always possible for editors to decide that readers are better served by treating otherwise notable topics at a more aggregate level. That continues to be true for former municipalities and ghost towns.

That said - and I recognize I am not a typical user, but - one of the recurring annoyances I find when consulting Wikipedia occurs when a formerly independent municipality (e.g., a former streetcar suburb) has been merge-redirected into a current-city article without the article containing information about the merged suburb itself. If I am lucky, the current-city article might include the name and amalgamation date of the suburb, without providing the kind of information a standalone article would include (population, governmental structure, office holders, settlement history, etc.). In these cases, a bias that encourages content based on "present-day" human geography against historical geography for articles ends up excluding content that had clear encyclopaedic value (at least to me). It would be a shame for any changes to the guidelines in this area to tilt the field any further in this direction. Newimpartial (talk) 19:28, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Recent or not we do still need enough sigcov to write an article worth having as a stand alone. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:43, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure that comment helps move the discussion forward as much as it simply reiterates a position. In the RfC and since, it seems clear that editors do not agree on what counts as an article worth having as a stand alone in this area. By contrast, I think there is general agreement that articles need to have reliable sources for the content they contain - disagreement largely concerns a possible minimum threshold of content to be required to retain articles on geography as inhabited by humans. But whether or not to include an explicit bias for present-day vs. historical geography does not say anything I can discern about the required content threshold (or sourcing for same) - it seems more likely to express background assumptions about the comparative "importance" of topics. Newimpartial (talk) 20:04, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like the question to ask @Horse Eye's Back is: What does "an article worth having" look like? (NB: I'm asking what the Wikipedia article itself looks like, which is not a question about what the sources look like. For example: Does "an article worth having" contain some minimum number of sentences or facts?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:13, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Thats a hard question and why IMO we treat each deletion discussion as separate and exquisite. We want to give editors maximum freedom to make any P+G arguments they desire, up to and including WP:IAR because editors will be faced with effectively infinitely variable contexts. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 03:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

AFD isn't supposed to be about whether the article is worth having (except perhaps in WP:TNTcases). AFD is supposed to ignore the fact that it's an WP:UGLY little article and consider the notability of the topic alone.

But some editors clearly do have a personal idea of what an article worth having is (e.g., that it's not too short, or not too ugly). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Almost but not quite... AfD is about whether an article worth having can be made, not whether the current article is worth having (thats more of a merge/redirect issue, but to be fair that is a common outcome of AfD). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:13, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

What do you think an article worth having looks like? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

The community consenus on this expressed in WP:N, explained in the nutshell "Wikipedia articles cover notable topics—those that have gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time, and are not outside the scope of Wikipedia. We consider evidence from reliable and independent sources to gauge this attention." and I don't disagree with that in any notable way. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:24, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

You are answering the wrong question.

WP:N is about whether a topic is worth us having an article on it.

I'm asking what you think an article worth having looks like.

For example: New York City is a topic worth having an article on. This is true regardless of whether the article is good, bad, or in between.

But a page that says only "I love New York City, the Big Apple!" is not IMO an article worth having – even though NYC is a notable topic.

Do you understand the distinction between topic and article now? What does an article worth having look like to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

In general notability terms the topic and article are one and the same. As I said before there is grey area here, we can for example decide that a topic is likely notable but that for now it should not be a stand alone article but a subsection or otherwise in another article with the idea that it later be expanded into one. That is all within our remit. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:57, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

That's just the problem: The topic's worthwhile-ness is determined by notability, but whether the written words on the page ("the article") are worthwhile is not determined by whether the topic is notable. The article's worthwhile-ness is not the same as the topic's worthwhile-ness.

You wrote above that we do still need enough sigcov to write an article worth having. That implies that "writing" is something that affects whether the article (not the topic) is worth having.

Again, consider this example:

• New York City is a topic worth having an article about.
• A page that says only "I love New York City, the Big Apple!" is not an article worth having. (In fact, it is so non-worth-having that it would be subject to several speedy deletion criteria.)

Imagine that the topic is New York City.

Now tell me what an article about New York City would be worth having. Presumably you agree with me that an article with having is not one that says "I love New York City, the Big Apple!", even though that's about an incontestably notable topic. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:54, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Notability is never independent of extant sigcov. Beyond that each article's context is unique, which is what I've said a half dozen times now but you just aren't listening... The question you're asking has no single answer, it will be different in every single context which is why we treat each context individually. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:45, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

You didn't write "we do still need enough sigcov to have a notable article". You wrote "we do still need enough sigcov to write an article worth having".

It is not logically possible to know what's "enough sigcov to write an article worth having" if you don't know what "an article worth having" is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

And you are telling me what I mean by that rather than listening to me. I suggest you re-read what I've written (perhaps you will notice that what I wrote was "an article worth having as a stand alone" and you've been taking it out of context), I will not be writting any more for you here. Please consider yourself satisfied. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:33, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

I've given you multiple opportunties to explain what you mean, but you've given me only a tautology: We need enough sigcov to write an article worth having, and an article worth having is one for which we have enough sigcov/notability.

If you mean something else, I invite you again to say what you mean. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

You're consistantly misquoting me, that you insist on cutting as a stand alone from every single context is completely misleading and uncivil. Never do that again, not to me or any other editor. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:40, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it makes any difference. The logic is still circular:

• we do still need enough sigcov to write an article worth having as a stand alone.
• How do we know if we can write an article worth having as a stand alone? We have enough sigcov.
• What's enough sigcov? The amount that allows us to write an article worth having as a stand alone.
• How do we know if we are able to write an article worth having as a stand alone? We have enough sigcov. And repeat.

If you have a different answer for one of those steps, then please tell me what it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:13, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Q: "What's enough sigcov?" A: "It depends on the individual context" Fin. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:53, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

How would explain to a new editor what "enough sigcov" is, without making that new editor think that your answer is functionally equivalent to "whatever I feel like at the time" or "nobody knows, so we just make up different answers based on whether WP:ILIKEIT or not"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

IF this is your stance, I'll go a different direction and say there is no need whatsoever for a GEOLAND SNG. All articles for populated placed must meet GNG. Period. That simplifies things tremendously. older ≠ wiser 22:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Probably not as much as one might hope.

One of the ongoing problems is that editors regularly interpret the GNG's requirements in such a way that they just happen to favor the outcome that the AFD participant intuitively believes is the correct outcome. We each look at the same sources, but come to differing conclusions. Someone will say, e.g., that the US Census is significant coverage in a secondary, independent, reliable source, and that therefore the article must obviously be kept. The next one will say that it's trivial coverage ("just 4-7 numbers"), primary, and non-independent, and that therefore the article must obviously be deleted. The argument doesn't go away; it just shifts to a different form.

For most editors, I think we could reliably predict what their view will be, because what matters the most, most of the time, isn't whether the sources are technically A or B; it's whether the editor believes this is a desirable thing for Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:24, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

A big issue I see is that some folks at AFD utilize the vagueness of WP:GEOLAND to keep any article about a place that may have ever had as many as ten people living there at some point. It is the vagueness of the current guideline that is causing the confusion. With such a vague guideline, it is only to be expected that there will be disagreements about what it means at AfDs (as well as significant variability in the outcomes of the AfD discussions). older ≠ wiser 12:54, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Is there something inherently wrong about having an article about a place that only had 10 people living there, and that wouldn't apply to a place that had, say, 100 people living there?

I don't think the guideline is vague. I think the guideline is clear and that some editors really dislike the results (results in "an article not worth having" – whatever that individual means by "an article worth having"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Is there something inherently wrong about having an article about a place that only had 10 people living there, and that wouldn't apply to a place that had, say, 100 people living there? No, of course not and that's not what I said or even implied. If there is something worth saying about such a place beyond that it existed in such and such a location, then an article may be warranted. But it is ridiculous to think that ANY place that once had ten or more people living there should have a default presumption of notability. older ≠ wiser 20:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like your idea of "an article worth having" is a populated place about which it is possible to say at least these three things:

• that it existed/it's a populated place,
• that its location is known (might include approximate location), and
• there is "something [else] worth saying" about it.

So 800 words on geography and demographics alone doesn't work for you, but something like "Smallville (population: 42) is a town near Lake Woebegone that is best known as the birthplace of Alice Expert" might work for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

When the 800 words on geography and demographics alone are nothing more than boilerplate generated by a bot to give some tabular data the illusion of being substantial, yes that alone is insufficient. As for the hypothetical Smallville, I'd say it depends. If Alice Expert is anyone even close to widespread notability, such an article might be warranted on the likelihood that there might be something more published about the place. But in most cases, I'd likely suggest such an orphan article to be merged into the next level up (and it is not clear-cut). older ≠ wiser 20:46, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think I agree. Imagine, e.g., that we have five articles for nearby populated places, each containing 800 words on geography and demographics alone [that] are nothing more than boilerplate. I don't agree that one merged article with five sections, now containing 4,000 words on geography and demographics alone [that] are nothing more than boilerplate constitutes an improvement in any way.

Your hope in merging appears to be that if you merge up high enough, then someone will be able to write something that you find interesting or significant, thus transforming the topic from one you (and I) find WP:BORING to one you (and I) find WP:INTERESTING.

Traditionally, notability has treated boring topics the same as interesting ones. The question is "Can we write 300 words?" and not "Can we write 300 words about something 'significant' or 'substantial'?"

(An Wikipedia:Orphan is an article that nothing links into. I think you meant to say Wikipedia:Stub.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing, in the case of the five articles for nearby populated places, If there were agreement to merge and the only actual content to merge was nothing but gussied up tabular data, it would make more sense to present it in tabular form rather than pretending the boilerplate prose actually helps anyone understand it better.

Your hope in merging appears to be that if you merge up high enough, then someone will be able to write something that you find interesting or significant, thus transforming the topic from one you (and I) find WP:BORING to one you (and I) find WP:INTERESTING. I've never said or implied anything like this. Where do you come off making SH*T like that up? Without any indication that there is anything meaningful to write about a place beyond basic data, I would have no such expectation that there is anything to say about it, which is why it might be better to merge such a perma-stub up to the next level. older ≠ wiser 21:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

You said above that you want articles only if there is something worth saying about such a place beyond that it existed in such and such a location.

The fact that "it existed in such and such a location" is not worth having an article for it. The fact that people lived there, and the population's demographics can be described is apparently not worth having an article for it.

You complain that demographic data only gives the illusion of being substantial (even when there's a quite lot of it, and "Large in size, quantity, or value; ample; significant" is Wikitionary definition #6 of substantial). You want something beyond those demographic facts. You also talk about the need to have "something worth saying". Of course, what is "worth saying" is subjective and will vary from person to person. Therefore I conclude that you want some facts in the article that you believe are "substantial" and not about demographics; I also conclude that what's "worth saying" in your opinion is something that you will find interesting, and that you don't find demographic facts interesting.

If you believe I've misunderstood you, then maybe you could give me an example of a totally boring little town, in which nothing of importance has ever happened, and for which you believe GEOLAND would correctly support having an article. What is it, beyond the demographic facts, that you think would make the Wikipedia article have "something worth saying"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Your repeated misrepresentation and distortion of my comments is tiresome. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve. Once upon a time I thought you were one of the most responsible editors around; now not so much. If the goal is to understand what others are saying in order to reach some mutually agreeable point, this is failing. On the other hand, if the goal is to antagonize those with an opinion differing from yours and inflame an already tortuous discussion, well congratulations.

You've cherry-picked selections of my words without context. I'm not going to bother to rebut point-by-point as that would accept the misleading framing you are trying to set up.

This is all really rather surreal, in that in many cases, I am fine with tiny articles about places so long as they are properly sourced and do not misrepresent the nature of a place (e.g., we should not be mislabeling something as an "unincorporated community" or "hamlet" or "village" when it is just some sort of a named place (like an orchard) that happens to have some people living nearby).

Actually, I do want to respond to one specific misrepresentation you make about my words. It is not that the demographic data itself is not worthwhile, it is more an issue when an article consists of nothing else and lacks context or meaningful connection to anything else.

So do you think an article about a place consisting SOLEY of barely intelligible boilerplate prose about statistical data extracted from a tabular dataset is a worthwhile article? Really? Sheesh. Can you give an example of such a populated place (and in the light of other aspects of this discussion, I would not include administrative divisions)?

I'm not sure what you are asking for in your last paragraph. It sounds mutually exclusive. If there is such a totally boring little town, in which nothing of importance has ever happened and we in fact have no published accounts about this place, why do you think such a place should have an article? older ≠ wiser 13:06, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Why do you say we in fact have no published accounts about this place when we in fact have extensive published accounts about the demographics of this place? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:53, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Your said nothing of importance has ever happened; tabular demographic data that has been transmogrified into paragraphs of prose in no way shape or form constitutes "extensive" coverage of the place. older ≠ wiser 12:07, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

First, even in a place where nothing of importance happens, then we may still have sources. Small town newspapers will catalog the usual details of the budget, mayoral election, the construction of a building, etc., even though it is insignificant to anyone outside the town and even most of the people within it.

Second, I think that the US Census does constitute "extensive" coverage of a place. That's a lot of numbers and words each time, and it's been repeated every ten years for more than two centuries. One census report is a lot more coverage than a magazine article saying "best known as Alice Expert's birthplace". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

As I indicated, if there are sources with accounts of the place, then I have no issue with an having article (there might still be room to discuss whether an upmerge is warranted, but that would by case-by-case. I do not agree in the slightest that census data constitutes extensive coverage. It is a lot of numbers, yes, but without context they are pretty much meaningless factoids. Of course, if a secondary source (or even the census itself) publishes an analysis that examines and summarizes data for a place (beyond merely re-iterating the data), that would be significant. older ≠ wiser 12:22, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

What is the difference between "a lot of coverage" and "extensive coverage"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

I dunno. Why do you ask? It is not a distinction I recall having made previously. older ≠ wiser 14:16, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

I think they're the same, but you seem to say that that the US Census includes a lot of coverage but isn't extensive coverage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:18, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

I wish you would stop making stuff up and attributing it to me. There is a lot of data (factoids) produced by the census, but in isolation is not very meaningful. Again, seeing a how the same information is available for census tracts and other areas, if there are two places that have no other published accounts about them other than census data, can you explain why one type should have an article and not the other? older ≠ wiser 17:25, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think I'm making stuff up. I think I'm trying to make sense of you saying on the one hand that the US Census contains an extensive amount of information about each town and yet doesn't constitute extensive coverage of each town.

Yes, I think there is a reason for why one type has an article and the other doesn't, and you'll find it in the lead of WP:N: Editors don't choose to have it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:43, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't see this. You seem to be claiming that census data, taken in isolation without any other supporting information, is sufficient to establish notability. But if that very same census data exists for any number of divisions, why is one type notable and not the others? older ≠ wiser 17:58, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

As I said, you should be able to "see this" in the lead of Wikipedia:Notability. Look for the sentence that begins "Editors may use their discretion..." The reason that one type qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article ("notable") and the others don't is because editors have "use[d] their discretion" to decide what we want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:03, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

This is remarkably unhelpful in a discussion about standards for notability. On the one hand, you seem to suggest that all that is needed for a place to be notable is a citation to census data. And yet you fall back on editor discretion when asked to clarify precisely how such a standard could be applied. Once again, how is census data alone sufficient to establish notability for a place? older ≠ wiser 14:00, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

Because populated places are notable because people live there, not because of sourcing requirements. Therefore, the measure for notability is verification, similar to NPROF, as opposed to being covered by secondary sources. Being listed in a census is usually prima facie evidence that a place is populated. SportingFlyer T·C 18:38, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

So does that mean that any place that is listed in a census is therefore notable? If it is not based solely on the existence of census data for a place, then what is the distinguishing criteria? older ≠ wiser 19:13, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

To your first question, merely being listed in a census does not make a place notable. The USA is a perfect example of this, as the US census sometimes designates its own places. However in a country where the census is a one-to-one match for populated places, being listed in the census should be enough to verify the article as a populated place.

This is why we currently have "legally populated" - it's intentionally a permissive guideline, but not so permissive that anything that could ever be a populated place qualifies. SportingFlyer T·C 23:03, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

@SportingFlyer, I think you mean "Populated, legally recognized". Illegal settlements can sometimes be notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I meant "legally recognized." I was tired. SportingFlyer T·C 08:12, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

What census is there for a large modern country that has a one-to-one match for populated places (and what does that even mean)? And what is the distinction that enables editors to distinguish between what is or is not permitted under this guideline? older ≠ wiser 13:17, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

I would wager almost all of Europe just as a starting point. I've just looked at Slovenia's and doing some spot checking, it is essentially a list of every settlement in the country. SportingFlyer T·C 18:19, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

What exactly are you looking at (and even then it's not even clear what you mean). I would be astonished if the census of any sizeable nation did not make results available at various levels of granularity. older ≠ wiser 18:51, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

The table Population by sex and by age, municipalities and settlements, Slovenia, annually at seems to be a list of every settlement in Slovenia. SportingFlyer T·C 19:15, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

The UK do it by parish or wards in larger areas. But they are not legally recognised places. The UK government does not recognise the census as legally recognised. In fact, try and find what is legally recognised settlements in the UK, other than Cities, or towns that have legislation in place for their establishment (or market), you will not find any legally recognised phrase anywhere else. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 19:45, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's a problem, though. I'm looking at some very small places in the UK right now, say Hillesden, and it's a civil parish, which should have some legal authority to exercise jurisdiction over an area. If a place is unparished, unparished places are still comprehensively covered.

Plus, the Slovenian example is not intended to prove we can use the census as proof of population for all countries at all times. SportingFlyer T·C 22:42, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

What census is there for a large modern country that has a one-to-one match for populated places? sounds a bit like asking "What census is there for a large modern country that deliberately omits all of its rural residents?"

A properly performed census will contain information about people who don't live in cities/towns/villages. But most of them do make it possible to answer questions like "How many people live in Margate per se?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

I wasn't entirely sure what was meant by one-to-one match for populated places. It appears to be a claim that the census delineates each and every populated place in a county. Perhaps I guess shouldn't be too surprised that this may be true for some countries. I'm not sure why you think that is comparable to asking "What census is there for a large modern country that deliberately omits all of its rural residents?" That is certainly not the case with US Census, although such residents may be summarized within relatively large divisions rather than in specific named localities. older ≠ wiser 22:15, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Here is the only functional definition of 'notability': If editors agree to have a separate, stand-alone article about this subject, then it's notable. If they don't, it's not.

For the most part, we want sources that make us believe that we will be able to write a few hundred words and comply with the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Verifiability policies. However, in some cases, even that minimal standard is set aside. For example, NPROF doesn't care about NPOV (there is no other subject for which we'd accept a press release from a BLP's employer as the sole source), and NSPECIES technically doesn't care if it's possible to write more than a single fact (namely, which genus the species is in).

But no matter which standard is used, notable == editors agree to having an article.

So I am telling you, that even if the standard drives you nuts, the fact is that all subjects are notable if and only if editors agree to have an article about them, and that for this subject, editors have agreed to have articles about cities/towns/villages in the US Census (therefore these subjects are notable) and not to have articles about census tracts (therefore these subjects are non-notable).

I realize that this standard is uncomfortable for people who want everything to proceed in a highly systematizing and logical fashion, but this is the reality: Editors chose all of the notability standards, and the overall standard they chose is in the very first sentence of WP:N: editors to decide whether a given topic warrants its own article (emphasis added). That you think the standard they chose for NGEO is "unhelpful" is unfortunate for you, but mostly irrelevant. Editors decided that census data alone is sufficient to make a city/town/village notable, and that exactly the same kind of census data is insufficient for a census tract that isn't a city/town/village. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

This is precisely why there are repeated, extended, discussions for this supposed (non-)guideline (in that it provides no meaningful assistance for determining what is or is not notable). And if it is a matter of discretion, then surely we would do better to have nothing at all. Instead of knee-jerk appeals to WP:NGEO as a reason to keep an article about a place the discussions should focus on the qualities/attributes for each place that make it notable. older ≠ wiser 20:24, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that's true. I think there are repeated discussions about this guideline because some editors disagree with this guideline, rather than because they don't understand what the guideline says.

We could provide a very significant level of clarity, but this wouldn't change the fact that some editors won't like it. For example, we could write into this guideline something like this:

• The US Census is a completely sufficient source to justify the creation of an article about any place identified in it as a city, town, village, or similar human settlement, even if it is the only source known to exist in the entire world about that populated place and even if it is now a ghost town. There are no exceptions to this rule: Every single past or present city, town, village, or similar human settlement in the US is absolutely notable and must have a separate, standalone article about it, even if the only possible contents are boilerplate text describing the census data.
• Census tracts for rural areas smaller than a county (defined here as the first-level administrative subdivision of the state that contains it and explicitly including Louisiana's parishes) that are reported in the US Census and that have never been identified in the census as being a city, town, village, or similar human settlement, or part of a city, town, village, or similar human settlement, are non-notable. Articles must never be created about them, no matter what other sources may be found for them. These must be merged up to the county or parish that contains them, or, if the area extends across a county border, to a regional article such as East Tennessee or Northern California.

It would be clear, but I suspect that you still wouldn't like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:09, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

No, I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from (again). In its present state, this supposed guideline says nothing that is objectively useful in discussions about the notability of a place. Essentially what is left is a vague generalization of WP:5P1 that might as well say that Wikipedia does function as a gazetteer and that any populated place (as well natural features) should be catalogued. What some interpret it to mean is that any place where as few as ten people may have lived for a time as recorded in a census is notable (without paying much attention to whatever descriptive attributes might be present in the census data). older ≠ wiser 21:31, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

What's your problem with "as few as ten people"? The guideline says zero people is acceptable, so why do you think "as few as ten" is worse than the explicitly authorized zero people? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

I have no problem at all with having articles on places with few or even zero people provided there are sources that provide context. The issue I have is with articles that have no sourcing, no context, and no indications of any significance other than some numbers extracted from a census dataset. older ≠ wiser 13:22, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Maybe we have different ideas about what "context" means. "Smallville is in Ruritania" is context (the context of place). "Smallville had a population of 12 in 1900 and a population of 42 in 1950 and a population of 220 in 2000" is context (the context of time).

The US Census is "sourcing". Saying where a town is located is "context". Populated places are not required to have "significance". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:29, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

@Bkonrad as someone who proposed "10 people" as a rule of thumb in a prior discussion, I should point out that my proposed clarification of the guideline would be (1) a place has been verifiably recognized by the government of jurisdiction as a "populated place" (usually verified in an official gazetteer, except for jurisdictions like the US where appropriate sources do not exist), and (2) the place has also been verified as having a minimum of 10 inhabitants at some point in time - this would usually be a census, but other WP:RS independent of the subject could also work. Those two, taken together, would trigger the presumption of notability. Newimpartial (talk) 22:20, 30 November 2025 (UTC)

What I (and I think some others) struggle to understand is how (or perhaps whether it is even possible) to determine what legally recognized means in a global context. I feel very strongly that encoding a numerical threshold into the guideline is a mistake. Also, I don't see why you say things like except for jurisdictions like the US where appropriate sources do not exist. Why do you say that? There is more high quality information available about places in the US than many other nations -- the issue with GNIS is that people make erroneous assumptions about what the categories represent and misuse that. The same sort of misuse has happened with other nations as well. older ≠ wiser 13:32, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

@Bkonrad: Could you elaborate on how GNIS is misused and how it could be used properly? This might be good information to add to a future guideline. –dlthewave ☎ 17:39, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

It's discussed in some details at Wikipedia:Reliability of GNIS data. Not all the places described as "populated places" would match what we might expect for such a place. I don't have much to add beyond that. older ≠ wiser 17:47, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Break

And besides, the same set of "extensive" numbers and words are available for census tracts and other sorts of unnotable divisions. What is it that make some of them notable and not the others? older ≠ wiser 12:36, 22 November 2025 (UTC)

we should not be mislabeling something as an "unincorporated community" or "hamlet" or "village" when it is just some sort of a named place (like an orchard) that happens to have some people living nearby)

How do you tell when something is "just some sort of named place" vs a true "hamlet" or village or unincorporated community? Katzrockso (talk) 05:53, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

First place to check is the official definitions applicable for the area; second would be how it is described in reliable sources. older ≠ wiser 12:09, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@Bkonrad the problem with deciding that "all settlements and municipalities have to meet GNG" would be the following (perhaps unintended) results:

• some dubiously-existing places (or places designated by something that is neither their official nor most common name) would be deemed to merit an article
• some actually-existing places (officially recognized by the relevant government, with administrative or representative functions) would not be deemed to merit an article
• for some countries, no sub-national geographies might consistently "merit" articles

I believe most editors, since early in the history of enwiki, have seen such outcomes as undesirable from the standpoint of an encyclopaedia. Newimpartial (talk) 14:56, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

First, rather than defaulting to GNG, I would much prefer to have a guideline that is not so hopelessly vague and imprecise as what we have now. How does having a vague guideline with diverse interpretations and variable outcomes at AfD avoid these (which are essentially nothing more than largely baseless slippery slope arguments)? The first point is nonsense and would certainly be no more of a problem than already exists with many articles about places based on OR and misunderstandings of the "official" sources. The second point is also without merit as any such place would have sufficient sources to easily pass GNG. older ≠ wiser 15:14, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

>some dubiously-existing places (or places designated by something that is neither their official nor most common name) would be deemed to merit an article

Are you saying hoaxes/not real 'places' would have articles? Because thats what we already have with the current system and I fail to see how GNG would make that more likely. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Traumnovelle To answer your question, I am saying that travelogues are not as good - as sources about what places exist, and what they are called - as official government lists, etc. And yes, I am saying that imposing GNG - which privileges published, independent prose sources, like travelogues - is more likely to lead to the inclusion of places that only exist as inhabited places in the mind of the travel writer, or perhaps in the minds of the marketing people who are their (uncredited) sources. So yes, I am saying that it would be easier to create such articles under GNG than NGEO. Newimpartial (talk) 19:47, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Inclusion of housing developments and such already happens with NGEO being cited as a reason to keep them because they may appear in a government document as a one-word mention. As for publications that are clearly promotional, I wouldn't consider them reliable sources, although I have seen people consider tripadvisor a reliable source... Traumnovelle (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Traumnovelle I am really more concerned about hotel complexes and touristic "districts" than I am about housing developments, since authors are more likely to use the former in travelogue prose, and these published sources are likely to be independent (if credulous). I simply do not trust travel writers to know what the places they discuss are "really" called, but the GNG would favor such prose treatments over official government sources in determining what "places" merit articles. (I am also concerned about the scenarios of places that "really do" exist, but where e.g. one demonstrably populated village has received extended prose treatment by an RS tourist or two, and the rest have not. I don't think the encyclopaedia benefits from keeping the one at AfD and deleting the rest, which is the obvious outcome according to GNG.) Newimpartial (talk) 20:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Newimpartial Questions: Do you think hotel complexes and touristic "districts" are currently acceptable under the GEOLAND standard? If you do, then why are you opposed to clarifying the guideline? If not, then these should already be covered by GNG. I'm not aware that there is any significant issue with editors creating articles on such areas under the aegis of GEOLAND. older ≠ wiser 20:54, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Bkonrad To answer your first question: no, I don't, because the kinds of places I'm talking about are not official "populated places" and therefore not notable under GEOLAND. NGEO currently slants the playing field in favor of official recognition and documented population, so these sorts of issues tend not to occur.

And to be clear, I do not oppose the clarification of GEOLAND - indeed, I have already proposed both source requirements and a population threshold. Rather, I oppose changes to NGEO that would subject populated places to GNG/SIGCOV.

But on your last point: sure, editors can already try to create new articles based on a couple of travelogues, without pretending to NGEO notability. However: (1) they generally lack the incentive to do so, since articles on "real" places typically already exist where they can place the relevant content, and (2) when such an article is created, so long as GEOLAND exists, the most likely outcome of any discussion of it is a merger into the "real", official populated place to which it belongs. That is the way most SNGs work, even when they are not expressly restrictive of GNG notability: articles that fit the SNG are created and kept, while ones that don't face a higher "burden of proof" at AfD.

In the absence of NGEO, however, the logic behind both (1) and (2) would no longer apply. So I believe that these are the kinds of places that would be found notable at AfD if the GNG were the sole basis of notability for inhabited human geography. And this and related forms of article incoherence would be a gradually snowballing problem, as they often are in areas without an SNG or an active wikiproject that establishes clear norms for inclusion and treatment of topics in a domain. Newimpartial (talk) 21:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Do you have some evidence that these would be kept under GNG or is this just a wild fantasy? older ≠ wiser 21:27, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Bkonrad GNG is generally understood to be met when multiple, published sources offer independent coverage of a topic. I have watched enough AfDs to know that many editors treat the number of RS words published on a topic in such sources to be the best indicator of WP:SIGCOV, and therefore a topic meriting an article under GNG. So no, I wouldn't call it a wild fantasy. Newimpartial (talk) 22:39, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Close but not exactly, there is actually more or less a number of words metric built in when considering whether something counts as SIGCOV... "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." but you appear to be under the impression that trivial mentions alone can meet sigcov. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:49, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back Just as a quick clarification: I suspect that I disagree with you about what a "trivial mention" is. So in another domain, "X won the Nobel prize in Economics" in an independent source is never a trivial mention for me, because it is encyclopedic content. I feel the same way about "Z is a recognized species of caterpillar" when found in an authoritative nomenclature database.

Now, an editor could reply to this with, "yes, but these are areas where the claim to notability isn't based on GNG". Formally I agree with that, and I understand WP:SIGCOV as a test that only applies within the GNG framework.

However, I also believe that our "notability ecosystem" would work better if editors were to treat reliably-sourced, credible claims to encyclopaedic significance as SIGCOV within GNG as well - because they are paradigmatic encyclopedic content - and not subject them to a "minimum length requirement", whether explicitly asserted or merely implied. Newimpartial (talk) 17:51, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Then perhaps you are just confused? You can have a trivial mention of non-trivial encyclopedic info which is what is happening there. But if there is no non-trivial mention somewhere then it isn't encyclopedic info. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:59, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I think I know where Newimpartial is coming from, and I have seen been used at several AFDs in the past. One piece of significant cov is the rule. However is there are 1000 minor pieces of coverage showing a wide notability of said article, editors have argued that how does 1 piece outlay 1000? Davidstewartharvey (talk) 18:10, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Three pieces of sigcov is generally the rule, not one. I also don't think thats what Newimpartial is arguing, that would make what they said make less sense not more sense. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:21, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back to answer your question: no, I don't think I'm confused; I think I disagree with you. I hold with the interpretation of notability - which is as old as the concept - that says that reliably-sourced "real-world significance", i. e. encyclopaedic info, counts more towards meriting an article than an extended RS treatment of actual trivia about a subject. This view is partly reflected in the way passing mentions are defined in the guideline, is reflected in many AfD !votes (and the retention of articles), and is incorporated wholesale in most SNGs in some form or another.

Of course, there is a competing view that emphasizes the length of prose treatment instead, when defining SIGCOV. In my view one of the main practival benefits of GEOLAND is to define a class of topics on which such bickering can be avoided. Newimpartial (talk) 18:34, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

So you don't think there can be a trivial mention of a non-trivial thing or you do? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:25, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back To try to answer your question: if the best source available mentions a "non-trivial thing" about a topic in passing, I understand that to grant notability to that topic in a way that an equally short mentions of a trivial thing (something unrelated to the topic's credible claim to significance) would not. For a biographical subject, for example, a mention in the NYT of their Nobel prize in Economics would grant notability to a greater extent than if the NYT offered a mention of equal length about the same person playing the role of Santa Claus at a Christmas party.

Of course, a longer discission of the Nobel is worth *more* notability, but the role this brief mention would more often play is that more specialized reports (potentially less independent of the subject) give more detail, while the NYT grants a bare mention. My interpretation of this scenario is that some notability is granted by the NYT report and some by the longer but more "niche" report, the combination generally ensuring that the subject merits a separate article - particularly among a class of articles, like Nobel prize winners, who are almost always treated in standalone articles. Newimpartial (talk) 21:47, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

If there is nothing beyond a trivial mention how do you establish that the information is encyclopedic content? If the only coverage that winning a nobel prize got was a single line in the NYT then winning a Nobel wouldn't be encyclopedic content. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:45, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back Here again I disagree. The English wikipedia community - in line with the community of English-speakers from which it is drawn - recognizes certain claims to significance as valid even when little might be written about those topics, especially in secondary sources. Nobel prize winners are an example of this, as are senior academics, eukaryotic species, and "official" populated places. To answer your question directly: we know such topics are notable because the topic verifiably fits in a category that the community has already decided is notable, whether or not the specific example has been written about in a way that satisfies GNG-defined-by-word-count. In these domains, editors can establish that a topic is notable because it meets the criteria for inclusion, criteria that enwiki recognizes as a clear claim to encyclopaedic relevance.

Now, if it were the case that no RS were available about these topics beyond their mere existence, then it might be reasonable to aggregate up, e.g., into "List of Nobel prize winners in Economics" or "List of obscure mollusks". However, additional information is generally available, either in database form (which some editors turn up their noses at for notability even though they may be quality, independent RS), or in suboptimal prose sources (like ABOUTSELF publications, biographies published by employers or colleagues, etc.). So, generally speaking, recognizing notability based on verifiably meeting domain-specific criteria allows us to have articles with enough prose to satisfy a range of editors' aesthetics, even though in many cases (e.g., academics) the sources used for that prose would often not satisfy GNG SIGCOV, strictly construed. Newimpartial (talk) 23:18, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

"The English wikipedia community - in line with the community of English-speakers from which it is drawn - recognizes certain claims to significance as valid even when little might be written about those topics, especially in secondary sources." no it doesn't... All of those examples draw their significance from being the subject of WP:RS and in all of those cases a lack of sigcov would be valid deletion criteria. There is no claim to notability separate from sigcov, when we presume those topics are notable its because we presume that sigcov exists even if we can not immediately identify it. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:46, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back you say in all of those cases a lack of sigcov would be valid deletion criteria, but the 2024 consensus on WP:NSPECIES, and the strong, repeatedly expressed consensus behind WP:NPROF, say the opposite. And as I have pointed put before, WP:SIGCOV is a test that is specific to the GNG, and is not a universal touchstone for notability.

You can say as often as you want that a mollusc isn't notable unless prose is written about it, or that an academic isn't notable unless secondary sources offer biographical information about them - but the enwiki community simply doesn't agree with either of those claims. Aside from a few curmudgeons, there is simply no actual support for the universalist view that a certain level of independent, secondary RS text is required to support all articles. And you seem to imply here that presumptive notability is an assumption that SIGCOV must exist somehere - but that isn't generally true in the WP:N framework no matter how often you insist on it. That type of rebuttable presumption applies since 2017 to athletes, and almost nowhere else on enwiki. Newimpartial (talk) 00:05, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

"topics which pass an SNG are presumed to merit an article, though articles which pass an SNG or the GNG may still be deleted or merged into another article, especially if adequate sourcing or significant coverage cannot be found, or if the topic is not suitable for an encyclopedia." you are wrong to claim that SIGCOV is only within GNG. You understand that for something to be recognized as a species it has to be the subject of prose right? A mollusk that isn't the subject of prose would not meet the standard because it wouldn't be a recognized species, so you're wrong all the way around. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:22, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back As we have discussed elsewhere on this page, the SIGCOV test is specific to GNG. The notion of "significant coverage" is not specific to GNG or to that test, and WP:SNG is fairly clear on that point when it says that SNGs may specify types of coverage considered significant for the purposes of determining notability (emphasis added) and that others, for example, the SNG for academics and professors and the SNG for geographic features operate according to principles that differ from the GNG. It is most certainly not saying that articles subject to SNGs are subject to deletion unless they meet SIGCOV, particularly since topics that meet SIGCOV can still be deleted for lack of notability, according to the passage you already quoted.

As far as the poor molluscs go, I mean, nomenclature databases contain words and therefore in some sense prose (they ain't generally poetry), but as a minority pointed out during the adoption of the NSPECIES SNG, the prose in any or all nomenclature databases would typically not satisfy GNG, and the more detailed descriptions to which the databases link are typically not secondary and therefore don't contribute to SIGCOV. The supermajority accepted that this was the case but did not take it as a valid objection to the guideline. So I don't think I'm off in my interpretation of this example. Newimpartial (talk) 01:44, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

Under the model in which SIGCOV = amount of potentially useable information, primary sources can contain SIGCOV. They just don't count towards GNG despite having SIGCOV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

It sounds like we have a few open questions about the GNG that could potentially be addressed at Wikipedia talk:Notability. These include:

1. What does the word "significant" in SIGCOV mean? Does it refer to a source claiming the subject is significant (e.g., "Alice Expert is the world's foremost expert on the size of the Sun"), or about the volume (e.g., "Here are 42 facts you didn't know about Alice Expert")?
2. Are databases appropriate sources under the GNG (ever, usually, sometimes)?
3. Under the GNG, do sources that do not contain prose (or contain very little) contribute towards notability?
4. If a topic definitely does not meet the GNG (e.g., no SIGCOV sources), but it does meet SNGs, is it still okay to have a separate article?

The ones for this SNG somewhat overlap:

1. Does a place need to meet the GNG, to qualify for a separate article under NGEO?
2. Is it worth having a separate article on a place if the only information demographic and geographic information taken from the US Census (or a similarly detailed and reputable source), and we believe that is likely to continue being true for the foreseeable future?

Does that sound like the right set of questions to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:41, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing personally, I'm wedded to SIGCOV being the test, so I'd look for a different way to ask what "significant" means in different sections of WP:N rather than your first Q1. And I'd ask your Q4 in relation to specific examples, like NSPECIES and NPROF, rather than in the abstract. And for your second Q1, I think it's important to distinguish between the "populated places" domain (which has basically set aside GNG) and the named features and built structures (which have mostly deferred to GNG). I'm also not sure how many questions on WP:N editors could productively answer at once.

But your taxonomy of issues looks solid to me. Newimpartial (talk) 05:16, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

I think that one question at a time is usually the right answer.

The word significant appears 20 times in WP:N. It's possible that some of the seven that are not about "significant coverage" could be helpfully re-worded. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I suspect some of the "significant coverage" ones might also be reworded, to help distinguish the GNG test from the overall principle (that coverage matters to notability). Newimpartial (talk) 05:30, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

I also think that SIGCOV is a key factor (second IMO only to independence), but I see two different opinions here about what that means:

• SIGCOV means coverage that is significant in volume ("a significant amount of coverage")
• SIGCOV means coverage that indicates significance ("coverage of the fact that the subject is significant")

These are not interchangeable. I suspect that SIGCOV is meant to be the first, and that we don't actually have anything written down about the second. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:12, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

I have interpreted SIGCOV in the first sense and SNGs provide a way for a topic to be notable despite not having SIGCOV in SIRS that is "significant in volume" Katzrockso (talk) 03:35, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

NPROF doesn't even require "SIRS" (secondary independent reliable sources). NPROF is perfectly fine with only having sources that are primary and non-independent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:12, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

Yes, precisely what I meant to convey. I think other editors in this discussion have conveyed the belief that the notability guidelines state that something may pass a SNG, but still not be fit for an article due to lacking SIGCOV, based on this quote topics which pass an SNG are presumed to merit an article, though articles which pass an SNG or the GNG may still be deleted or merged into another article, especially if adequate sourcing or significant coverage cannot be found, or if the topic is not suitable for an encyclopedia. Katzrockso (talk) 05:52, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

WP:SNG was created in May 2020 and that line was added in February 2021. I don't see anyone at the RFC commenting on the 'significant coverage' wording, and I don't think it should be interpreted as evidence that SIGCOV is actually required – it might be a factor, but it also might not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:20, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

It looks like that line comes from this February 2021 RfC. I'll have to figure out who wrote that and see if we can glean their intention in proposing that relevant section. Katzrockso (talk) 06:40, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

It appears that RfC was written by Barkeep49 in this edit , based on this discussion. Katzrockso (talk) 06:50, 23 November 2025 (UTC)

@Davidstewartharvey, Traumnovelle, Giuliotf, WhatamIdoing, Chipmunkdavis, Bkonrad, and Horse Eye's Back: - I've set up a page here for people to put forward proposals. We've had a lot of debate about this and I think it would be a lot more helpful just to put the proposals down on (electronic) paper so that people can see what they look like. FOARP (talk) 18:44, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

It's unclear how you want that page to be handled. For example, in Proposal 1, you write about "non-trivial coverage by their name", but what does that mean? Someone will probably say that if the place goes by multiple names, then only the one in the article title can be used to prove SIGCOV IRS TLABBQ. You wrote that "sources must be provided", which contradicts WP:NEXIST and the multiple RFCs that have tried and failed to get a requirement for at least one source to be cited in each article (usually for overreach. Maybe in 2026, someone will try an RFC on "In principle, every article should cite at least one source" and then do the novel thing of not sabotaging the proposal by adding some other, more controversial pet rule). Do you want us to discuss those problems, fix those problems, or just vote against Proposal 1 because of those problems? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:35, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I want people to write down what their proposed change is in a proposal. The vote-section is just a place-holder. If you have a criticism of another person’s proposal write it in the discussion section under their proposal.

PS- to state the obvious, Proposal 1 is not my proposal. FOARP (talk) 06:28, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

The change that I think would be helpful is a separate page called WP:Populated, legally recognized place, so that people who can't glork the meaning from context and the community's practice can go read a long explanation of what these words mean, why we expect editors to use discretion instead of applying simplistic, bot-like rules, and that if you're personally not sure whether a given place is a populated, legally recognized place, you should not send it to AFD. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand why we are trying to change the standard itself; why not just hold some RfC to PAGEDECIDE whatever settlements are poisoning Wikipedia with their stubiness into a larger level of geographic organization. Katzrockso (talk) 07:51, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

"BAD RFC: this is clearly against the GEOLAND standard.". FOARP (talk) 12:05, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Anyone saying that would be wrong on the merits. Katzrockso (talk) 14:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Let me introduce you to every effort to do anything about this subject-area on WP, ever, including the above discussion. FOARP (talk) 10:07, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

The above discussion seems to be composed of editors who astutely recognize that the problems are not with "legally recognized populated place", but with how editors are interpreting that standard. That calls for clarification (perhaps explanatory essays like @WhatamIdoing said), not abandonment. I don't see any editors in this discussion who have made an argument that is "wrong on the merits" Katzrockso (talk) 20:24, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could think about a policy proposal that says there is no minimum length for articles, and that "it's a stub, and I hate short articles" is never grounds for deletion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

But it is often grounds for not covering a topic as a stand-alone page, in general we hold that its better to have one start than two stubs. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:38, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think that's true. Some of us (including me) hold that it's better to have one article with 400 words than two articles with 200 words, but I've heard from other editors that the opposite is true, especially for mobile readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

There are always exceptions, and the complaints I've heard from mobile readers start well above 200 words in size but that is a legitimate concern for many especially on legacy devices. Always going to come down to context which is why we use individual consenus for this sort of thing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:20, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

Sure, I agree with that. But the motivation for this entire quest to change the standard seems to arise from a dislike of stubs that don't have tons of information, like the barangay articles commonly mentioned. That would be much more easily solved by going through and RfC to PAGEDECIDE the barangay-like articles for other countries to a higher level of geographic organization.

I think your policy proposal would be a good idea though, since people seem to misunderstand the WP:Deletion policy. Katzrockso (talk) 23:08, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Looking at pages such as Alabang and Tatalon, which are about 100 words long plus huge infoboxes, I'm not sure that the community would recommend merging them (mostly because of the huge infoboxes). I would expect the one-sentence Tugatog (not counting the infobox's contents), on the other hand, to result in some eye rolling and noises of disgust. Is this a WP:NOEFFORT complaint? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

No, I don't suggest that those perfectly reasonable stub-size articles should be merged as I agree that wouldn't improve the encyclopedia and I'm not invoking any lack of improvement to these articles, I'm sure most geostubs could be greatly expanded with proper sourcing/research and that is no reason to delete them. For example, I recently created Sweet Sulphur Springs, whose previous name White Sulphur Springs, Indiana is currently at AfD because of some conflation by the GNIS. Katzrockso (talk) 00:19, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

You aren't, but I wonder whether other editors (e.g., AFD noms) might be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:03, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

I think that content is more important than article length. White Sulphur Springs tells us practically nothing about the place other than the fact that it had a post office; even the source that mentions mineral springs in the area doesn't talk about any sort of community. We could add a few paragraphs about nearby natural features, what school district is in, climate, etc but we'd still be at AFD trying to figure out what this place actually 'is' because the article doesn't tell us. On the other hand, the lede of Sweet Sulphur Springs would be an acceptable stub even though it's just a few sentences. It tells us that it was a health resort, years operated, key people and dates as well as it's fate. This sort of information should be the bare minimum for an article. Regardless of where we want to draw the line for notability, we shouldn't have articles sources only to databases and post office records that don't give a clear description of what it actually was. –dlthewave ☎ 15:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

That's because White Sulphur Springs is based on the conflation of several different things: the hotel/springs area, which was named "White Sulphur Springs" and a nearby community Fidelity. They are not the same thing, the GNIS conflated the two. I am not defending the state of that article at all, let me be clear. But there are real places involved here, which is what happened with 99% of the GNIS entries in my experience. Katzrockso (talk) 04:24, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Re various comments about how the current standard is misinterpreted: if that's happening often, then it's a bad standard. Either that, or people who can't interpret it properly have to be banned from these discussions, which isn't ever going to happen. Mangoe (talk) 03:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

@Mangoe I certainly agree that everyone who has said "Brian is sleeping in my kitchen tonight; can I haz article" - or any cognate thereof - should be banned from these discussions. Newimpartial (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)

The thing is, I don't think it is mis-interpreted often at AfD. SportingFlyer T·C 18:09, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

I agree; I think there are scarcely any examples of the wrong decision being made at AfD with regards to geographic locations. Katzrockso (talk) 23:32, 20 November 2025 (UTC)