Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gallups, Arizona

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a deletion review
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The result was delete. Yunshui ^雲 _水 10:47, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Gallups, Arizona

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Another "no there there" mystery, the name just appears on a 1970s topo map, sticks around to the next edition, and then disappears again, to reappear when it is copied in from GNIS. And there is just nothing there: it's just a random junction of two intermittent streams without the slightest indication that a human being ever set foot in the place, much less built anything. Searching is a bit of a problem but after accounting for the city of Gallup and a birther-pushing preacher, I get no meaningful hits. Mangoe (talk) 04:11, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 05:55, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Arizona-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 05:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. I don't get the multitude of AFDs about places in Arizona going on and on. Here the AFD implication/claim is this has never been a populated place. But it is identified as having been a populated place in GNIS, do you think that is just made up? And, it is a place with water. Current Google satellite view shows two "tanks" (open water holes/ponds/tanks) full of water, and named springs also in the immediate area. It seems to me that "Gallups" name applies to the area between and around two or more road ends, as highlighted in this Google map view linking two places "named" Gallups. Does anyone seriously think a place with water in generally arid area is not going to have been populated?

Frankly I don't like the quest to delete all these places, including this one, just because non-locals can't find on-internet sources giving elaborate stories about them and appearing to be highly reliable. I am rather sure, instead, that local history sources do indeed cover these places. And Wikipedia is an almanac or whatever-is-the-term-describing-fact-we-do-cover-all-of-these for covering populated places. Sure, tag for expansion (but doesn't a "stub" tag already call for that?), but

wp:AFDISNOTFORCLEANUP. --Doncram (talk) 18:03, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply

]

In case you were unaware, it was non-locals who put all these spots on in the first place! When the locals write these things up, they show up in searching: that for instance is how I found out what "Burro John" was all about. The accumulation of names in the GNIS gazetteer was conspicuously uncritical, and their choice of "populated place" to cover a huge variety of rather disparate sites was unfortunate, because everyone's first impulse is to put it on a continuum with actual settlements like towns and villages. And sometimes they are, and oftentimes they are not: a lot of times they are self-evident mistakes, such as Headquarters, Arizona. Because of this we have long taken the position that GNIS and Geonames do not confer notability and are largely useful for the coordinates they record, and in the US at least we have taken the position that named spots on the railroads aren't notable just because they have names. As far as the claim that these can be expanded: some of them can. I discovered that Chrysotile, Arizona, was actually the site of a major asbestos mining operation. But saying they can be expanded doesn't create sources, and I frankly do not believe that meaningful sources exist for all of them. Frankly, I would be inclined to prohibit this sort of mass dump of geo-stubs from gazetteers because of the great deal of work it takes to clean them up, and the inevitable resistance encountered by people who more or less object to verification on principle and who aren't doing any of the work. Mangoe (talk) 19:25, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram: "But it is identified as having been a populated place in GNIS, do you think that is just made up?" ABSOLUTELY! We've documented countless errors in the GNIS: check out Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Susie, Washington where they had 15 industrial railroad spurs mistakenly classified as "populated places" (and they still appear on current topos!). Sure, something existed at these places for it to have appeared on a map at some point, but even those that are correctly classified as somewhere a person lived at some point in time are not necessarily notable, this including neighborhoods, subdivisions, mobile home parks, ranger stations, and temporary work camps. It's disturbing how many people have mass-created articles solely from the GNIS without bothering to find corroborating sources to establish notability or the need for an article when information can be covered elsewhere. Reywas92^Talk 21:58, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete No evidence this is or was a populated place. The existence of water on arid land is not evidence of a human settlement.----Pontificalibus 13:51, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete bare dabases are not reliable sources to show a place is notable. For the record GNIS seems to have been so determined to place names everywhere that they did in fact just make some up.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:56, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete No evidence this is or was a populated place. fails
WP:GNG Lightburst (talk) 04:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply
]

Delete GNIS is simply not sufficient or reliable evidence that a place is populated. No other indication that this location is populated or notable in any way. Glendoremus (talk) 17:15, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Delete - Like most GNIS entries it looks like there was something here that someone named "gallups" and used as a landmark, but there's not evidence that it was something that was a populated place or meets our notability guidelines in any way.

@Doncram: your Google Maps example seems to be an artifact of their pathfinding algorithm. The map shows two places named "Gallups" less than 50 feet apart (likely an erroneous duplicate); in areas without roads, the algorithm automatically takes you to the nearest road (which in this case is about 2 miles away) before proceeding even if it would be much faster to simply walk the few steps between the two points. There's no sign of a large roadless area called Gallups. –dlthewave ☎ 23:59, 7 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Another failure of lazy mass-production. Reywas92^Talk 21:58, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this page.