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This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was transwiki, merge, delete. (already transwikied) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 23:43, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Edmeston, New York (Subarticles)

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These 20+ articles about the town of Edmeston, New York contain very detailed data about a small New York town over the past 250 years. Some of the pages contain oddly-formatted or frivolous text; letters, poems, pov comments glorifying the town. Others contain one-line bios of major town figures (and list where those figures have been referenced in the wider world).

Pre-VfD History of deletion dispute:

  • One of the articles was listed as a speedy deletion candidate by Dom ([207.99.6.125]).
  • Danny mentioned this on IRC, starting a prolonged debate; he then deleted all of the Edmeston subarticles as "non encyclopedic."
  • Over the course of the debate, Terryfoote and Raul654 concurred strongly that they should be deleted; others thought they should be kept in some form, merged down to only encyclopedic content, or generally debated on-wiki. I'm undeleting and listing them on VfD as they were not proper speedy-deletion candidates.

I am not sure how I feel about these articles yet, but I think creating this set of articles was a great effort on Nonenmac's part. Thanks for putting time into wikifying this stuff and making it beautiful, even if it's not all appropriate for WP. +sj + 01:29, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Votes

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  • I agree that these articles should probably be moved to a more appropriate place. I will do it but give me a week to get everything copied out. We have put a lot of work into this and don't want to lose it all. Nonenmac 01:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
AND whoever removed the Edmeston, New York (Chronology) article and all the subarticles, please put it back long enough so I can copy it. I was given no notice that they would be deleted Nonenmac 01:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for puting the articles back. I will copy them out and find another home for them. Then you can delete them if the votes direct it.Nonenmac 02:16, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • From reading through a selection of the articles, it looks like this is a compilation of primary sources on Edmeston. As such, it would be a prime candidate for transwikiing to one of the other projects, either Wikisource or Wikibooks. --Carnildo 02:07, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Traswiki and delete from the Wikipedia namespace--nixie 02:19, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Strong delete ; Move it if you must, but this is not at all appropriate here. Most of the stuff is a bunch of signed letters - looks like a good candidate for Wikisource. --mav 02:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • There is no question that this should be deleted. On the other hand, this is excellent material for Wikisource, and the author has agreed to that, at my request, I might add. Delete and move to Wikisource. Danny 02:38, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete--however, do not treat this vote as a precedent. If someone created encyclopedia articles on these topics, I would vote to keep. Meelar (talk) 03:03, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge into a single model article at "Edmeston, New York."
    Delete leaf pages.
    Transwiki to Wikisource as appropriate. +sj + 03:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    Why not a separate "History of Edmeston, New York" article? Because the town isn't important enough for people to expect to find an article by that title.
    Why not a subpage? Because subpages are often considered harmful in the main namespace.
    How easy will the merge be? The source material is not in a very natural format for merging; different sections have wilely varying tones. But the sectioning into people/schools/businesses/churches/houses is excellent (and a model for future city articles), so an improved outline would not be difficult.
    • Initially I was excited to see such a well-crossreferenced collection of local information, but then I saw there were places where the subarticles had random text that suggested someone (the uploader? the authors of some original source material?) was just fooling around. And clearly the pages need extensive sourcing to avoid being removed as original research. I'd like to hear Nonenmac weigh in on these points.
    • Re: Wikisourcing raw content -- Nonenmac, is this actually source material from some archive? If so, please list the source and move it to wikisource; you can still link out tne Wikipedia articles with w:Article name instead of Article name. +sj +
  • Merge into Edmeston main article. Capitalistroadster 04:41, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, this stuff should be submitted to Wikisource. --Michael Snow 05:06, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge either to Edmeston main article or to a single article on Edmeston (history). I prefer merge-and-delete because I don't think the individual article names are useful as redirects, but they can be left in place if it's too much work to perform a proper GFDL-friendly merge-and-delete. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:18, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Comment I'd like to see us cut Nonenmac some slack. I see no harm in unevenness of coverage, that's endemic to Wikipedia, so the fact that Edmeston is covered ten or fifty times more thoroughly than other towns is OK. I do not like to see the material splattered around a score of separate articles. Given that 32K is hallowed by tradition as an acceptable article length, and that there's general agreement that 32K is not a hard limit—I think George W. Bush is over 70K now—I'd suggest that the information be merged into as small a number of articles, preferably one, that the merge be done as soon as possible, and gradually cleaned up and trimmed of extraneous matter over time.
One humongously long undisciplined article that needs cleanup is perfectly acceptable to me.
Many of the source quotations, "oral-history-like" material should be trimmed down or omitted. They should illustrate some point that's being said about the town, not just appear unexplained on their own. The full versions can go in Wikisource.
I don't think there could be any possible objection to Nonenmac keeping any or all of this material as subpages of his user page while he's working on it, as the work is obviously Wikipedia-related.
In the Wikipedia main namespace, the final result should look like a long, detailed article about Edmeston, not like the loose contents of an "Edmeston historic archive" file drawer in a dusty cabinet in the back room of the public library. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:36, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge into a comprehensive article. Articles by city AND by decade are a bit superfluous. Radiant_* 14:28, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge and redirect. JYolkowski // talk 18:39, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge any encyclopedic information into the main Edmeston article, I don't think redirects are really neccessary. Rje 21:08, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Transwiki the source documents, merge the articles back into the town article, and viciously prune. RickK 21:20, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Transwiki pretty much everything to Wikisource. Like Sj, I at first thought this was totally legitimate, though vastly detailed ("1901: Steam heat was installed in the Gaskin House."), but then I saw some of the more ridiculous and non-encyclopedic, non-POV stuff ("All these brave, hardy, adventurous, fearless, industrious pioneers endured many hardships and sacrifices while clearing the land and paving the way for our comfortable homes today.") and decided to vote transwiki. Thanks to Sj and various others in #wikipedia for championing the VfD-ing of these articles, rather than their straight-out deletion, as per Danny. #wikipedia is great - I feel proud to have participated in such a momentous discussion. I believe this is a rather important topic, and one that may come into more scrutiny once Wikipedia and its sister sites grow a little more. Hopefully such detailed articles of the future will not also contain the sort of content unfit for Wikipedia that is found in this set of articles. — flamingspinach | (talk) 23:03, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
  • Transwiki the source documents, viciously prune and merge what's left back into the town article, and delete the original articles. Jayjg (talk) 03:23, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. I've copied the contents of all of these subarticles to Wikisource, where I agree they should be. I'll try to intgrate some of the pertinent information into the Edmeston, New York article in the future. I wonder how many man-hours were wasted on this discussion. If someone had just suggested that Wikisource was a better home for this stuff, I would have done it long ago. Nonenmac 12:15, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
P.S. I like Dpbsmith's analogy: like the loose contents of an "Edmeston historic archive" file drawer in a dusty cabinet in the back room of the public library, but I can assure you that cabinet is not dusty. Nonenmac
  • Transwiki, merge, delete subarticles as per Jayjg. (Exactly as I said in IRC. How'd I miss this listing until now?) Mindspillage (spill yours?) 16:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Transwiki, merge, delete, as per previous suggestions. Since Nonenmac appears to have already copied the appropriate subarticles to Wikisource, merge and delete should be the only steps necessary. I think this three-step process adequately addresses all the major concerns. --MikeJ9919 22:46, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.
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