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). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Snowball keep. I know I've gotten yelled at before for applying WP:SNOW way too swiftly, but this one seems a harmless enough closure to me, especially given the precedent that villages are considered inherently notable. Non-admin closure. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 19:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ab_Lench[edit]

Ab_Lench (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

Delete No sources or references. Nothing to show any form of noteability whatsoever. Just as a note, this AfD is a test case-- if it is successful, I will be starting to do group nominations of the hundreds of similar articles like this one, most of which consist of 1-3 lines of text and an infobox and no sources or references. Jtrainor (talk) 05:44, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep, sure more could be added to the article about the town and external links could be added, but I think this is encyclopedic content. Useight (talk) 05:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The thing about tiny villages, especially in countries with rich histories, is that there is generally a great deal to be said about them, it just simply needs to be found. Geographical stubs won't get bigger if they keep getting deleted. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 06:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This is a nice thought in theory, but in practice, these stubs are created and then almost never touched ever again. A random sampling just in the category this one comes from reveals dozens of similar one-line articles. Jtrainor (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply If I'm not mistaken, Wikipedia has only existed since 2001, which is like, 7 years. Why don't you just give it a little more time? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 06:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep The consensus is that geographical locations are inherently notable, is it not? And references aren't hard to come by, I've found and added one in a matter of moments. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 06:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Consensus cannot override core policy. Jtrainor (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reply Notability is a guideline rather than policy, which "...is not set in stone and should be treated with common sense..." --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 06:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • ...and the 'occasional exception' does not cover hundreds of articles like this one. That's far more than occasional. Jtrainor (talk) 07:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep I'm sure that if someone went into a British library in the region they'd have something on the village... besides, geographical stubs are notable, I'd say. Master of Puppets ^{Care to share?} 06:20, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment How can one tell if something is noteable if it has no sources or references? Jtrainor (talk) 06:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • So add some references, nobody agrees with your view that real places should be deleted and arguing the toss here won't change that. There are nearly 5,000 google hits for this place, you did a search and tried to add sources yourself before taking this to AfD, right? That's what the deletion procedure says you should do. I spent five minutes doing just that an added four or five more sources and useful information to the article. Nick mallory (talk) 08:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per everyone. Insofar as articles like this are a problem, improvement, not deletion, is the solution. Maxamegalon2000 06:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep So the nominator wants to delete hundreds of British villages? Good luck with that. It's to be hoped the consensus on this nomination saves him from wasting his own time - and everyone else's. Real places are inherently notable and every village has sources, references and history worth recording, instead of trying to delete broad swathes of actual places, maybe the nominator could search for some sources, improve some articles and, you know, contribute to building the encyclopedia? Ab Lench gets a mention in the Domesday Book of 1086, so William the Conqueror thought it was writing about anyway. Nick mallory (talk) 08:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep It's snowing in Ab Lench. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Since the article no longer meets the criteria for the 'test case', perhaps the nominator wishes to change his/her opinion to Speedy Keep and withdraw the nomination.207.69.137.23 (talk) 13:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, real, recognised places are automatically notable. On the subject of British villages, there is something to say about any village, even the tiniest ones. All it needs is an editor with an interest in the local area willing to write a little and do a little research. J Milburn (talk) 13:37, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I'm going to have to ask the people saying 'keep, real places are inherently noteable' to quote a policy that backs them up, and also prove why this allows them to somehow bypass sourcing requirements. And if every village has possible references, those references should have been added when the article was created. Jtrainor (talk) 13:40, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Those rationales are wrong. Read User:Uncle G/On notability#Notability is not a blanket for an explanation of why almost all cities, towns, and even villages in the world will satisfy the PNC. Then read Wikipedia:Guide to deletion#Nomination, Wikipedia:Deletion policy, and User:Uncle G/Wikipedia triage for what you should have done before nominating an article for deletion and what you should do when you see an article that cites no sources. Nick mallory has already explained this to you, above. Treating the location of sources as Somebody Else's Problem is not helping to get the encyclopaedia written. Uncle G (talk) 14:00, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • (ec) I'm a little out of sync with Wikipedia, but this page mentions it. Quote: "Cities and villages are acceptable, regardless of size". In any case, let us use common sense here. There is going to be something to be written about any village of any size- either it is historical, meaning that there will be historical mentions (books like the Doomsday Book, or the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales) or it has just sprung up, in which case local (and maybe national) newspapers will cover it in some depth. As my examples above show, it just takes someone with a little commitment, and preferably an interest in the area in question (access to local archives is even more useful- sadly, I didn't have that) and an article on just about any settlement could be bulked out, providing that it is 'officially recognised'. Even if it isn't, if someone has written about it, then let it have a page too. The pages still need sources if they are ever to be half decent articles, we just know that real places deserve articles, even if they themselves no longer exist. J Milburn (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep In addition to the points made by Nick mallory, Uncle G, and others, WP:OUTCOMES is clear on community consensus. Under Places: Cities and villages are acceptable, regardless of size. When these articles are found, improvement is the answer, not deletion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cube lurker (talk • contribs) 14:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep. Reliable sources exist, and villages are notable regardless of size.-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 15:48, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep There is a precedent for keeping articles, even if stubs, about geographic locations, hamlets, or villages. A bot created stub articles about every location which is listed in the U.S. census. Many of those have since been expanded with info from history books and newspapers. They have all been kept in AFDs so far as I know. Scads of other articles about localities have been created based on entries in the 1911 Britannica, and have been kept in AFDs. In these two groups of articles, the requirement for verifiability was satisfied. In some cases hoaxers have created articles about nonexistent villages, which have been properly deleted, over the objection that "all gepgraphic locations are notable." I would insist on at least some reliable source as a reference, which this village seems to have. A problem with older references is that a village may have a name like "Oasis" or "Mill" or "Crossroads" or "The Ford of the River" or "Fortress" in a non-English language. and the reference might be to an entirely different geographic entity in the same country or political subunit of a country. A given province or country may have several villages with the same name, and references may be conflated. We sould insist that the reference actually applies to the same village described in the Wikipedia article, and that it does not conflate separate villages which co-existed or which existed in different eras. These concerns do not appear to apply to this one, but there have been recent AFDs where this was a problem. Edison (talk) 17:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:OUTCOMES - a consensus that we can safely say will not change. The only geographical location that I have ever seen deleted on Wikipedia was a copyvio. You can throw blue links out all you want...consensus isn't going to change. --Smashville^BONK! 17:55, 19 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - Towns/villages are inherently notable. There's no such thing as a "non notable town." An important example of the "common sense" and "occasional exception" clause of WP:NOTABILITY. --Oakshade (talk) 19:18, 19 December 2007 (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.