Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saint Johns Mission, 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). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Komatke, Arizona. Sandstein 08:09, 14 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Saint Johns Mission, Arizona

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User:Onel5969 wants to waste my (and your) time. Citation in article Arizona Place Names p.375 says "St. John's Chapel or Mission....This is an Indian Mission school... Place is also called Komatke." So I redirected the page to Komatke, Arizona and added this content about the church/mission, now called Saint John the Baptist Parish Laveen (map), and he reverted it. Unclear why this would need to be a separate page when this is not a separate place. Reywas92^Talk 02:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Reywas92^Talk 02:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Arizona-related deletion discussions. Reywas92^Talk 02:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

~~Delete~~ Redirect not a populated place - a potential historical boarding school at Komatke, Arizona. This is not a reliable database to source WP:GEOLAND stubs from. Would vote merge, but the mission is already included in the Komatke article. [1] A reminder to the nominator to WP:AGF. SportingFlyer T·C 02:31, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Passes WP:GEOLAND. There is no indication in the source that this officially recognized populated place is the same as the CDP, Komatke. Rather, the source shows that the populated place at one time was known as Komatke, long before CDP's even existed. But the personal attack is noted.Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:34, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- The GNIS also lists Saint Johns Mission as a variant name on its entry for Komatke. The designation of the CDP is irrelevant: while they "generally include one officially designated but currently unincorporated community," "The boundaries of a CDP have no legal status," so an article on a CDP should focus on the community and specify the data is statistical and not definitively in- or exclusive of something. It's quite clear that the mission is not a distinct place from this community. Also note the listing of Saint Johns Indian School at the same location. Reywas92^Talk 09:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, on it doesn't. Here is the GNIS entry to the CDP, which is where you redirected this article. The entry you show above actually gives more weight to the notability of the populated place, St. Johns Mission, which is also known as Komatke, a populated place from where the future CDP garnered it's name, existing as both a populated place and a CDP. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:26, 6 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    - So then a redirect to Komatke would indeed be the correct result, if they are the same place. SportingFlyer T·C 01:29, 6 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - and to say that the USGS source is not reliable is something that is a drastic shift in RS. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:35, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The USGS source is only unreliable in the sense that it doesn't adequately distinguish between a legally recognised populated place and a mobile home park or, in this case, a boarding school/church mission (see my newspapers.com source if you have access.) It's fine for WP:V purposes, but not for the purposes of creating articles. Furthermore, Komatke still exists. SportingFlyer T·C 03:27, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, the GNIS is not entirely reliable, certainly not enough to mass-produce articles off of. Again, the GNIS is merely a context-free database of names and features that have been on a map, it gives us nothing else beyond existence at some point and elevation at a coordinate. "This guideline specifically excludes maps and census tables from consideration when establishing topic notability, because these sources often establish little except the existence of the subject." It is not "legal recognition", and it is not something to rely on alone. Its identification of "populated places" is not the same as GEOLAND#1 (it has a separate designation for incorporated places ("Civil") and CDPs ("Census"), and that is not always accurate. An error I've found is listing Allenstown Elementary School as a populated place – this propagates to the most recent topo map that puts it in place of Allenstown, New Hampshire, and the school is actually in nearby Suncook (map). Other schools incorrectly marked as populated places include Birney Day School (map), Farm School (map), Field Schoolhouse, Manchester School (map), and Corner Campbell School.

Another issue is failure to update places that no longer exist with "(historical)": Miles City, Florida (map) disappeared completely decades ago yet for some reason it still appears on topo quads!. There are also a number of named river crossings listed as populated places, such as Santio Crossing, UT (map) and Upper Crossing, ID (topo and GMap). Grand Ecaille, Louisiana is listed as a populated place, despite actually being an abandoned sulphur factory. Sure, at one point it was a place with a population of workers, but I hope you see why it's frustrating to see mass-production of articles saying "is a populated place" or "is an unincorporated community" based on nothing but this database. And I haven't even gotten to your windmills yet! Reywas92^Talk 09:00, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect per Reywas92 Lightburst (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to Komatke where this historical school is already mentioned. The school was listed on a county highway map and then sucked into GNIS - this is not the process by which a place is "legally recognized". Fails GEOLAND, insufficient in-depth sources to meet GNG and to write an encyclopedic article. MB 04:03, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Seems likely to me that the Franciscan mission could be Wikipedia-notable, as a historical item. "The name is taken from the mission school founded by the Franciscans in 1894.", with footnote to Arizona Place Names book. St. Christopher's Episcopal Mission in southern Utah is notable. The Franciscan mission at Our Lady of Fatima Church, in Chinle, Arizona, is notable. Both of those have substantial artifacts in the form of buildings, now listed on the National Register, though. User:Onel5969, lemme know elsewhere if you'd like to work on an article about this, if any sources can be found. --Doncram (talk) 23:04, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment - thanks Doncram - but at this point, not sure I wish to work on this article. I'm a bit disillusioned by the lack of understanding of the first pillar of WP's five pillars, which is that a function of WP is to act as a Gazetteer. And the lack of understanding that while flawed, the GNIS database is the official database of the USGS, the entity responsible for designating geographic features of the U.S., which satisfies the definition of legally recognized. Not to mention the personal attacks. Methinks this behavior borders on WP:Wikihounding (see this edit). I'll have to think on that a bit. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 01:26, 6 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've already done a Newspapers.com search which has almost the full Arizona Republic, the local Phoenix paper, and didn't find too much. I'd be open to restoring this as a non-populated place if enough other sources are found, but I think it's currently well-represented on the Komatke page. SportingFlyer T·C 01:23, 6 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - just to correct some misconceptions regarding GNIS and whether or not they are a reliable source for this type of Gazetteer information. All the following information is taken directly from the USGS website (emphasis added is mine):

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a Federal body created in 1890 and established in its present form by Public Law in 1947 to maintain uniform geographic name usage throughout the Federal Government.

Decisions of the BGN were accepted as binding by all departments and agencies of the Federal Government.

It serves the Federal Government and the public as a central authority to which name problems, name inquiries, name changes, and new name proposals can be directed.

The GNIS Feature ID, Official Feature Name, and Official Feature Location are American National Standards Institute standards.

The database holds the Federally recognized name of each feature and defines the feature location by state, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates. Onel5969 ^{TT me} 02:18, 9 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect preserving history. The nominator is obviously comfortable with a redirect, and since this has been listed in GNIS, deleting it altogether makes no sense. Samboy (talk) 19:39, 12 December 2019 (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.