Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Soda Springs (near Burbeck), Mendocino County, California

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 California Western Railroad. In the event this isn't maintained within the target, it can be handled at RfD. However at the moment it is, and there's weak support for the AtD here. Star Mississippi 02:10, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Soda Springs (near Burbeck), Mendocino County, California

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Contested PROD. Non-notable flag railway stop with no population. This is one of dozens of mass-created articles on non-notable California locations made only from GNIS coordinates, by the same user during a few-week period in 2009. No evidence that this site was ever populated, failing WP:GEOLAND; another user added two references after my PROD but both are passing mentions just confirming that there was once a railroad stop with this name. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:53, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and California. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:53, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Transportation-related deletion discussions. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 19:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How did we miss this one? delete as everything says this was nothing more than a flag stop (except maybe Durham? but we need to see exactly what he said, given how often he is misrepresented in these articles). Mangoe (talk) 19:19, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep as any landmarks in the vast "empty" (but not really) wilderness of western North America are notable and useful; barring that redirect to California Western Railroad jengod (talk) 19:38, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your first claim is simply your opinion, but it goes against a great deal of consensus. We have deleted any number of such GNIS-based landmarks because of misidentification, and we have quite consistently taken the position that a named spot on the railroad is not notable per se. Neither is it "useful" to simply enumerate places about which we know essentially nothing except their name and location; such entries are simply clutter.

As far as redirecting to rail lines, we have done that on occasion. I am generally opposed because, again, we can't say beans about these places, and if the railroad article doesn't mention them, it's a bad redirect in any case. Mangoe (talk) 02:40, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In this case, our California Western Railroad article mentions this stop. That article would make a good redirect target if a redirect is desired.

We have redirected mass-created station stop articles in the past to their associated rail lines. Most recently were a number of flag stops in the Manitoba wilderness. See Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Silcox station

I'm not recommending a redirect for now - I'm just saying that redirecting to the railroad article is not a bad idea in this case.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs • global count)} 02:30, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not mortally opposed to a redirect, but the problem is how unlikely it would be that someone would search for this term. "Soda Springs" is a pretty generic name, and California has a much better-known Soda Springs near Lake Tahoe. Even the name of the article has to specify "(near Burbeck)", as if that helps. This place is so non-notable I can't imagine anyone ever thinking to look for information on it, and if for some reason they did, they would probably start with California Western Railroad anyway. A redirect is pointless clutter, as Mangoe said. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 13:50, 26 October 2023 (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.