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 no consensus. —⁠ScottyWong⁠— 16:10, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Landenberg Junction, Delaware[edit]

Landenberg Junction, Delaware (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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This is a rail junction, and it was never anything but a rail junction. There are numerous references to it as such, and none whatsoever to it as a town/settlement/whatever. Mangoe (talk) 04:05, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm _Talk 05:04, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Delaware-related deletion discussions. Hog Farm _Talk 05:04, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect>Wilmington and Western Railroad, where the line begins or alternatively recast as Landenberg Junction, which could merit its own article. 05:19, 23 August 2021 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Djflem (talk • contribs) 15:42, 3 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Historical settlements tend to have poor Google documentation and require an alternate source-type of digging. I was able to find nearly 50 mentions of "Landenberg Junction" in historical Delaware newspapers, just from a quick search on Newspapers.com. These range from the 1910s to the 2000s. It is my impression, from reading these newspaper reports, that the location does indeed exist and is typical of other historical communities that develop around rail road stations. Several houses or stores build up in proximity of the station and the area/community naturally becomes known by the name of the station. A community can be small and limited in size, it doesn't have to have 100,000 residents and skyscrapers to make it "exist". The old saying "one-horse-town" says it all. I vote to keep because historical communities like this deserve documentation and simply need better sourcing. There are plenty of mentions of it. Here are some of the newspaper mentions that helped me come to my vote.

• "They turned to friends who owned an old farmhouse in Landenberg Junction for referrals."
• "Company of 30 Clash with Officers at Landenberg Junction."
• "It once extended from Wilmington through Greenbank, Yorklyn, Hockessin and up to Landenberg Junction, where it connected with the old Pennsylvania Railroad."
• "Officer Wounded in Landenberg Junction."
• "The extreme heat is said to have been responsible for spontaneous combustion of some paper in the shack of Albert Brown in Landenberg Junction."
• "The Cranston Heights Fire Company was called upon last night to extinguish a fire in Landenberg Junction."

Pinging users @Dough4872: and @TheCatalyst31: who both supported to Keep article during first nomination in 2013. --Fallingintospring (talk) 05:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings, Fallingintospring. Pinging editors from only one side, and in particular the side you're on as well, is canvassing and it is forbidden. You should be pinging everyone involved in that discussion, or no one at all. This is a friendly and constructive, I hope, advice. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 07:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect as suggested above. Non-notable location with no legal recognition, so neither #2 nor #1 of WP:GNG are met. To be notable, it would need an article that is primarily about the topic, not a passing mention. Where is the WP:RS article that is primarily about the indicates the WP:GNG of the subject? I agree that there are a number of trivial, passing mentions in newspapers.com, but nothing has this location as its primary subject. Many of the articles are about the railroad station and yards: thirty men on a train at the yards at Landenberg Junction, Lineman killed by train. (BTW - Fallingintospring: I did not find the "Officer Wounded in Landenberg Junction", could you provide a link or year?) The article about spontaneous combustion is at best a trivial mention. Yes, people died there - there seem to be articles about accidents and at least one obit. Not all historical communities, suburbs, housing developments or trailer parks are notable. GBooks has Delaware Place Names from 1966 that refers to it as a "RR station," if there was a community in 1966, then the source would have indicated this. As this locale is primarily a railroad station, WP:STATION is applicable and there is nothing notable enough about this station to warrant a separate article. BTW - this is similar to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Landlith, Delaware. Cxbrx (talk) 17:29, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: The sources above seem to demonstrate some notability of this as a real place name that's been used historically to refer to here. If @Fallingintospring: adds them to the article, I will !vote to keep; otherwise I'll !vote to redirect to the article on the railroad or on the city nearest it (Elsmere, Delaware). jp×g 21:35, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Fallingintospring has discovered sources which indicate that this was an actual community, rather than simply a GNIS error. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 01:06, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - 1904 and 1904 topos show this as "West Junction". Newspaper searches for both West Junction and Landenberg Junction return numerous articles that refer to it as a railroad junction ("Landenberg Junction of the B&O Railroad") and a very few that use it as a landmark. At this point we have zero reliable sources that support "community", "populated place", "settlement", etc, and I would also say that these passing mentions (though numerous) don't meet GNG. At best it might warrant a mention in an article about the railroad. –dlthewave ☎ 16:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Which railroad? the B+O, or predecessors? Or railroad with which it junctioned? And do you mean redirect? Djflem (talk) 22:06, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Railroad companies built their stations where money could be made from a combination of freight, passenger, mail, and express traffic. Even where a community did not already exist (and I am thinking of transcontinental railroads in Canada and the United States) when the railroad company built a station, there soon would be, because new settlers would buy land from the government or the railroad. A community grown up around a station might consist only of a mine and housing for its workers, but that would still be a community driven by their needs and eventually with a general store and a post office. So this is why you don't need a city charter to show that a point on a railway line is a community: Settlements at the start of the railway era formed around stations, in the same way that they used to form around harbours. You don't need in-depth coverage of a community when you can demonstrate that something had to be there because a passenger train stopped there every day. Eastmain (talk • contribs) 20:44, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Railroad stations did play a role in the development of communities (and vice versa), but in my experience there are just as many junctions, sidings, water stops, etc that found their way onto Wikipedia because they were miscategorized as "populated places" in GNIS. Many of these places didn't have communities because the employees, if there were any, commuted from an actual settlement. Mentions in news articles could indicate a community but just as often meant that it was simply the closest place marked on the map to whatever it was that happened. Do we have any evidence that Landenberg Junction had worker housing, a general store, post office or anything besides a junction where two railroads connected? Was there even a station here? The bar is low, but we do expect verification that the train stopped here before we assume that there must have been a post office, store, etc. –dlthewave ☎ 21:56, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to have to say this, but the notion that stations inevitably led to settlements is completely untrue. Railroads had "stations" for a whole laundry list of reasons, and even when the reason was to generate traffic, often enough that traffic never came. Even now there are places called "West Plane" and "East Plane" on the Old Main Line, the ends of the siding for "Plane 4", but there was never a Plane 4 town: the name comes from the earliest days of the railroad there, and since there was an interlocking, it had to be called something. We have deleted numerous "stations" that were nothing more than passing sidings necessary to single track operation. We've also deleted a bunch of "Junctions" which were nothing more than places where two lines joined. Based on the testimony we have, the latter situation is what we have here: the various newspaper references (which BTW would never satisfy WP:GNG) are the typical sort of name-drops one sees about any sort of place name in local crime reporting and such. A spot on the rails is not proof of a settlement. Period. Mangoe (talk) 03:48, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Wikipedia is a gazetteer about settlements, and this is/was a real one, per above. --Doncram (talk) 21:09, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very surprised by your suggestion as above, Doncram, seeing as you're an experienced editor. Wikipedia is most definitely not a "gazeteer." We have, inter alia, WP:NOTGAZETEER, and certainly WP:NOT (especially the part about Wikipedia not being any kind of guidebook). Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of random information. We're not the internet's end-all and be-all. -The Gnome (talk) 07:49, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I did not know before of that essay, created in 2021. Of course essays do not govern. But there is also wp:Gazeteer, an older essay. And I do understand from many AFDs over the years (altho i have not been active recently) that the consensus is that established settlements are wikipedia-notable, and that we are deliberately a gazetteer about them. I believe the general usual reference to give is wp:GEOLAND (i think tho I am not sure). We simply are a gazetteer about settlements, that is just a fact, sorry if u do not believe that. --Doncram (talk) 21:44, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Doncram, for over a decade the WP:GEOLAND standard has been that "populated places without legal recognition" are considered on a case-by-case basis, so simply confirming that a place existed is not sufficient. My experience has been that we've been trending toward a stricter reading of this guideline but a significant minority of editors feel that our gazetteer function takes precedence. A compromise that's been suggested for this article is that the rail junction be covered in the article about the railroad, which might also be how a gazetteer would handle it.

One issue that's come up recently is the realization that many thousands of articles were mass-created from incorrect GNIS database entries. WP:GNIS goes into detail, but the gist is that the database lists many natural features, rail junctions/sidings and other miscellaneous places as "populated places", and these were mislabeled as "unincorporated communities" by the article creators. This means that places sourced solely to GNIS always require a third-party fact-check. Landenberg Junction one isn't quite as blatant at the infamous Susie, but this might give you an idea of why it's under a bit of scrutiny. –dlthewave ☎ 22:57, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment:Recently I've seen some new-to-AfD editors who seem to be on the keep side. I welcome having more eyes on these AfDs and in general I agree that if an article is borderline, we should keep it or merge it. However, it seems like some editors might not have reviewed Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) and WP:STATION. In addition, taking a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Geography to see other, similar discussions could be helpful. The GNIS database is down, but reviewing WP:GNIS could also help. I'm trying to reach consensus here and am hoping that editors will review the resources I've mentioned.

In the case of this location, it is railroad junction. There is no legal recognition of a community at this location. I agree that people probably lived near this location, but there is no WP:RS article that is solely about this location. Fallingintospring listed a number of references, which I also looked at. As I wrote above, most of these seem to be about a railroad station or yard at this location. The other references are trivial. The article still has just one reference, no one has taken the time to add these other references (I realize that the lack of refs is not a reason for deletion, my point is that we have far more words here in the deletion discussion than we do in the article.) One thing to consider is that if the subject was a person or a company, would it meet WP:GNG? This location does not meet WP:GNG. Not all geographic locations are notable and as this is clearly a station, it should be redirected. Djflem suggests redirecting to Wilmington and Western Railroad, which would be fine with me. Cxbrx (talk) 12:57, 9 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per reasoning I gave in commentary, above. We're not here to post up indiscriminate information. -The Gnome (talk) 07:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per Fallingintospring, and Eastmain, and Doncram. @The Gnome WP:5P1 supports that wikipedia is in part a gazeteer. As such the non-policy essay WP:NOTGAZETEER has contradictions with a fundamental core pillar and is a badly realized idea. Further WP:NOTGUIDE was never intended to undermine wikipedia's role in essentially fulfilling it's core mission which is and I quote "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Wikipedia combines many features of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers."4meter4 (talk) 20:55, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your reasoning, 4meter4, is wrong on a fundamental basis: Having some attributes of something does not make you that something. And this is applicable in every field and every discipline. A gazeteer is an unfailingly complete record, or, at the very least, this is its purpose: To contain all known information about its subject, be it a geographical location, the laws, addresses, etc. The emphasis in WP:5P1 is on "combines many features"; were Wikipedia a gazeteer, WP:5P1 would phrase its self-definition differently and quite explicitly. On the contrary, Wikipedia not only clarifies that it is not a directory (there is no contradiction whatsoever) but states flat out that it cannot be trusted, unlike publications of record such as gazeteers. -The Gnome (talk) 12:21, 16 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Gnome is right except for where they are wrong. Wikipedia is a gazeteer about settlements. --Doncram (talk) 07:05, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Could you, then, please, Doncram, provide links to Wikipedia policies, guidelines, or "multiple" AfD/RfC pages where it is stated, or even indicated, that "Wikipedia is a gazeteer about settlements"? -The Gnome (talk) 10:07, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: I said that I would !vote "keep" 23 days ago if somebody managed to add the above-mentioned newspaper references. They do not seem to be in the article. jp×g 19:40, 16 September 2021 (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.