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 delete. – GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:13, 26 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wangtang (northwest of Guilin), Guangxi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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Delete: no reliable source (databases such as GEOnet do not qualify), no Chinese, no pushpin named "Wangtang" in the vicinity of the coordinates given. I do not have any tolerance towards articles like this that don't even give Chinese or a more specific administrative division. Nothing found on xzqh.org, which is an authoritative source on villages and towns in China. Note that the closure of the previous debate occurred when there was only 1 vote (and that was to delete), and that closure was subject to deletion review. —HXL's Roundtable and Record 17:18, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Please explain why you think GEOnet is not a reliable source. I believe the .mil in the URL means it's a US military database, no?—S Marshall T/C 18:11, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It certainly isn't accessible now, and when it was, it probably was little more than a bundled list of villages or towns of a certain name in a province, which isn't very helpful given that villages are normally four levels below a PRC province. Also, it seems to impose US own standards on what is a city and a town, when all such administrative divisions are clearly defined in mainland China. A reliable place database should be verifiable with the local government. —HXL's Roundtable and Record 18:19, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It's accessible via the Wayback Machine, which confirms that you're right: GEOnet is essentially a great big list. But the rest of what you say makes no sense to me at all. The US military is a reliable source. The Chinese government is perhaps less so. And quibbles about the definition of "town" or "city" don't seem relevant to me, when per longstanding consensus, even villages are inherently notable.

  The key point here is that material doesn't need to appear in every reliable source. It just needs to have a reliable source. See?—S Marshall T/C 18:33, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Whatever you say. And are you saying that either Chinese government is less reliable than the US military when it comes to their own settlements? Be careful about what you say, and please look past possible political bias. "Quibbles about the definition of 'town' or 'city'" are relevant in determining whether a source is reliable. Think about it...calling a town in mainland China or Taiwan a 'city' would be a grave misrepresentation of the government's classification, which is all that matters.
• Besides that, if you cannot find a settlement on the best of maps or the most comprehensive databases, you have a problem. —HXL's Roundtable and Record
• It should also be pointed out that in the previous nomination for this and other villages, it was demonstrated that GEOnet coordinates were sometimes inaccurate by 15 miles or more, which to me casts some doubt on its reliability. Clearly, the database is not compiled based on satellite imagery or whatever if it is that inaccurate, so why should we trust it? Additionally, I understand your point about having a single reliable source, but shouldn't we at least check to make sure that there is some corroboration by other sources? The GEOnet database could be out of date; maybe it was taken offline for that reason.--Danaman5 (talk) 19:14, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• What I'm saying is that the evidence so far presented is insufficient for me to conclude that GEOnet is unreliable.—S Marshall T/C 19:32, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But you're not claiming it is error-free are you? We should never take any source no matter how "reliable" as being the absolute truth when other evidence suggests that an error may have occurred.--Pontificalibus (talk) 19:39, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Now there's an irony.  :) The very first sentence of Wikipedia:Verifiability reads as follows: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. In other words, policy appears to support my interpretation rather than yours.

  However, the irony is that I have very recently been arguing that this phrase needs amending, and I said: "...it's a sin against the basic purpose of an encyclopaedia to publish known error except to refute it." So my own position is that the truth matters.

  I think in this case we're best following the advice of WP:NPOV. Where there are various reliable sources, and it's not obvious how to choose between them, we're best off describing the dispute rather than picking sides. In other words, the article should reflect the honest doubt. It should begin with the words "According to GEONet...", and end by mentioning that we have not found any other source that mentions the place. But that isn't the same as deleting the material.—S Marshall T/C 19:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If we go down that route, we will no longer have an article about a settlement, but about a supposed settlement - and there's a reason we don't have Catgeory:Possible Cities. We won't be performing the function of a useful gazetteer if we can only propound uncertainty. How many atlases have "London (or possibly not)"? We either assert that it exists, or we decide that in this instance that source is not sufficiently reliable (or we're just unsure, and IAR) and we don't have an article on it unless we find further sources confirming its existence.--Pontificalibus (talk) 08:30, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I presume there's been a confusion with the Wangtang located 25km south-east of Guilin. Maybe someone had their map upside down. --Pontificalibus (talk) 19:04, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - I think it was probably unwise to reopen this AFD so soon after, but since it is here, I will comment. After doing some more searches, the only thing that I have been able to uncover is a pushpin on Baidu Maps, which can be seen by searching for"广西壮族自治区桂林市临桂县望塘". This pushpin seems to be in approximately the right place. However, the map itself is not labeled with this name, and I can't find another reference to such a place anywhere. The administrative divisions list for the county doesn't show it, nor does Google Maps, Baidu searches, etc. I think we may be dealing with an echo of the past or an error, and the creator of the Baidu Maps pushpin and Geonet may both be victims of it. I think I've shown pretty clearly in the past that I believe that small village articles should exist on Wikipedia, and that we should all do the research to make them accurate and complete, but I am not comfortable with an article based on such scant evidence as this.--Danaman5 (talk) 19:14, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep GEOnet is a reliable source, and the nominator's allegations to the contrary (without evidence, note) is just not enough to base decisions on. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• It doesn't matter who presents evidence to the contrary. All it matters is that the evidence is found. And it has been, by others, and so it is evident that you are here only to attack me. This is highly folly of you when your efforts could be better spent improving articles on that vaunted gas-guzzling state. —HXL's Roundtable and Record 02:58, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We don't have to have an article on everything in GEOnet do we? We can decide that we don't have enough data to make a reliable and useful encyclopaedia article in this instance.--Pontificalibus (talk) 08:30, 19 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. — • Gene93k (talk) 00:05, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think if there is no extensive coverage from multiple sources (not just merely a name and location, but industries, economics, demographic, weathers, schools etc) on the city, the article failed Wikipedia:Notability. Quote: "No subject is automatically or inherently notable merely because it exists".

• Delete - article does not have enough references to make it reliable or notable. Relying on Geonet even though its .mil is giving too much weight to one source. If there are reliable references to include population data, name of subdistricts or villages to improve the article, I'll withdraw my delete comment. Wikipedia isn't a directory, street map or repository for geodata. --Visik (Chinwag Podium) 01:29, 20 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The original AfD was about half a dozen articles, each of which contained nothing but the name (in Roman letters only, no original Chinese) and geographic location. Most of them were identified by a few editors who found them on Google Maps - although none of them was a city, they all were small villages (pop. 1,000 at most), and some were tens of kilometers away from where the articles claimed to be (with degree-min-sec precision, too!). This one, noone has been able to identify so far. Google Maps is pretty good at showing small villages, especially located along major roads (which, as experience has shown, are more likely to appear in GEONet database - they list some small villages if they happen to be road junctions), but there is definitely no Wangtang shown there at that location or anywhere that can be sensibly described as "NW of Guilin". There is the town of Wutong (五通) some 5 km to the west of the purported location (on Hwy G321), so if anything, the article can be renamed that way. -- Vmenkov (talk) 01:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. I copied the above from my comment on the deletion review a while back. As to why GeoNET is not an entirely reliable source, at least as far as small places in China are concerned: I personally believe that this is the case based on what I saw when comparing what GeoNET had for another several Wangtang villages and what more precise sources (such as Google Maps and printed maps by provincial publishers) had for them. Certainly GeoNET's claim (if it is what they claim) for their ability to give correct coordinates with precise minutes (let along seconds!) of long/lat, or for calling small villages at road junctions "cities", is preposterous. -- Vmenkov (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2011 (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.