Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)

Time to get rid of the AtD clause for GEOLAND

This sentence probably sounded like it made sense at the time: " If a Wikipedia article cannot be developed using known sources, information on the informal place should be included in the more general article on the legally recognized populated place or administrative subdivision that contains it." In practice it is largely being used as an escape clause for "keeping" places which research has shown to probably fall into some generally non-notable class. Given that GEOLAND has been interpreted as justifying an article on any settlement, however little is know about it, there doesn't appear to be anything that fits the bill for this inclusion in the next level up clause, so what it is used for in practice is to generate redirects for post offices, station stops, and other non-settlements from GNIS for which articles have usually been deleted in the past. So what happens is an article gets redirected to a township or county article which either doesn't mention the name or which falsely calls in a "community". I do not see how this is useful to a reader, so I am proposing to strike this sentence. Mangoe (talk) 21:35, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

We are still workshopping proposals if you want to add one related to this (see below). FOARP (talk) 10:23, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Proposals from Workshop

Below are the proposals that came out of the workshop process following the RFC that failed to find a clear consensus as to whether the present standard is or is not fit for purpose.

Please give them a read and say whether you are OK with going live with a general RFC on these questions, or whether you think any proposals should be struck or added.

Proposals

Proposal 1

Proposal: The WP:GEOLAND standard should be amended to read "Cities, towns, and villages are typically presumed to be notable"

Proposal 2 1. Settlements: Cities, towns and villages are notable, but their status must be backed up a reliable sources. (This would be to cover the argument as to if it is a village. If a council or newspaper call it a village who is to argue?) Hamlets, subdivisions, housing developments do not fall under this rule and must meet GNG for notability. Former villages that are now suburbs of Cities or towns do not lose their notability but show their former status by reliable sources.

2.Administrative areas that manage a range of public services are regarded as notable. (I know this is difficult as per previous discussions, as each country have their own systems - India for example has Community Development blocks which only look at the development, so the caveat of range of public services would cover this off?

The other is issue is surrounding things like former counties, especially in the UK with the local government reforms, where some counties will not exist, but have historical context and are notable - would they just need to meet gng.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 10:56, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Proposal 3 Proposal: Following an essay I wrote a while back at, WP:SETTLETHRESH, I'd like to propose that in addition to establishing that that the subject is a "legally recognised, populated place", it's article must contain one full sentence of encyclopeadic prose backed up by a reliable source. Under this proposal, being a legally recognised, populated place would be a necessary but not sufficient critereon - so the sentence cannot be "this place exists", it would have to tell you something about the place. ---- D'n'B-📞 -- 18:12, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Proposal 4 Proposal: No change. WP:GEOLAND does not need to be changed.

Proposal 5 Proposal:

• Populated, legally recognized settlements and upper-level, legally recognized administrative divisions typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history. What constitutes "legal recognition" varies by country. Census tracts, census-designated places, and sub-settlements such as neighbourhoods or Iranian abadis are not considered notable under this section, but may be notable for a different reason. Lower-level administrative divisions, such as irrigation districts, are also not considered notable under this section, even if legally recognised, but also may be notable for a different reason. Any settlement or administrative division notable under this section must be verifiable.
• Populated places without legal recognition are considered on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the GNG. Examples may include subdivisions, business parks, housing developments, informal regions of a state, neighborhoods, etc. – any of which could be considered notable on a case-by-case basis, given non-trivial coverage by their name in multiple, independent reliable sources. If a Wikipedia article cannot be developed using known sources, information on the informal place should be included in the more general article on the legally recognized populated place or administrative subdivision that contains it. Settlements are not to be inferred from the presence of post offices, schools, churches, or other such facilities, as these often are found in isolation.
• Disputed regions are generally considered case-by-case. Their notability for Wikipedia is independent of the validity of their claims. Sometimes it may be more appropriate to merge these articles into ones on a broader conflict or political movement, or to merge articles on multiple disputed names for the same region into one article.

(+)*Geography articles should not be bulk created without the prior consent of the community.

Proposal 6 Proposal:

(this is an alternative to the opening 2 sentences of Proposal 5 as further defined in [Document To Be Created] and upper-level legally established administrative divisions also as further defined in [Document To Be Created] are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Abandoned or depopulated places can also be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history.

Discussion of proposed RFC questions

This is essentially the nine proposals that were made in the workshop, with HEB's proposal struck, and the two proposals Giulio wanted to withdraw withdrawn. FOARP (talk) 10:22, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

I like most of these proposals, I particularly like Proposal 3. Great work to everyone in the workshop!

My main thoughts are on Proposal 2:

I'm not sure if people will object to the line beeing drawing between hamlets and villages, but I do agree that essentially village or village equivalents should be the extent to GEOLAND. I'm just imagining some technicality in some country's system regarding how settlements are named in sources (exceptions to this probably would fall under GNG). I think the administrative areas should also, have a similar "size" caveat. In Myanmar, for example, there are technically some "100 household" service management units within the actual smallest real unit of local governance.

For Proposals 5 and 6, I am similarly unsure of "upper-level" in the qualifier for administrative division. To me, that would read as excluding second-level administrative divisions or below. I agree that things like irrigation districts should not be notable, but I would prefer it to be using something like Proposal 2's definition with public services or a more clear wording on what is "upper-level" EmeraldRange (talk/contribs) 12:27, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

A suggestion ... upper-level, legally recognized administrative divisions "such as Cities, towns, and villages," possibly? - Enos733 (talk) 23:10, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

To me, villages are very much not examples of "upper level administrative division", indeed to the extent they have any administrative function they are about lowest level. Thryduulf (talk) 23:44, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Where I am at, other than title, there is no legal distinction between a city and a town or village. - Enos733 (talk) 00:33, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I'll restate my support for this moving forward here. I think these proposals are an improvement on the current phrasing of the guideline and hopefully we can clean this up. Giulio 13:11, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Especially (but not exclusively) if lines are drawn on the basis on nomenclature, it would probably be useful to have a page describing the terms used for different settlement types in each country and what they typically look like on the ground. The aim would be purely informational so that when people are talking about an e.g. village in e.g. Myanmar they are all talking about the same thing. The page would explicitly be independent of any notability (or other) guidelines (although such could reference this page) and be purely descriptive, with explicit notes that it described typical ranges/examples and there are exceptions. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Looks promising. Donald Albury 13:30, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

• Looking at it, I think we can merge Prop 1 and Prop 2. That would read:

Prop 1+2

1. Settlements: Cities, towns and villages are typically presumed to be notable, but their status must be backed up a reliable sources. Subdivisions and housing developments do not fall under this rule and must meet GNG for notability. Former villages and towns that are now suburbs of cities or towns do not lose their notability but their former status should be supported by reliable sources. 2.Administrative areas that manage a range of public services are typically presumed to be notable.

This would bring the number of proposals down to five which I think would be welcome (particularly to any closer!). Prop 3 and Prop 6 probably need some word-smithing to turn them into actual proposals for implementation, though I think the intent of the proposals is clear. FOARP (talk) 13:50, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

I think that is the easiest proposal to understand. Legally recognised just doesn't cut it without a huge checklist for each country, and even then some dont even have them! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 14:34, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

1+2 is the best, no need to argue over the definition of one, you must provide an RS to do so. And if a place has no RS confirming such a detail, well can it be notable then?. Although: 'Subdivisions, housing developments' should say this 'and' or is there something else that is meant to be included?

'Former villages that are now suburbs of Cities or towns do not lose their notability but show their former status by reliable sources.' should probably say 'former villages and towns' and decapitalise city. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:27, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

done.

Prop 3 re-write

In addition to any other notability criteria, sourcing should be available under which an article containing one full sentence of encyclopeadic prose backed up by a reliable sources can be developed telling the reader something about the place extending beyond its mere existence.

Prop 6 re-write

An informational page should be developed recording typical examples of populated places that do and do not typically meet the notability criteria in specific countries.

Additionally I've tried to rewrite Prop 3 and Prop 6 as proposals for implementation per the above. FOARP (talk) 07:55, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

re Proposal 6 - when I first proposed this (see Workshop: Proposal 9) it was as an alternative opening to the original Proposal 7, now renumbered and reduced/rewritten as Proposal 5. FOARP's rewritten Propl 6, although it could stand, of course, as a separate proposal in its own right, does not really reflect my intention, which is to include an express option to define, country by country, the units that can be presumed notable. This is because there are so many variables that no single definition is going to cover them adequately, and because it may reduce otherwise endless further discussion. Ingratis (talk) 07:20, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Proposal 6: Populated settlements constituting cities, towns and villages (including abandoned or depopulated settlements) as further defined in [Document A] and legally established administrative divisions, also as further defined in [Document A], are presumed to be notable.

"Range of services" probably needs clarification / less vagueness. Otherwise it could be argued as SNG green-lighting abstract sets of lines on a map. One could say an irrigation district or a library district provides a range of services. Maybe "broad range of services" or "diverse range of services". North8000 (talk) 17:07, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

"Range of services" could probably benefit from some examples. A very small town may not be able to do much, but in the US, I'd expect them to repair the streets and make some land-use decisions (Zoning), and also to have a government entity that can pass a Local ordinance (e.g., setting the speed limit or declaring today to be Smallville Day). In much of the US, water and schools are handled by separate agencies, and emergency services are often outsourced to the county.

Alternatively, it might be possible to say something like "This should be interpreted as including places such as Smallville in England and Ruralton in Newfoundland." WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:55, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I'd say adding the word "broad" does the least injury to the origin intent of the drafter here. FOARP (talk) 07:50, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

• I like proposal 5 as a concept, but as it reads currently, it feels more like an essay (such as in WP:OUTCOMES). Is there a way to simplify it. --Enos733 (talk) 23:02, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  Ignore this - The proposal rewrites all of WP:GEOLAND, rather than amends any one section. I do still think it reads more of an essay. - Enos733 (talk) 23:06, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not sure how to redraft without hurting the original intent. Perhaps you can make some suggestions as to what it is you want to change? FOARP (talk) 08:30, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  I could probably go something like:

  1. Legally Recognized Entities Populated, legally recognized settlements and primary administrative divisions, specifically counties, municipalities, and other principal sub-national jurisdictions, are likely to be notable regardless of their historical status or current population size. Settlements must be verifiable. Current entities must possess formal legal status within their respective nation. Other recognized entities or settlements, such as census tracts, census-designated places, or special district governments, do not meet this specific criteria and must establish notability in accordance with WP:GNG.

  2. Unrecognized and Informal Places Populated places lacking formal legal recognition require evidence of notability in accordance with WP:GNG. This category includes residential developments, commercial parks, and local neighbourhoods. If sources are insufficient for a stand-alone article, the information is merged into the article for the encompassing legally recognized entity or administrative subdivision. The presence of individual notable facilities like schools or post offices does not make a settlement notable (see WP:INHERENT).

  3. Disputed Regions and Mass Creation Notability for disputed regions is determined based on the depth of source coverage independent of the validity of territorial claims. Content regarding disputed areas or competing names is merged into broader political or conflict articles when a stand-alone page is not supported. Geography articles are not to be bulk created without prior community consensus. -Enos733 (talk) 21:17, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  In general, I like that, but there is that pesky "legally recognized" thing. Where I live we have things like "soil and water conservation districts" and port or inlet districts that have publicly elected governing bodies and taxing powers, which I do not believe should be exempted from the GNG. The port and inlet districts are generally not a problem as the ports and inlets themselves usually meet the GNG and the taxing districts can be mentioned in the articles about the port or inlet. I really do wonder if we need this at all. The justification for having an SNG for populated places is to predict which places are likely to meet the GNG. Why not just fall back to using the GNG? Donald Albury 14:56, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  @Donald Albury, a couple of things. First, I read my proposed rewrite as establishing a general principle and then being clear(er) about how it should be defined (in this case the limiting factor s "other recognized entities....do not meet this specific criteria"). The second thing is that I don't necessarily share the idea that WP:GEOLAND is as broken as other editors do. The challenge has been mass creation of entities that are virtually nothing but a census-type listing. - Enos733 (talk) 15:31, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

  As I said, I do not believe that "legally recognized" is a useful criteria. I don't think that we can come up with any criteria that we could apply even-handedly to populated places in every country. We could go with something like the country-specific guidelines at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Region-specific guidance or, my preference, just rely on the GNG. Donald Albury 17:23, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

  I just took a look at the RFC that got us here. The first response was that the problem is mass creation. I think we can solve that by being specific with our examples in the prose and by specifically frowning on mass creation. The second question is about what legal recognized means. While not completely the same, an editor did create WP:NSUBPOL to provide clarity of which subnational politicians do and do not meet NPOL. I think a similar effort can be made here to provide the necessary country by country guidance. - Enos733 (talk) 22:55, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

• As someone who mostly writes about places that no longer exist, a "legal recognition" criterion is a non-starter. Such information about an extinct settlement will hardly ever be available. Zero^talk 08:48, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  Possibly you could expand on this a bit. "legal recognition" is in the present WP:GEOLAND standard, some of the proposals for change include it, some don't. In that context, what is it you want to see? FOARP (talk) 09:57, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  Per the above comment, it would likely be helpful if the RfC quoted the present standard before the proposals to change it and also included an explicit option to retain the status quo. Thryduulf (talk) 10:01, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  That's prop 4. The proposals are ordered in the order they were proposed in - i.e., neutrally. FOARP (talk) 10:09, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  While numbering the proposals for change in chronological order makes sense, I don't think including the status quo in the middle of the list of proposals that change the status quo is helpful, ideally it should be first or last but wherever it is it should be quoted. Thryduulf (talk) 10:17, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  Anywhere we chose to put it - especially first or last - is going to draw accusations of bias. In this way we avoid that. People can read all the proposals before !voting. Crazy, I know. FOARP (talk) 11:39, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'd actually say it was more biased to position the status quo as if it were a proposal for change when it, by definition, is not. People need to be able to easily compare proposed changes with the status quo in order to form a meaningful and relevant opinion on the change, the unbiased way to do that is to clearly present the status quo as the status quo in an easily referenced position. Thryduulf (talk) 11:44, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'm sure at least a link to WP:GEOLAND will be provided in any preamble to the discussion. FOARP (talk) 12:22, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Further to the exchange above, my house is in about 20 different legally recognized places. 4 of them (Town, County, State, Country) are what an average person would consider a "place". The other 16 are legally defined zones defined by a set of lines on a map, each with some specialized purpose, sometimes with a specialized set of services. For example a school district, a park district, a fire protection district, a forest preserve district, a precinct etc.. Regarding the "range of services" SNG criteria, one could claim that the forest preserve district offers a range of services. But a town (even a small one) or county offers a diverse range of types of functions and services. North8000 (talk) 19:26, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

For that matter, many homeowner associations have legal recognition and provide some range of services (e.g., snow removal, landscaping), but by and large these are not considered as places under GEOLAND. Similar for condo coops. By itself, provision of services is not a distinguishing factor. older ≠ wiser 20:03, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't know how to put it into words, but what I think that what that specific criteria is reaching for is that it is governmental, and in the primary hierarchy. E.G in the US that would be city/town/village, county, State, Country (and in some exceptional cases townships). And, amongst governmental areas, these have a higher diversity of functions that those more abstract sets of lines on a map. North8000 (talk) 20:31, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that few of those are legally defined and that most of them are administered under laws which allow whatever agency to administer them, or even establish them in the first place. That's the issue with census CDPs: they are defined by the census strictly for counting, and have no authority behind them. They only exist so that statistics can be produced for places that don't have defined boundaries, legally or otherwise. Mangoe (talk) 19:36, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

• Say a village existed in the 18th century and ceased to exist in the 19th century. It wasn't famous for anything in particular but there is enough known about it that an article of a few sentences and a couple of sources could be written. How are we to interpret the "legally recognized" criterion? The government isn't around any more and we don't know how they saw this village. (This is a common situation in historical work.) Why should that matter? Why should a government, even an extinct one, decide what is notable for us anyway? I'd like to see the "legally recognized" thing replaced altogether by a guideline that places with a distinct identity and name, having a continuing population for an extended period of time, qualify without the need for government approval. Zero^talk 14:08, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'm not certain that "extended period of time" is always required either. For example some ghost towns and construction camps are notable despite only existing for a few years. Thryduulf (talk) 15:57, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  But isn't the whole point of this exercise to determine how to characterize types of populated places that can be presumed to be notable and bypass GNG? For any places such as archeological sites, ghost towns, housing developments that can pass GNG, this guideline is not relevant. older ≠ wiser 16:21, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Not implying an answer to your broader question. But remember that the SNG criteria is just an alternate to GNG. I think that the situation that you described would meet GNG as typically applied to GEO, especially if you created a real (albeit small) article as you describe vs. a stub.

I agree that "legally recognized" is not a very good criteria. It's so vague that has little correlation with wp:notability and excludes some wp:notable ones and can be interpreted to include lots of non-notable ones. North8000 (talk) 21:25, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

I hate to say it but to have all of the effort that has been put into this (sorry I missed that it was even happening) come to fruition this is going to need more work. More work is a burden, but not as much of a burden as having all of the work that has been done on this go to waste. Also having 3 or more mutually exclusive choices means that mathematically any one of them is unlikely to get the super majority needed to be accepted as a consensus. (yeah, I know it's not a vote). My suggestion is to get the folks who have been actively involved on this come up with one version / proposal that is most aligned with the group's thoughts. And make that the proposed change. And then the group that developed it should all support it as their product even if it wasn't exactly what each individual preferred. Then a well-written, clear concise RFC. And the proponents should also be ready to put in a well-written rationale for the changes in as early responses. (but not in the RFC itself which needs to be neutral.) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:44, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

This is modelled on WP:NSPORTS2022, where a change did ultimately come about because support rallied around one option. We've had numerous "just try one option" proposals in the past that never got anywhere. FOARP (talk) 07:43, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I gave several different suggestions in my post. Another way to approach the math problem is to ask respondents to respond on every alternative. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

IDK, I get the feeling that not enough people want this to happen. I'm not going to bother with something that for sure is going to be a lot of trouble if not enough people want it to happen. Am I wrong? FOARP (talk) 09:37, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't think you're wrong. I'm not seeing much enthusiasm for changing the status quo from, and certainly no general enthusiasm for a specific change. Thryduulf (talk) 19:56, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

I personally don't have the time now to participate, sorry. I would like this to change very much, as when I get started again on reviewing US articles it's going to continue to affect my submissions. I would suggest one thing: the biggest continuing dispute I see is what constitutes legal recognition. I feel I must be very hard-nosed about this: postal service naming is not law, and census counts are not law, and other administrative actions do not create law as far as this is concerned. But I'm sure I'm going to be shouted down about that, and I really, as I said, don't have the time to mount an extended defense of that. Mangoe (talk) 02:33, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Totally agree. However, I feel that there is too many editors who do not want to change the Status Quo, even if it is clearly impossible to manage legally recognised, because they don't like change. The same attitude is being seen at the RFC on the renaming of AFD - the process has changed to include the merger process but most don't think the name should change as it will confuse new users! Davidstewartharvey (talk) 05:16, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, I'm all for clarifying the vagueness, but discussions to change the status quo are an exercise in banging one's head against the wall when there is a significant number of editors for whom a bare mention of a population and location in any sort of quasi-governmental database or publication is sufficient for an article. older ≠ wiser 10:55, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Sigh! I have to agree with that. I really wish we could tighten up the minimum standards for articles about populated places, but then, I seem to be out step with much of the community about a lot of things. Donald Albury 15:26, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

The Nikolai Kurbatov case (see below) really is a quite convincing argument that GEOLAND needs to change. It's yet another mass-creating case caused by GEOLAND. Indeed, its an example of exactly the thing that some people have been claiming isn't or even can't happen. Having thought about it, I think we still need to go ahead with something here. FOARP (talk) 20:55, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Yet again, that's a mass creation problem not a GEOLAND problem (or a sportsperson notability problem, or a redirect problem, or a dictionary words problem, etc). I'm not saying there isn't a problem, I'm saying that it's a different problem. Changing GEOLAND will not (because it cannot) fix a mass creation problem. Thryduulf (talk) 22:36, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Not to rehash the massive amount of discussion here, but it cannot be merely a coincidence that mass-creators have chosen the topic-areas where we have ridiculously low standards for inclusion in which to mass-create. It can also be seen that what was done in NSPORTS2022 did put a stop to mass-creation in that area. FOARP (talk) 07:39, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

It is a GEOLAND problem because GEOLAND is what makes these mass-creation cases so hard to clean up. Take for example this discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sandogo.

A user mass-created about 80 stubs on Burkina Faso villages using bad sources, with incorrect coordinates, outdated names sometimes duplicating existing pages, things being listed as villages despite not being villages etc. (I have to add that currently there are articles on ~25% of the villages of Burkina Faso, mostly mass-created about 20 years ago but at least they were using a good source so I've been gradually working on improving them). The end result was keep on the basis of GEOLAND because users found that some of them were real places even though all the pages had a number of inaccuracies or outright mistakes and bad sources. Of course no-one who voted to keep on that basis then bothered to systematically go through the articles and sort them out and the creator of the articles refused to acknowledge there was any problem with them and stopped editing soon after, so the end result was that all those error ridden articles stayed up for years until I stumbled on the mess, salvaged the pages I could and sent the rest through AfD.

So because the current version of GEOLAND prevented mass-deletion of a set of flawed mass-created articles, mis-information stayed up for years. And this was only a small and fairly recent case, this isn't even scratching the surface on the tens of thousands of such articles created particularly between 2006 and 2010 that remain online and unaddressed because it is such a slow and tedious task.

You are welcome to propose a change to the policy on mass-creation if you think it can be fixed that way, but given that there are already supposed to be limits on mass-creation and this keeps happening and we don't have a good way to deal with it then clearly something needs to change. Giulio 11:40, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Agree with everything said here. Also have to point out that when in the past we discussed changing our guidance around mass-creation, typically the same people who oppose doing anything about notability issues also oppose doing anything about mass-creation. The allegations of bad faith and "hounding" the people who mass-created tens of thousands of PAG-failing articles onto the encyclopaedia are rarely far behind. FOARP (talk) 14:31, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, no, there's not really a difference between the mass creation issue and the GEOLAND issue; mass creation happens because people look at the guideline and see that it implies that any "official" list of places is "legal recognition" therefore that they can go ahead and make a settlement article for each entry. These "don't have to satisfy GNG" subject guidelines are all problems in this wise because they are interpreted to mean "I don't have to have enough info to write more than a stub," but this one of the worst offenders and the level of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT in the face of many times this has come up is really disheartening. Mangoe (talk) 15:54, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, achieving any sort of meaningful change in situations like this requires a Herculean effort and the patience of Job. older ≠ wiser 16:25, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

100% agree @Mangoe. It is *ASTOUNDING* to have been told over and over in last year's discussion that this wasn't an issue, that we were parading "straw goats", that any example was essentially cherry-picked, that the whole thing was an issue of the past and that no-one was doing it any more, that we were simply making it up when we said that GEOLAND was qualifying single buildings as "legally-recognised populated places" and that "only advanced by people seeking to discredit" the policy were saying this.... and then to have a case that demonstrates the validity of everything we said happen again.

It's very disheartening as well. You know that any attempt to do anything about this is likely to lead to a lot of heat. You know that there's going to be people trying to shut it down and throwing around all sorts of accusations. I have to be honest and say I was tempted just to let the whole thing lapse because that would be easier.

But the Russian selo case really clarifies that we have to do something here because even the idea of slowly working on the existing articles - a task that would take decades - is a non-starter whilst these articles continue to be created at a rate far faster than any clean-up effort can deal with them. FOARP (talk) 18:52, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Mass creation is a behavioral problem, and needs behavioral solutions rather than notability solutions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Notability guides behavior; that is its only purpose, as is, for that matter, anything else we discuss about writing and editing an encyclopedia. This isn't even a distinction without a difference. Mangoe (talk) 02:24, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The distinction is this: When the problem is notability, we address it with the Wikipedia:Deletion policy (including Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Alternatives to deletion). When the problem is behavioral, we address it with the Wikipedia:Blocking policy.

Compare:

• Nobody is allowed to create an article on _____ because Wikipedia does not want an article about it.
• This editor specifically is not allowed to create any more articles about _____ because this editor specifically has a history of screwing up in this area (e.g., struggling to distinguish between notable and non-notable topics due to personally misunderstanding certain sources).

WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

1) OK, so the problem is behaviour. Then you’re ok with dealing with the product of that behaviour? That’s where this always falls down: the insistence that mass-created articles should be dealt with as if they were special, individually-crafted snow-flakes, rather than as production-line articles, results in them being impossible to deal with.

2) Acting as if the guideline isn’t causing the behaviour is just denying the facts. The mass-creators in this field all, when challenged, cite the guideline as a no-further-explanation-needed justification for what they are doing. It is not simply a coincidence that when people want to turn out a large amount of articles with minimum effort (say, to be the person who created WP’s 7 millionth article) they choose this topic-area to do it in.

3) Even just focusing on behaviour, I’m sorry but do you want to be the one to take the latest mass-creator in this field to ANI? Knowing that they admit struggling with a whole range of mental illnesses? I’m an admin so I suppose it’s my job, but I honestly don’t want to, and find it hard to blame them specifically for just following what to them (and numerous other people) appears a straight-forward interpretation of the rules. After being involved in dealing with C46 and Lugnuts I would rather just change the rules to prevent this from happening again. FOARP (talk) 07:21, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, from my perspective the behavioral issue here is that each time this issue comes up, which in reality it has been coming up for a decade now at least, the response is invariably to wring some hands, declare that there's nothing wrong with the current text of the guideline by alternately pettifogging any attempt to alter it and then simply saying there's nothing wrong; and when a new mass creation is discovered, no matter how recently it happened, the response invariably is to ignore that we agreed that we were not going to permit it, and to force yet another article-by-article review as the only recourse. And to put that in perspective: we never finished dealing with Somalia, where there were maybe a few hundred articles to review. We never finished with California. I think we did completely go over Arizona, and I made at least a first pass over North Dakota and I think Montana and Idaho. I'm not sure if I ever finished Utah. Most recently I went over every "unincorporated community" in Indiana, and it took well over two years to finish, with some 450 nominations; in that time I estimate I looked at somewhere between 3000 and 4000 Indiana articles. Of the various people who worked on these in the past, I am the only one left doing it, and at the moment Real Life and a degree of burnout has brought the effort to a halt in Illinois, where I expect to have to look at as many articles as for Indiana. So the solution is, by intransigence and a great deal of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT, to stymie all attempts to deal with the issue by making a hopelessly long task the only permitted approach, and at that, it keeps getting longer because in practice more mass creations are allowed to stand. And it also bugs the hell out of me that the people who keep showing up to thwart doing anything about the issue never participate in those AfD discussions, even to try to save articles. And the most fundamental point of all, that a large percentage of these mass-created articles are inaccurate due to misinterpretation of the sources or because they aren't reliable is always blown off, even though I bring it up every time this subject comes around again. But the guideline, as it is now worded, encourages people to trust these sources and assume that they are authoritative because they assume that every listing from a governmental source constitutes "legal recognition"; and when they do it, the same group of people always step in to prevent anything being done about it. That's the behavioral problem here. Mangoe (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Why are you "nominating" these instead of "boldly merging" them (e.g., to a list inside a county article)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I vaguely recollect that in one case in the recent past, the mass-creating editor has simply reverted the bold merges and carried on. Then we just get back to the current topic of discussion ("legally recognized" can be interpreted in an extremely open-ended fashion). Choess (talk) 22:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The one I know about was the Lugnuts Mahalle articles. Others have doubtless done the same. FOARP (talk) 07:42, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't merge the articles because, as I said just above, the usual issue is that what the article says about the place isn't true. The majority of deletions get submitted because the "populated place" (GNIS's terminology) appears to not be a settlement, er, "unincorporated community" at all. The most common cases are 4th class post offices and named points/stations on railroads; probably the next most common case is non-notable subdivisions, and after that, almost anything can be misconstrued to be a settlement, as you can see in the list of examples in WP:GNIS. There are cases where there's no evidence at all beyond a label on a map. And if it is actually a settlement, the prevailing viewpoint is that it merits an article. So merger has never been a viable solution except where something like a neighborhood can be folded into the article of the enclosing community. That is a rare case; more commonly, for a neighborhood, there's nothing to merge and a redirect suffices. Mangoe (talk) 01:51, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I was including Wikipedia:Blank and redirect as a "merge" for this purpose (e.g., post office gets redirected to the county, train stop gets redirected to the rail line). But I suppose that the next step in that chain is someone at RFD complaining that the location is {{not mentioned}} in the article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, we have had issues in the past with stubs being redirected to "unincorporated community" or "populated place" lists in county articles when the place in question is not any sort of populated place at all. Sometimes references have been lost in the process which makes then even harder to track down. As for train stops, it seems appropriate to include stations and perhaps whistle stops in the article for the line but I don't think minor junctions or sidings merit a mention or redirect. I think that merging to county level lists is a step in the right direction but we'll still need some criteria to ensure that were being factually accurate. –dlthewave ☎ 03:42, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

1. IMO step one is to stop the behavior; step two is to see whether the editor is willing to help clean up the mess. This works best when we intervene early.
2. I agree that improvements to this guideline could reduce the undesirable behavior. I don't think that "change" the guideline will be as useful as "clarifying" it by providing examples ("Laketon has had a population of zero since it was flooded to create the water reservoir in 1974, but it still counts as a formerly populated place because it was a proper functioning city for 167 years before then") and information ("Do not use any of the following databases, because they're census tracts instead of actual populated places, unreliable, or otherwise prone to misinterpretation:"). I could also see some value in saying "If you plan to create more than 25–50 per day, then you must have WP:MASSCREATE permission; if you plan to create more than 100 from the same census or database source, then you should first present your sources at the ____ page and ask editors to confirm that it's considered reliable for this purpose."
3. I'm willing to address editors who are engaging in inappropriate mass creation, but as a practical matter, I don't patrol new articles, so my willingness to help probably wouldn't actually make a difference.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

You're talking about this as if we haven't already been round this particular loop a number of times. In reality it has played out as:

"1) IMO step one is to stop the behavior;"

So, in the latest case, I was already trying to engage with the editor concerned back in 2021. Attempts to prod the torrent of articles just led to the prods being removed. Attempts to redirect them were just undone. At every turn GEOLAND gunges up any attempt to address the issue.

"step two is to see whether the editor is willing to help clean up the mess"

LOL. No mass-creator ever does this. C46 called us all racists and quit. Lugnuts flat out told us it was our mess to clean up. Others just quietly quit WP. Some are bots that just got deactivated and their operators haven't been around for years. The typical non-bot mass-creator is chasing that endorphin hit they get every time they make the articles-created count go up, they have zero interest in actually improving their articles. Even when they are willing, the, uh, idiosyncrasies that drove their mass-creation behaviour also hinder co-operation with them and so nothing is acheived. At best, they move on from mass-creating and don't interfere with attempts to clean up their articles.

" I don't patrol new articles"

Mass-created GEO articles are almost never reviewed by NPP. NPP editors refuse to review them and the editors who mass-create typically have autopatrolled because their articles pass the GEOLAND guideline. FOARP (talk) 08:32, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

In re "I was already trying to engage with the editor concerned back in 2021": Why didn't that editor get a WP:PBLOCK that would prevent them from creating new articles "back in 2021", until the existing ones were cleaned up?

Instead of changing GEOLAND, why aren't we changing the Wikipedia:Blocking policy to say something like "Persistent addition of misinformation, including well-intended but mistaken ones that (e.g.,) claim a railway stop is a 'populated place' or a 'village'" is a block-worthy problem?

My persistent question here is not "How do we change the rules so people can't claim that GEOLAND wants these articles?" We are never going to be able to write the rules so that people can't make mistakes. My persistent question here is "How do we detect and stop these within the first 100 articles, so there is never a multi-thousand clean-up situation ever again?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

IMO, the problem is not how to change the rules so people can't claim that GEOLAND wants these articles but rather how to help people understand what is and is not appropriate. As it stands currently, the guideline is so hopelessly vague that people can and do interpret it in any way they want. older ≠ wiser 17:03, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

"Why didn't that editor get a WP:PBLOCK that would prevent them from creating new articles"

As Mangoe said, their articles were furiously defended by people who ought to have known better, thus preventing anything being done about them. See, e.g., here, where you see every issue that has been identified with the Russian rural locality article-set discussed exhaustively (the fact that many of them are train stations/farms/etc., that many are relatively recent creations, that they are not required to have a layer of administration, that many of them have low or no population and no evidence of ever being substantially populated, etc.). I think you can get a feel for the kind of arguments being made by the fact that one argument advanced for these being legitimate GEOLAND passes was that a location with a population of zero that was designated a selo was "an already existing inhabited locality (which happened to have no population at the time)".

All of this was known years ago. This could have been stopped years ago. EDIT: and yes, there's a strong correlation between the people saying "mass-creation is the problem, not GEOLAND" here and the people who opposed doing anything about mass-creation when we last discussed it. FOARP (talk) 22:23, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

@FOARP, can you put a summary of that selo problem in User:SunloungerFrog/sandbox/GEOLAND notability and sources supplement? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

@Mangoe, I'm looking at your comment that These "don't have to satisfy GNG" subject guidelines are all problems in this wise because they are interpreted to mean "I don't have to have enough info to write more than a stub".

I'm concerned about people conflating article content with subject notability. The GNG does not, and has never, required anyone to write any amount of article content. The GNG doesn't officially even require that it even be possible to exceed stub length. Meeting the GNG's SIGCOV requirement (assuming editors could agree on what that means...) sometimes results in a good infobox and a few sentences, which is stub-length. The GNG also doesn't, and has never, required anyone to actually cite sources or "demonstrate" that the subject meets the GNG. I would not want anything in this guideline to suggest that article content determines the subject's notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

If there is significant coverage, then as a rule it is almost always the case that that it would eventually be possible to write more than a stub. But fair enough. We're still left with the same problem: that the "legal recognition" clause, because nobody really agrees on its meaning, is routinely interpreted as saying that any listing of of place names of any sort from any governmental source (a) is legal recognition, and (b) is to be presumed accurate as interpreted by someone creating articles for each entry in it. The second clause, experience shows, is false: some of them are accurate as far as they go (e.g. census counts), but many of them are error-ridden (e.g. GNIS, as we have documented in WP:GNIS, and GNS/GEONAMES has the same problems except far worse) and a lot of them do not mean what people assume they mean (e.g. the Iranian abadis and the Philippine baragays; it looks as the the Russian/Soviet sources have similar problems). And the first clause isn't true either, as I've pointed out over and over about US CDPs.

And I'd be more willing to worry about such "conflation" if the solution weren't always to ignore all the people who have complained for well over a decade about dealing with these articles and the arguments about the guideline that show up over and over and over and over and over in AfD discussion. Every little quibble always seems to revert very quickly into "oh, we have to stick with the status quo". But this has come up time and again; the very first doubt about legal recognition shows up in Archive 2 from 2013, before this was even elevated to a guideline. Mangoe (talk) 03:06, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The problem of "nobody really agrees on its meaning" is why I think we need a country-by-country list of sources, the many and varied ways people have misunderstood them in the past, and lots of examples. For example, w:ru:Село suggests to me that a selo is probably a valid "legally recognized" populated place, but that the editor writing such an article needs to do significantly more work than just "_____ is a selo (village) in Russia", because the factual statement might well be "_____ was designated a selo (a word for a larger village, with a church that rang a bell) in pre-Soviet Russia; its boundaries differ from the modern rural census tract named after it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:54, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Maybe there is scope to expand Wikipedia:Geographic references to do this. List of national and international statistical services would probably be a good thing to weave into it. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 06:09, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing - the issue with that idea of what a Selo is, is it wasn’t what was applied later by Soviet and Russian authorities. We’ve had Russian Selo with populations of 0, 1, or 2, and no evidence that more people ever lived there. Even Abadi has, as one of its possible translations, “village”, it just wasn’t used by Iranian authorities in that way. FOARP (talk) 06:44, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's my point: "the editor writing such an article needs to do significantly more work than just "_____ is a selo (village) in Russia", because the factual statement might well be" one (notable) thing and it might well be another (non-notable) thing, and there is no way to tell the difference from certain sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I think it's worth trying, especially with the mass creation case below. Something needs to be done. BilledMammal (talk) 07:52, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Right. This is EXACTLY what some people kept saying wasn't an issue, or wasn't happening, or wasn't happening any more, or couldn't happen, or we were just making up. *EXACTLY*.

These are mass-created articles, created because they give a notional pass of the WP:GEOLAND standard due to local law (in this case Russian) granting "legal recognition", but which in reality has led to the mass-creation of thousands of stub articles about single buildings with a population of 1 or 2. This is yet another case of this, after the Californian, Iranian, Azeri, Emirati, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Filipino, Turkish, Polish, and Belarusian cases.

This is not just us making things up, or trying to carry on a grudge against an already-indef'd editor, or being crazy deletionists. This is an actual real problem. FOARP (talk) 10:06, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

FYI, I should also make you aware of Central African Republic to add to that list, I already sent the most egregious examples through AfD (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Abou-Ndoulaf) however there are plenty more articles that were part of the same mass-creation effort that had coordinates pointing vaguely near something that looks like a village so someone would likely need to go through them more thoroughly for any AfD nomination to be successful, its on my to do list, but behind another of other things and I'm taking a bit of a break from geographical article right now. Giulio 13:48, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I've sort of been mulling on the options here and it seems to me that there are broadly four choices:

1. The status quo
2. Remove the SNG totally, use GNG only
3. Some revised words that are stricter in some way about the definition of "legally recognised", maybe with per-country subpages that set out in detail how that works on a country by country basis
4. In addition to "legally recognised and populated", require at least one reliable source with significant coverage to be present in the article, as per WP:SPORTSIGCOV.

Of those, I imagine that few people will like #2, though it should solve mass creation. #3 would be a lot of work to get in place. #4 should also solve mass creation, and is somewhat simple to understand, as it only adds one thing to the existing SNG, and we can point out the parallel to SPORTSIGCOV. Just my two centimes, anyway. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 14:56, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Your #2 would be my preference. #4 would be a minimally acceptable alternative. #3 is impractical as there is such variability around the world it would basically be moving the 'vagueness' from a global problem to a country/regional problem. It is extremely unlikely such specific guidelines would be forthcoming on a wide scale anytime soon and without defining any sort of default, this would essentially promulgate the status quo (or worse, when one country/region decides an article on every verifiable cluster of houses is acceptable, other counties/regions will want to emulate that). older ≠ wiser 15:12, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

FWIW, a possible compromise might be to set #2 as the default with some provision to allow countries/regions to explicitly define what types of localities can be presumed notable for that area (which would be subject to community review before implementation). older ≠ wiser 15:23, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

As the proposed of 2, I would of course say yay. The issue is administrative areas and how you word it. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 15:39, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I am not a geographer, so I don't know, but is there a formal geographical word or phrase that encompasses administrative areas and likewise one for cities/towns/villages, so that we can use those formal phrases in the wording? Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:23, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Maybe "Administrative units" or "Special-purpose districts" for the further and "settlements" for the latter? And we are clear that any SNG pertains only to the latter? Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:49, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

The issue is the differences in different countries. In the UK, we have Parish, District/Borough, Unitary, County councils, plus national parliaments (Scotland, Wales, Northern Island). They manage different parts of local services. However, take the US, schools are managed by the local school boards, which in the UK is the councils responsibility. In India we have Community Development blocks, which manage planning and development which in the UK is the councils responsibility. One of the points put previously is that the administrative areas provide a variety of services. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 17:22, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I also prefer #2, with #4 at a minimum if #2 does not reach consensus. Defining "legally recognized" for every country in an even-handed way would be a Herculean task, and one I do not think would be worth the effort. Donald Albury 18:32, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

I also prefer #2 with #4 as a good alternative. Does anyone have an idea how much more empirically restrictive #2 is than #4? If #4 gets most of the job done then might be worth going with as the proposal. A binary choice RFC (adopt proposal or keep status quo) may be best to avoid !vote splitting. Agree that something needs to be done here. NicheSports (talk) 05:43, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think vote-splitting is a concern if the proposals are separate, support/oppose polls in an over-arching survey. People can support both or oppose both, or !vote only in one poll and not in the other in that context. That, anyway, was how WP:NSPORTS2022 worked out.

Country-by-country guidance is something that can be an option in any event, even with keeping the present GEOLAND standard - it would just get a little bit pointless if we switch to GNG though not entirely so - so should be kept detached from any other change.

I think proposals around requiring significant coverage need to engage with the issue of what that significant coverage could be (cf. people arguing that listing in a census is significant coverage). If people want to exclude purely statistical listings, they need to say that explicitly. FOARP (talk) 08:19, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I'd suggest something along the lines of WP:SPORTSIGCOV, for example:

All articles about settlements must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database and statistics sources.

Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 08:39, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

That could work in place of/as a re-write of existing prop 3 which had similar intent. FOARP (talk) 08:46, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I like that. It is simple and enforceable. We would need to discuss how it would apply retroactively, however. Donald Albury 14:59, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Re retroactiveness, I would not propose mass- or bot- anything (tagging, nominating for deletion, searching for offending articles etc.), at least in the first instance. But rather a simple maintenance template akin to {{No significant coverage (sports)}} that editors can add as and when they come across an article that merits it, or the usual merge, redirect, delete processes. (That's what I do when I have a go at poorly-sourced sportsperson bios).

One of the things we do on WP:URA is run a regular bot sweep of article space and write a list of "probably unreferenced" articles to some user space pages, which human editors then go through and consider what, if any, maintenance templates might be added, or other disposal methods. We could consider something similar, and over time, deficient articles will get weeded out or tagged and eventually fixed. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 15:37, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I think including something along those lines for pre-existing articles in an RfC will increase the odds of it passing. I would prefer something more stringent for articles created after the adoption of a new notability standard, and maybe something intermediate for recently mass-produced articles. But then, that would complicate the RfC, so probably should be put off for future discussion. Donald Albury 15:56, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@SportingFlyer @Newimpartial @Giuliotf @EmeraldRange @James500 @Silverseren @Alexandermcnabb @Seraphimblade @Kingsacrificer @Passengerpigeon Katzrockso (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing @Enos733 @Joseph2302 @Sirfurboy @David Eppstein @Andrew Davidson @Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction @Brickguy276 @Seav @N1TH Music Katzrockso (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

@GothicGolem29 @Arutoria @Aquillion @Dantheanimator @Zero0000

Editors that were involved in the last discussion last October or the workshop phase that I haven't seen comment here yet that might want to opine. Please add anyone I may have missed. Katzrockso (talk) 20:14, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

• I'm unhappy with all of these. First, unless I misunderstand, all of them contain the presumption of notability in some form; is this the result of a prior RFC? Second, few of them (and few of the arguments for them) reference sources at all. Sources are always required per WP:V and we cannot have criteria that go around this. The reason independent criteria other than the GNG exist is because, per WP:NOTABILITY, The subject-specific notability guidelines generally include verifiable criteria about a topic which show that appropriate sourcing likely exists for that topic. That is to say that subject notability criteria don't really bypass the GNG; they must rely on an implicit assertion that "if something passes this criteria, then sufficient sources to pass the GNG almost certainly exist, even if we don't have them on-hand." And GEOLAND in particular has had problems with this, producing endless permastubs for which the sources manifestly do not exist. Based on this I feel that one option should be to delete GEOLAND entirely (ie. subject everything under it to the red line of the GNG; the sources must actually be demonstrated, because history has shown that we don't have a good way to demonstrate that their existence can be inferred.) But beyond offering that option, in terms of wordings for GEOLAND that I'd find acceptable... I strenuously object to how option 2 (the sole one to reference sources and therefore the sole acceptable option to me) removes the vital typically presumed to be caveat; contextual situations always exist, and in this case in particular it's important. Fixing that would give us:

• Cities, towns and villages are typically presumed to be are notable, but their status must be backed up a reliable sources.

I still am not really satisfied with this, though, because the first part (the "typically presumed" part) has no real meaning; only the sources matter. And the second part has the problem that some people assert that a mere line in a database is enough to base an article on, which is completely unacceptable. A more precise wording would perhaps be:

• Cities, towns and villages are typically presumed to be are notable when their status is backed up by significant coverage in independent reliable sources. Databases, lists, and governmental records that do not qualify as significant coverage of the specific location in question are never acceptable sources for this purpose.

The problem is that, fundimentially, databases and lists simply do not show that appropriate sourcing likely exists for that topic; therefore, we must have an option that strictly bars them from being used. Personally, I would also consider separating off the databases and lists that do not pass WP:SIGCOV are never acceptable sources for the purposes of notability under WP:GEOLAND into its own RFC question, since I feel it's one of the core disputes historically and could be applied to any formulation for the rest. --Aquillion (talk) 20:51, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Which takes us to: How do you define SIGCOV? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, we do have WP:SIGCOV for that (...addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material.) but honestly I don't think we need a hard-and-fast definition beyond that; editors can reasonably argue over it if something comes to AFD, and IMHO that's a good thing - our policies should provide room for contextual discussions. The important part is that someone who creates an article, and who wants to argue that it should exist, needs to be able to argue in good faith that the sources they've found are significant coverage. If we need something specific to GEOLAND and problems we've run into surrounding it I'd say that, aside from the base requirements of SIGCOV, another key point is that it shouldn't be something indiscriminate - ie. if you can find a thousand entries or pages that are basically identical aside from a few numbers, it's obviously not SIGCOV. But I don't think we need to spell that out, do we? More hazy situations can be worked out on a case by case basis if necessary (but I doubt it will be; the fundamental dispute here is over sources that I suspect everyone agrees do not and could never pass SIGCOV.) I mean SIGCOV is a fundamental part of the GNG, it's not something obscure or poorly-defined. --Aquillion (talk) 21:17, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Looking at the four options outlined above:

• The status quo
• Remove the SNG totally, use GNG only
• Some revised words that are stricter in some way about the definition of "legally recognised", maybe with per-country subpages that set out in detail how that works on a country by country basis
• In addition to "legally recognised and populated", require at least one reliable source with significant coverage to be present in the article, as per WP:SPORTSIGCOV.

I think that #4 is a bad idea, because it directly conflicts with WP:NEXIST, because editors don't agree on what constitutes WP:SIGCOV (we even have some editors who believe that "significant coverage" means that the source makes a Wikipedia:Credible claim of significance, rather than being a significant amount of (usable) coverage), and because it will inevitably lead to proposals, a few short years hence, that all non-compliant articles be deleted or draftified. (See also, BTW, the current draft proposal to do that for thousands of sports articles.)

I think that #3 has the most possibility, but I think that "stricter" is the wrong concept. It mostly needs to be "clearer", which largely means that it needs to use language and concepts that translate easily between various jurisdictions. For example, give examples that include Incorporated town in the US and say things like "obviously a water district doesn't count, even though it may be a legally recognized entity". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:54, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

This isn't really the place to argue over individual proposals (that can wait for the RFC), but I do want to say that I feel that your arguments against #4 contradict themselves. On one hand you say that you think there's confusion over WP:SIGCOV, which I strenuously disagree with; but then you say that it will lead to proposals to delete large swaths of articles - proposals you obviously think might succeed, otherwise why be worried about them? And for those to succeed they would obviously have to reach a consensus on SIGCOV, which suggests, to me, that you do recognize that there's at least the broad outline of a community agreement on SIGCOV (sufficient that it could, if applied to existing articles, result in many of them being deleted), you just don't like the implications of applying that in this topic area. --Aquillion (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

you say that it will lead to proposals to delete large swaths of articles - proposals you obviously think might succeed, otherwise why be worried about them? Because proposals like that take very significant amounts of time and effort to push back against, often because the proponents keep demanding more and more evidence and sometimes shrubberies. Time and effort that cannot be spent on improving the articles that some people have taken a dislike to and insist are fixed before their deadline. Without this time and energy spend defending against the proposals, then there is a good chance they would pass - to the very significant detriment of the project. Thryduulf (talk) 21:34, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Thryduulf understands the problem. And so do you, except that you after you admit that "editors can reasonably argue over" whether a reliable source constitutes SIGCOV, you say "that's a good thing". I do not agree with you that an increased amount of arguing is "a good thing".

Here's a simple and predictable scenario:

• Fact: We have something around 10,000 articles for US census-designated places, and thousands of similar articles for many other countries.
• Fact: A non-trivial fraction of those articles, particularly about small towns, only cite their national census.
• Fact: Wikipedia editors do not agree on whether the US census reports constitute SIGCOV. For example, one AFD regular has declared that only sources containing multiple paragraphs of prose can constitute SIGCOV. Some editors take the WP:WHYN approach and say that if a Wikipedia editor can write multiple paragraphs of prose from the source, then that's a significant amount of coverage. Others follow the Wikipedia:One hundred words standard.
• Prediction: If we adopt a "must have SIGCOV" rule, someone who objects to the existence of stubs, bot-created articles, articles that don't say why the subject is 'significant', and/or articles that have not been manually expanded will try to get them deleted or draftified en masse.
• Prediction: We will spend (some would say waste) many, many, many man-hours discussing the proposal.

Ignore whether the proposal will succeed. (I don't think it will succeed in the US. It might succeed if the proposal focuses on a low-income, non-English-speaking country and the proponent first puts in some time to cultivate a belief on wiki that the national census or other main source of data for that country is unreliable; that's what finally worked for the so-called Iranian "villages", after all.) Success for a proposal doesn't actually require an agreement about SIGCOV; it only requires that enough editors say "yes" or "no" to get a decision made. But from where I'm sitting, the fact that we will have l-o-n-g discussions about this IMO means the community loses. We say that the most valuable thing is editors' time, and a fight over whether to delete thousands of articles that contain sources that some people dislike and that other people would accept except that some other people haven't already expanded is a time sink of the first order.

Let me be particularly clear about the disagreement. This is a realistic outcome:

• Delete because it only cites a census database that does not contain even a single complete sentence in prose. Only prose counts (talk) 12:00, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Keep because the census database contains literally 114 different facts about this place. Count the facts (talk) 12:30, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Delete because the article is too short. IHateStubs 12:13, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Keep because the article could be expanded using the sources already cited in the article. ISeePotential 12:43, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Delete because Wikipedia's reputation is hurt by articles with only one source, and we should blow this up per WP:TNT. Make it shine 14:56, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Keep because Wikipedia should be a place where people can find out about every part of the world, and it could be expanded if someone wanted to put in the effort. It's not FA material at the moment, but deletion is not cleanup. Bright future 15:26, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Delete because only one source is cited. Multiplerequired 16:07, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Keep because local sources should be available for any place in this census. I smell sources 16:37, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Delete because SIGCOV is required, but the source doesn't have any coverage explaining why this little town is significant to anyone who doesn't live there. Itsinsignificant 16:42, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Keep because SIGCOV is required, and the census proves that this little town was significant enough to the whole country to be included in the census. Itsimportant 17:12, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Delete because it was created by bot, so it wasn't even significant enough for a human to write about. Ban the bot 17:49, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)
• Keep because there was a community consensus to create this back in the day, as proven by it being part of an authorized bot-based WP:MASSCREATION. Support your local bot op 18:19, 32 Octember 2026 (UTC)

None of them agree with each other, and yet they're all ideas that we've seen at AFD and in discussions about these articles.

If we are particularly unlucky, we won't only waste time and energy debating this, but we'll also end up with another round of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct in deletion-related editing and Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/AfD at scale will actually happen. (That one so far has only produced 524 comments on its talk page, if we don't count the existence of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Requests for comment/Article creation at scale, which was created on the same day by the same editor to deal with the same problem, against it.)

I want to avoid having fights over what counts as a "reliable source with significant coverage". I particularly want to avoid mass-deletion efforts that start the week after such a rule gets adopted. Basically, I think that option #3 #4 would be non-functional for our community at this point in time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

I want to address this point specifically: But from where I'm sitting, the fact that we will have l-o-n-g discussions about this IMO means the community loses. We say that the most valuable thing is editors' time, and a fight over whether to delete thousands of articles that contain sources that some people dislike and that other people would accept except that some other people haven't already expanded is a time sink of the first order.

To give some concrete examples on what the problem is: above I mentioned this discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sandogo a new editor rapidly pumped out ~80 articles on Burkina Faso villages, these articles were based on faulty sources (i.e. the coordinates they gave for the "villages" often pointed to scrubland with no nearby houses, they used a template and didn't update the administrative divisions when creating each new article, the sources used were websites which scraped the data from old US gazetteers which used spellings are not used today). Even the people who voted keep, upon inspecting some of those articles noticed these problems. This isn't a case of me not liking the sources, the articles were factually incorrect, but because a couple of editors managed to locate a handful of these villages, this clear misinformation stayed online for years. I eventually stumbled on this mess, and it took literal days of my editing time to go through these systematically one by one, fix the articles that could be fixed and send the remaining articles one by one through WP:AfD, taking up more editors time when it would have been far quicker to WP:TNT the lot of them and re-start them from scratch with proper sourcing once it is found.

And I'm not saying that we should blanket delete all geographical permastubs, often times these articles are created en-masse based on one database source. For example the bulk of the existing Burkina Faso village stubs were created using what appears to be a government source that labels these places clearly as villages that send representatives to do local government stuff, I personally believe that the information would have been better presented as a table on the page for the administrative divisions, but either for most people they clearly pass the current barrier for WP:GEOLAND and so I have spent most of the last 6 months of my editing time to bring them up to a better standard, and I still have a fair way to go. But then we have countries like Myanmar where the same editors that created the bulk of the Burkina Faso geostubs created another 1000+ stubs, but this time using sources that get their data from 80+ year old British gazetteers which have all the same problems with inaccurate locations and old spellings that are no longer used, and someone is going to have to go through those at some point and sort them out. Once cases like this are found where articles have been created with systematic problems the way to deal with these while wasting the least possible editor time is to WP:TNT the lot and let them be re-created once good sources become available.

What your statement essentially demands is that editors who want to get this mis-information off wikipedia should spend literal years of their editing time going through these articles one by one and fixing them or sending them through AfD individually rather than trouble the community with the occasional request to bulk delete a couple thousand badly sourced articles riddled with inaccurate information. I will assume good faith and that you are just not aware of how bad the situation is for some country's stubs, and I'll invite you to look through, for example, Category:Populated places in Hkamti District and figure out how long it would take to correct the coordinates of each village, AfD the ones that fail WP:V provide at least one reliable (not even in depth) source for each one. Giulio 00:44, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't want to have fights over whether a tiny town in the US, sourced only to the US Census, is a notable topic.

I believe that "require at least one reliable source with significant coverage [according to the personal and subjective opinion of the AFD nom] to be present in the article, as per WP:SPORTSIGCOV" will result in certain editors starting such fights.

If "require at least one reliable source with significant coverage to be present in the article, and oh-by-the-way, the US Census and any equivalently reputable national census definitely counts as SIGCOV" would solve your concern, then it would likely address my concern, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

" It might succeed if the proposal focuses on a low-income, non-English-speaking country and the proponent first puts in some time to cultivate a belief on wiki that the national census or other main source of data for that country is unreliable; that's what finally worked for the so-called Iranian "villages", after all" - I have always been clear that the Iranian census is reasonably accurate: I'm sure they counted the number of Iranian people in each general area correctly on the day of the census. It just isn't accurate for the purpose that people on WP have tried to use it for, which is as a list of "villages". It was never intended as this. It was not designed to be this. It is only the insistence of WP editors that some authoritative "list of villages" must exist because they would like one to exist for their policies to make sense that ever indicated otherwise. And yes, the same issue affects many of our census-generated article-sets, as we are discovering with the Russian rural localities with low/no population. FOARP (talk) 17:53, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

If a tiny town in the US has a count in the census, it is either because (a) it has a local government and borders which are defined in legislation, or (B) because a CDP has been defined for it, in which case the census has established the borders for the purpose of counting. In the first case there is no dispute that it satisfies the precise case that the guideline intends to cover. If it's a CDP, that usually means that it is a town for which someone wants statistics, but in some cases CDPs have been established for subdivisions or neighborhoods within cities, which are places which we would normally force to satisfy GNG. However, most small towns fit neither case, and the census doesn't provide data on them. Mangoe (talk) 02:12, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Minor nit, but CDPs are not defined for neighborhoods within cities (or other incorporated places). CDPs are defined for urbanized areas outside of an incorporated municipality (although they will be within one or more administrative subdivisions). CDPs are intended to provide data for such unincorporated urbanized areas to provide a basis for comparison with incorporated places). older ≠ wiser 02:36, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Basically, I think that option #3 would be non-functional for our community at this point in time. Just to clear up my own confusion, did you mean option #4 would be non-functional? As you'd previously suggested that I think that #3 has the most possibility. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:31, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, sorry! WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Thryduulf and @WhatamIdoing as you both mentioned this. For option #4, if we were to include in the RFC proposal a statement along the lines of

If WP:GEOLAND were to be amended in this way, future proposals for mass deletion, redirection or draftification of articles that existed before the amendment may not be made solely on the basis of the revised WP:GEOLAND; all such articles must be considered individually on their merits

would that suffice to help reduce the risk of future lengthy bitter arguments? If not, is there other wording or another measure that you think would help? Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:46, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I think this could just be a stand-alone proposal in case of any amendment. FOARP (talk) 17:36, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Maybe. I wonder whether editors such as @Giuliotf would find the restriction bearable, though, and in the case of a terrible mess (which has happened, and which will unfortunately probably happen again), it might turn out to be a bad idea.

This is IMO a not-unreasonable path:

• Community: "Here is the new rule. All existing articles are grandfathered under the old rule and must not be proposed for mass anything."
• Editor, a couple of years later: "Ugh, the Ruritanian articles are a total disaster! A hundred GEOLAND articles are citing only HoaxSite.com! And that stupid grandfather clause means I have to individually review each one and nominate them one at a time!"
• Community: "In the face of this misinformation disaster, we hereby repeal the grandfather clause."
• Another editor: "Finally! I've been waiting years for this. I hereby mass-nominate the following mass-created articles about indisputably real US towns for removal..."

Consequently, I think that identifying sources that definitely do indicate notability and some that are not necessarily valid for GEOLAND purposes (e.g., Wikipedia:Reliability of GNIS data) would be a stronger approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:24, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I am strongly opposed to option 2, which would degrade the quality, usability and value of the encyclopedia, as well as its function as a Wikipedia:Gazetteer. I would be most likely to support option 1, since I think that the case that there is a problem with the status quo has not been proven. I wouldn't be opposed to option 3, which, while this has been dismissed as requiring too much work, would be the most fruitful in resolving some of the disputes. Katzrockso (talk) 21:01, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Can you please explain how "degrade the quality, usability and value of the encyclopedia". Currently we have the masses creation stubs everywhere based on the presumption that if its in a census its legally recognised. 2 outlines what settlements are acceptable, and at least has a standard to mark it against, when legally recognised is not a realistic achievement, as previously discussed, as lots of countries dont have legally recognised settlements. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 11:54, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

…or extend “legal recognition” to individual buildings. FOARP (talk) 16:16, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

With regards to whether vast amounts of geostubs improve or degrade the quality of the encyclopaedia, I would like to make point that I haven't seen anyone else make:

Geostubs, unlike stubs about, for example, sports people who competed in the Olympics decades ago, require regular maintenance. If we take the Burkina Faso geostubs that were mass-created in 2008, the information they contained was a 2005 population estimate of each village and maybe some inaccurate coordinates. Since then the census results from 2006 we made public, another census was conducted in 2019, and the results were later made public and in 2025 the administrative divisions were changed impacting, every single village , these articles need a lot of work to be kept up to date and while an individual may be able to take it upon themselves to maintain the stubs for a small country like Burkina Faso (which is what I've spent several months trying to do), there are plenty of other countries and simply not enough people who are willing to do this tedious work. This creates enormous amounts of WP:WIKIDEBT as these articles become more and more out of date as time passes, and if the entire content of the article is a name, administrative division, population at an arbitrary point in time and coordinate location, then the information would perhaps be better presented and easier to be kept up to date as part of a list of, for example, villages in each administrative division. This would likely improve the quality of the encyclopaedia without losing any information. Giulio 16:38, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Right. Our Iranian "village" articles are overwhelmingly based on the 2006 survey also. 20 years and two census later, and no-one is updating them. Even when C46 - who created the overwhelming majority of them - was still on here they weren't bothering to update them. And honestly, why would anyone want to? It's a task best performed just by running a bot - which should instantly give people pause: is an article-set that can only reasonably be written and maintained by bots really what we want to maintain?

These articles were in large part created on the now-obviously-wrong theory that if article-sets were made then other editors would be inspired to come and work on them. That's not what's happened. FOARP (talk) 17:47, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not concerned about outdated contents. "Here's the population recorded in the 2005 census" is not misinformation. I'm much more concerned about calling something "a village" or "a town" when it's just a census tract in a rural region.

I wonder if we could put together a list of national censuses with practical information for editors. The US census corresponds to the goals well enough that we can (and do) have a bot run the updates. The Iranian census needs warnings about the difference between an actual village and the census tracts. How many others could we include in a list/table/helpful information page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Having outdated census data, while sub-optimal is at least acceptable if properly labelled, the bigger issue is when administrative boundaries move as then that becomes misinformation when a place is listen in Province X when it hasn't been in that province since the province boundaries changed in 20XX.

I think the fundamental question is when we can have pages like Banfora Department what value is there in adding a separate page for each of the listed villages when the only information presented in those articles can be contained in a simple table like that when the downside of such a system is that it makes maintenance so much harder and more tedious? Giulio 21:08, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

Do you know of any editors who genuinely believe that editing a wikitext table is easier than editing a paragraph of plain old text? I don't. "Just" adding a new column (e.g., to make a space for the newest census data) is considered one of the most difficult tasks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

It's not editing a table vs editing a paragraph of plain text, its editing a table on a single page vs editing paragraphs of text and info boxes on 22 different pages, and as the person who created that table and updated the population on those 22 different pages, I can tell you that working on a single page is significantly easier. Giulio 23:31, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

One final thing on how these mass-produced articles pollute the information space: just zoom in on any stretch of empty, unpopulated desert in Iran on Google Maps and you'll see place names in it. Click of them and there's a reasonable chance that Google Maps will serve you a link to one of Carlossuarez46's Iranian "village" articles. I just did it and literally the first place I clicked on was this. And yes, this was a C46 article. Even when it doesn't serve you such a link, there's a good chance that Google Maps originally scrapped WP to get the location and we've since deleted the article.

WP is a data-set that is scrapped by other other data-users. Systematic errors on WP end up metastasising all over the place. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if C46's "village" articles have polluted military targeting data-sets. FOARP (talk) 09:50, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Other websites also scrape the databases that C46 used. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

As as I have ever been able to work out, C46 was cross-referencing the Iranian census (place-names, populations, and districts, but no co-ordinates) with GNS (place-names and co-ordinates, but no populations or districts) to create a list of his own. In cases where he wasn't able to find GNS listings matching the name, he just created abadi articles with no co-ordinates, which is why we have thousands of articles about Iranian "villages" with no location to even allow you to check whether they're even there. A lot of mistakes were also generated this way, because GNS typically includes more than one possible name for a location. FOARP (talk) 13:06, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I actually agree completely that in many cases it makes sense to merge up the smallest localities to a larger administrative geography. Fram gave an example of what it might look like for small Russian localities somewhere and it seemed eminently reasonable. Katzrockso (talk) 00:22, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

FRAM also explained why this isn't working - the task is just immense, and GEOLAND is a no-further-excuses-needed justification for blocking or undoing such work. FOARP (talk) 08:12, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a gazetteer, and in any case real gazetteers limit themselves to listings of names and at most very summary characterizations and statistical data. We do not need to write articles on any place in order to satisfy the supposed "functions of a gazetteer". Mangoe (talk) 03:10, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Right. We are not a gazetteer (literally a kind of dictionary that accompanies a map or atlas) any more than we are an almanac.

Most gazetteers are just lists of names and corresponding map-locations. Exactly the kind of content that WP:NOT rejects and has rejected since very early in the project.

Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia. This means it is a summary of what secondary sources say about a topic. Notably, censuses are not secondary sources, but are primary sources. FOARP (talk) 06:36, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

That's a nice essay you wrote to clarify the distinction between "being" a gazetteer and having some "features" as described in Wikipedia:Five pillars. I'd like to see more help content like what you've put in Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a gazetteer#Commonly-used gazetteer or gazetteer-like sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

My thoughts would remain the same. Populated places would have a list under an appropriate administrative division (in the US that would be by county; other countries would have different "parent" administrative divisions to use.) The normal notability guidelines would apply to whether there should be an article about one, but for those wanting a "gazetteer", the lists would serve to have the few factoids available about the non-notable places (location, population, etc.). Existing "articles" on non-notable places could then be redirected to the appropriate place. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 11:31, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I like #3, sort of. IMO, the purpose of SNGs is to provide easy heuristics for editors. If members of a class of articles almost always meet the GNG, but particular sources are difficult to reach or esoteric, the SNG can bypass a lot of unproductive inclusion/deletion fights. Problems arise when the heuristic in the SNG fails to deliver, and most of the members of that class are not demonstrably notable. I think we have spent way too much time tied up in interpreting "legally recognized". In the narrow sense (an entity with distinct borders and multi-functional government, not just a census district) this worke reasonably well as a heuristic in the Western Anglosphere. It obviously fails when extended to census districts; and it's not clear to me that it works well in other parts of the world, where there may be a much lower density of secondary sourcing. I think Donald Albury's objection that this constitutes a "Herculean amount of work" is best answered by developing the SNG piecemeal, as we get a better picture of what sources of information exist for a given country, rather than trying to to it for the whole world at once. Choess (talk) 15:05, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I am going to start updating and expanding Wikipedia:Geographic references in the hope that it can form the nucleus of an informational annex to the SNG, or as supporting material for a revised version as per my option #3 about. I agree that it will be a lot of work, but I think what we do should be worthwhile anyway even if we decide not to go with an RFC. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:11, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I think we have spent way too much time tied up in interpreting "legally recognized". It seems to me that requiring the same standard across the world doesn't necessarily make sense, when the types and extent of legal recognition vary from government to government.

...developing the SNG piecemeal, as we get a better picture of what sources of information exist for a given country... This also speaks to a concern of mine. I've noticed some antipathy against "database" sources, for reasons that I don't really understand. It seems to conflate what Wikipedia itself is not with what kinds of sources Wikipedia should use, which are two very different questions. To me, the reliability and amount of detail provided by a source are far more important than its format. (If both are reliable, a database that has a lot of data on a topic is better than a two-sentence blurb of prose about it.) And if both of those vary from one country to another, it'll be more important and more helpful to document which sources are good for what than to make blanket dismissals.

The way I see it, Wikipedia can live up to our stereotype by making a "guideline" that is full of shortcuts and cross-connections to other guidelines. Or, we can live up to our stereotype by documenting which sources are good at which things in which parts of the world, and what different kinds of "legal recognition" mean from the Ozarks to Odesa to Okinawa.

I am concerned that the proposals raised so far have more to do with Wikipedia insider arcana ("it is well established that WP:FOOBAR overrides the GNG and is independent of WP:FLOOPTHEPIG") than in helping people who want to work on geography articles to do so, or explaining why the editor community has made the decisions that it has. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:46, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:26, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

This is a good statement of principles. We are here to give reliable, useful information to readers, not play lawyer. I think the important thing is to try to figure out, in different parts of the world, which things we can write a decent article about and which we can't, and then try to find relatively simple formulas (like "legal recognition") that approximately trace the boundary between notable and non-notable.

We should be cautious about prematurely defining intrinsic qualities that we feel intuitively make a place notable, and then trying to reach a usable SNG by exegesis through the local legal system. e.g., Enos733 downthread does a good job of summarizing what I feel makes a settlement significant enough to write an article about. However, my intuition is calibrated in a rich information ecosystem where government bureaus, news media, historical societies, etc. are throwing off lots of sources to write an article about the settlement. It's possible that in other societies, this information isn't just occult (in an undigitized archive somwhere) but non-existent, and that settlements of that sort can't be written about in detail, even if they seem to us to be intrinsically important. Choess (talk) 07:12, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

• I've been thinking about this discussion and the issues being addressed. I fall toward the line of mass creation is a behavioral problem. But, if we are going to try to be more precise, I propose "Primary administrative divisions and municipalities holding a charter or formal grant of authority from their government..." --Enos733 (talk) 20:47, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

  Offhand, I doubt that editors will know what that means. For example, does Swindon count? Almost a quarter million people live there, but it apparently has no royal charter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

  In the UK basically only cities and towns that had markets in the medieval period have charters, and some settlements that have been cities since time immemorial (pre 1189 in this context) might not even have that. It's also arguable whether the charters are from the government or from the monarch. Modern grants of authority are to councils rather than settlements, and the two frequently differ. As ever though, everything to do with UK administrative geography is almost fractally complicated!

  Many small settlements particularly will never have had a grant of authority of any description as they have never had any administrative responsibility. Thryduulf (talk) 22:59, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

  I think, broadly, that our expectation is that a settlement has (in some way), a local system of government with broad governmental powers (as opposed to a government designed around a singular purpose such as a school board), has recognized boundaries, and that local government is recognized by the state as incorporated. Charters may not have been the correct term, as I was imagining the state providing a grant of authority to the municipality. In some states, there is just one city (Monaco) and in other states, there are no unincorporated areas (Brazil). And within the US, there is similar variation, with no unincorporated areas in New York State and lots on unincorporated areas in Wyoming. Where we all agree is that "legal recognition" has to be more than a census record, road sign, or transit stop, and also more than one-off legislation. - Enos733 (talk) 04:30, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  Another nit, but "incorporated" is used in different senses. There are in fact many unincorporated communities in New York (and in Brazil as well) meaning that a particular settlement does not have its own separate municipal government. The other sense is that all portions of an area are incorporated as part of a larger administrative unit. In this latter sense, there are very few unincorporated areas in the U.S. The two senses of the word are often confused. For the purposes of this guideline, I think there is general agreement that municipal corporations would typically pass a notability test (either SNG or GNG). However, other regions might not have municipal corporations in the same way as the U.S. older ≠ wiser 11:18, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  The closest equivalent in the UK to the first sense of unincorporated is probably unparished area, but that's not quite the same concept as parish councils are typically responsible for much less than US municipal governments. Thryduulf (talk) 11:27, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Bkonrad, I wonder whether you could make a short list of small-ish places in New York and Brazil that fall on one side or the other of the line that you're describing. Concrete examples can be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:29, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  New York is relatively easy, just consider Category:Hamlets in New York (state). Brazil is not so neatly categorized (or I'm just not familiar with the schema there). A short list: Céu do Mapiá, Cucuí, and Feijoal, Amazonas (all are from Amazonas, which I picked because it is among the largest states by area with the smallest number of municipalities. older ≠ wiser 20:29, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  I would suggest that a hamlet in New York State would not automatically have an article under WP:GEOLAND. In New York, hamlets receive services from the town they are in and have no government of their own. As for Céu do Mapiá, it is located in the municipality of Pauini, which is one of 62 municipalities in Amazonas. Every part of Amazonas is within one municipality. - Enos733 (talk) 21:07, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  Well, that was kind of my point. Nearly every part of the U.S. is within an administrative subdivision of one form or another. It appears that in Brazil, a municipality is more like a second-level administrative subdivision than it is to a municipal corporation in the U.S. older ≠ wiser 21:14, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  I think notability extends to the settlement that has its own (broad power) government that is recognized by the state. For me, it is easier to articulate that our community should have articles on nations, states (whether or not there is a federal system), counties (if they exist), and municipalities. I do not think that villages within a municipality should have an automatic pass for notability, but if they have an elected (or known) leader, then they probably would pass for me - Enos733 (talk) 23:30, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

  But again you are looking with a US centric view. As per my comment below, in the UK alone, we have councils that cover not just a town, but has several towns and not just villages. The council is legally recognised, but the towns are not formally incorporated, so are not legally recognised under UK law. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:18, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  If we focus on whether the settlement has an elected or appointed government, why wouldn't that nearly solve the concerns? - Enos733 (talk) 15:01, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  Because many of those individual towns are also notable. In writing such a rule, we would be including Ruralton USA, population 167, and exclude the storied Arthurbrough, England, population 4,321. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:05, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  If Arthurbrough, England was a storied town, wouldn't there be enough reliable sourcing to meet GNG? - Enos733 (talk) 17:28, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  Yes, precisely. All this fretting about the exclusion of notable places that are or can relatively easily be sourced is much ado about nothing (or at worst a form of WP:STONEWALLING). This guideline is about what types of places get a free pass for creation based on a presumption that they are significant for the area/region. older ≠ wiser 18:28, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  Not on a presumption that WP:ITSIMPORTANT, but on the presumption that any "real" populated will have had reliable sources written about it, even if it's never been big enough to sustain its own newspaper/media outlet. The neighboring town's paper will write about it, the administrative division over it will issue reports that include it, and so on. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:40, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  As far as I'm concerned that is a distinction without any meaningful difference in outcome. Besides, there are, and have been, countless "real" populated places that have little or no trace in any source. older ≠ wiser 21:03, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  The problem with GNG is that disputing "real" populated places is a waste of time, so a guideline that clearly indicates that "real" populated places are acceptable is a savings on notable subjects. The problem we need to address is how to save editors' time dealing with the "fake" populated places (e.g., whistle stops on a rail line). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:43, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  I dunno. What is "real" is going to be different for different editors and for various regions. Thinking in terms or "real" is even less helpful than the vague "legally recognized" language that we have now. An ACTUAL benefit of GNG is that no one has to guess about whether the place being described is "real" or not. older ≠ wiser 21:09, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  The actual problem of the GNG is that some individuals have wildly different ideas of what it means in practice, so we would waste editors' time in AFD for places that have no realistic chance of being deleted. "But it doesn't cite SIGCOV IRS sources! It 'only' cites the US Census, which I call trivial routine primary source coverage even if they did cite it 17 times in the article, and the city's own website, which is non-independent, and the local school's own website, which is non-independent, and GNIS, which I say is unreliable, and a local history book, which I say is self-published. Ergo, it fails the GNG and should be deleted." IMO that kind of AFD nom would be a waste of time, and that waste of time is largely prevented by GEOLAND.

  I think that the suggestion that @SunloungerFrog posted below is a viable path forward. Tell people what the main GEOLAND-style sources are (and aren't) for any given country. Tell people things like "If it's got a US Census profile page like https://data.census.gov/profile/Lebanon_city,_Kansas?g=160XX00US2039100 that says it's 'a city, town, place equivalent, or township', then it passes GEOLAND, and if a little wide spot in the road doesn't have this, then (in the US) it probably doesn't pass GEOLAND" (or whatever the relevant rules would be). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

• Like Choess, I like proposal 3. WP:GAZ is worth considering. All the same, articles about places are still encyclopaedic articles. If there is nothing to say about a place, we shouldn't have an article. It would save a lot of arguing about the other definitions, and SNGs really only point to shortcuts that show that something is likely to be notable. When the shortcut takes longer than the direct route, it's not a good shortcut. So it all comes down to sources. If there are no sources that say anything about a place, then a Wikipedia article for that place fails as indiscriminate. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 17:08, 4 May 2026 (UTC)
• Comment. Proposal 4 reflects existing consensus. (The previous RfC was not closed as "no consensus"). The only proposal for change that I think has a realistic chance of reaching consensus is proposal 1, since it does not change the generally accepted meaning of "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable", but merely restates it in different words. The langauge of that proposal is not entirely clear, however. We would, for example, need to retain the words "Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability is not temporary" presently included in GEOLAND. I therefore suggest proposal 1A below instead. I think it is clear, from all the discussions that have taken place so far, that proposals 2, 3, 5 and 6 have no realistic chance of reaching consensus. Proposals are not likely to reach consensus unless they are small, incremental, simple, unambiguous, uncontroversial and not accompanied by walls of text.
  Proposal 1A

  The first paragraph of WP:GEOLAND shall be amended by replacing the words "Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable" with the words "Cities, towns and villages are typically presumed to be notable".
  James500 (talk) 06:58, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

As per the discussion above and at both previous RFC, "legally recognised" is not possible to manage, because of the huge variations around the world in what is deemed legally recognised, and in those places where there is no such thing. Take the UK. Some places are legally recognised because they were issued charters, like Maldon, but many of these were issued during the period 1066-1300. After that incorporation only occurred in the New Town building phase after WW2. And the UK has plenty of settlements that existed prior to the Norman invasion, places like South Benfleet, originally Beamfleote was settled by the Saxons, it is not parished, and the legally recognised entity is the local authority, which is the Borough of Castle Point, which also contains Hadleigh, Thundersley and the parished Canvey Island (which is legally recognised). Benfleet would pass GNG, but as the current SNG it does not, based on legally recognised. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:15, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

As far as I can see, South Benfleet was a parish and had a parish council, and was mentioned in legislation. However, I agree that it would be expedient to remove the words "legally recognized". And the removal of those words will not be accelerated by discussion of South Benfleet. James500 (talk) 08:25, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

"The previous RfC was not closed as "no consensus"" - If you want to go through the entirely pointless process of getting an uninvolved closer to close the blatantly no-consensus discussion formally as "no consensus", please be my guest. At any rate, when we discussed this, no-one pretended that the discussion had closed with a consensus in favour of the guide.

But like I said, you are free to request a closure if you want. FOARP (talk) 08:40, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Your first comment in that thread was I make it 20 agree !votes versus 17 disagree !votes. That's either weak consensus in favour of the standard not being fit for purpose, or (more likely) no consensus on whether it is fit for purpose or not. The problem is, that is not how consensus is determined. What WP:DETCON actually says is Consensus is ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy. The number of !votes is not relevant. I would have pointed this out if I had time to participate in that discussion. During the RfC, at 7:38 on the 20 October 2025, David Eppstein did deny your interpretation of consensus. I think, however, that it would be a waste of time to close the RfC, since I think the most likely closure would be "bad RfC". Instead, my advice is to implement proposal 1A. James500 (talk) 10:17, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

"I think the most likely closure would be "bad RfC""

Then you definitely should request a formal closure for this conclusion that not even you argued in any of your ~20 comments in it. But it definitely wouldn't be closed that way, because 37 editors had a chance to contribute to it and none of them argued that. FOARP (talk) 12:33, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

The more I read of this discussion, the more convinced I am that the only option for substantive change that is actually workable at a practical level is to define notability on an (approximately) per-country basis. Yes, this will be a lot of work, but if you want something other than status quo (with or without minor tweaks) it is necessary work. Even just between the US and the UK, two industrialied western nations with large volumes of both English-languge resources and editors familiar with them, the differences are so great that any simple wording either excludes many clearly notable places in the UK or includes many clearly non-notable ones in the US. Other countries no doubt differ from these two even more substantially. Particularly in more centralised countries were services are provided at a much higher level than especailly the US, there is likely much less need for formal recognition of individual settlements. Thryduulf (talk) 10:31, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I have made a start on this, with Bangladesh as a worked example, at User:SunloungerFrog/sandbox/GEOLAND notability and sources supplement. I'd welcome constructive comments on whether this is the kind of thing that would be helpful, comments & additions specifically on the Bangladesh entry, and worked examples for other countries. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 13:16, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

That does look like the kind of thing that would be incredibly helpful. I'm not familiar enough with Bangladesh to have a strong opinion about what is and isn't notable, but from a high level look I see nothing I disagree with. Thryduulf (talk) 14:41, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

This looks very useful. I was a little skeptical at first about 68,000 villages being pre-emptively notable, but clicking around on the ones that have articles so far, it looks like editors have managed to furnish them with some sort of data that's not purely statistical. I haven't done a really intensive source analysis, but that does make me feel more confident that a Bangladeshi editor would in general be able to say something meaningful and sourced about most villages. Choess (talk) 15:43, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes! This is the kind of thing editors really need. I'd also love to see some "bad" (or "complicated") sources listed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:08, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Thumbs up, absolutely. This is very much the sort of thing I had in mind and was trying to put forward in the Workshop. Ingratis (talk) 17:13, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I think this will end up entrenching systematic bias, and generally reflect what countries editors consider important, rather than what is actually notable. BilledMammal (talk) 00:52, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

The first thing that comes up whenever we discuss this clause is that it already does so, because the "legally recognized" bit was formulated based on the way that (some? many? most?) US states set up cities and such in law, but with an attempt to word it to be more generally applicable by not saying "incorporated". And maybe that is true, but that then leads directly into trying to sink the discussion. There's already systemic bias built into the availability of sources, particularly when we are forced into using the notoriously problematic US GNS as a source for nations which don't have adequate statistical/geographical compilations of their own; and the history of actual discussions shows that the nature of the individual statistical compilations used is inevitably what produces problem articles. And remember, the problem isn't so much that ostensibly non-notable places get articles, but that we claim that places are settlements when that is not true.The use of the Iranian versus the US census is an object example of this. The "legally recognized" standard works for the US census (ignoring the CDPs for the moment) because in the US they don't give counts for places which don't have boundaries established in law, so they have to be in that sense "legally recognized". The writers who used the Iranian census by contrast didn't understand that the abadis were functionally equivalent to the US census tracts, so that they ended up elevating the census data collecting organization into a set of spurious towns and villages. The issue with the Russian selo system is proving to have the same issue, only worse, because one can make the argument that it's improper for non-Russians to reject having articles on some sorts of selo but keep others.

So in actual practice we invariably do have different standards for different places in the sense that we have no choice but to have these arguments about sourcing. It's just that now we have arguments about how those standards reflect the Amero-centric standard we already have. And what happens is that people make mass runs of articles without benefit of such discussions, because they can and because the naive reading is that any governmental source is good enough for this purpose without having to really understand the nuances of that particular source. And once created, there is invariably enough resistance to deleting the articles and starting over, and therefore if anything is to be done it is going to involve article-by-article review, which is simply too much work. This is leading in the direction of not having any notability guideline, not just because accuracy and not notability is the real issue, but because yes, the problem is behavioral in the sense that we have to be able not just to say, "don't do this", but to make them start over from scratch, following consensus as to the interpretation and usability of the sources. Mangoe (talk) 06:56, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

This is why I think the easier distinguishing factor is whether the settlement has a government with broad powers, that is recognized by the nation (so not a homeowners association or a special (limited) purpose government). - Enos733 (talk) 18:09, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

That would exclude many very obviously notable settlements in places that aren't the United States. Thryduulf (talk) 18:42, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

If they are very obviously notable it should be easy to find sources for them. This guideline for all practical purposes is about the categories of places for which articles can be created with minimal sourcing based on a presumption of notability. older ≠ wiser 19:42, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

It's going to be difficult to get the community to accept a rule that excludes things that they believe should be accepted.

BilledMammal said above that the GEOLAND rule will "generally reflect what countries editors consider important, rather than what is actually notable". I suggest that for this subject area, "what places editors consider important enough to insist that it be allowed a separate, stand-alone article" and "what places are actually notable" are exactly the same thing. Everything that the community chooses to have a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article for is actually Wikipedia:Notable. (Both of those redirects point at the WP:N guideline.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

It's going to be difficult to get the community to accept a rule that excludes things that they believe should be accepted No one is saying that such articles should not exist. Unlike the majority of notablity guidelines, GEOLAND as it presently exists gives a free pass for the creation of minimally sourced articles and makes it EXTREMELY difficult and time-consuming to delete bad articles. Note: I'm not necessarily agreeing with drawing the line at whether a settlement has a government with broad powers. I am criticizing the fretting about the exclusion of very obviously notable places. If there is some way to formulate categories of places that should be included that can gain community acceptance, let's see it. older ≠ wiser 21:42, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

The fretting about excluding "very obviously notable" places could doom an otherwise sensible proposal. We won't succeed if the proposal can be attacked with claims like "This says London doesn't qualify, which is obviously nonsense", even though we all know that London would qualify anyway under the GNG. I believe there is a firm expectation in the community that all "very obviously notable" cities should be covered by GEOLAND even if that's not strictly necessary because they would also qualify under the GNG. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:05, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Don't many of our other SNGs all just about exhaustively cover their respective subjects so that if the GNG were to be deleted, few articles in the subject would be affected? Katzrockso (talk) 01:07, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing I think you're shifting terms and confusing matters even more than they already are. The comment I responded to was about the exclusion of "very obviously notable settlements" and now you're talking about cities. I don't think any proposed formulation of GEOLAND would exclude "very obviously notable" cities. It is possible that some categories of settlements might not qualify for automatic inclusion under some proposed revisions even though there are some "very obviously notable" individual members of that category. But such places should easily pass GNG if they are in fact "very obviously notable". older ≠ wiser 11:31, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Aren't major cities all "very obviously notable settlements"?

Or were you thinking of something like an archeological site, such as some long-abandoned Roman settlement in Britain? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

That's a very odd question given the thread (unless you are responding to something someone else wrote). Yes, I'd even say that most smallish cities are "very obviously notable settlements". There are lots and lots of other types of settlements other than cities, which is what I had was what I had been responding to in Thryduulf's fretting about all the very obviously notable settlements in places that aren't the United States that would be excluded. In any case, other than the suggestion to remove the SNG altogether and rely on GNG, I don't think any proposal so far would have excluded cities, either major or smaller. older ≠ wiser 17:53, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a settlement that:

• you believe would be excluded under the proposal
• you believe is "very obviously notable", and
• is not a city?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Why are you asking me? I don't see how this is relevant at all to my comments. I'm sure it's possible if not likely that I might have been clearer, but I really don't see why you are asking me this. older ≠ wiser 18:07, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Here's a very condensed summary of the key points in our conversation so far:

• Thryduulf says: "That [proposal] would exclude many very obviously notable settlements"
• You say: "If they are very obviously notable it should be easy to find sources"
• I think: What's an example a "very obviously notable" settlement for which it's easy to find sources? Oh, obviously a big non-US city like London.
• I say: "there is a firm expectation in the community that all "very obviously notable" cities should be covered by GEOLAND"
• You say: "The comment I responded to was about the exclusion of "very obviously notable settlements" and now you're talking about cities"
• I think: My example of a "very obviously notable" settlement for which it's easy to find sources was not relevant. Instead of guessing a second time, I will just ask him for an example of a "very obviously notable" settlement. Then I'll know what he's talking about when he says that there are very obviously notable settlements that it's easy to find sources for.
• You say: "I don't see how this is relevant at all to my comments."

Here's the relevance: I am trying to understand your comments, by asking you to give me an example of a settlement that meets the conditions we're talking about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Seems like a rather tortured reading, but again, I can accept that my writing is not always that clear. The example that you are looking for really is beside the point as far as I'm concerned. Thrydulf and several others have been fretting about how proposed revisions would result in the exclusion of "very obviously notable settlements". My point is simply that any settlement that is in fact "very obviously notable" would be notable regardless of whatever GEOLAND says. I'd argue the burden is on those fretting about places that would be excluded to provide some examples. older ≠ wiser 18:31, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I did provide an example of a place that might be excluded. AFAICT London:

• is very obviously notable, but
• is not an incorporated city, so someone could argue that it's not "legally recognized" and therefore excluded under the proposal.

You didn't accept my example.

Apparently you don't know of any examples yourself, because if you did, you'd probably have said "Sure, consider the example of ____" instead of spending all this time avoiding it. This makes me wonder whether I should discount your analysis entirely.

Here's why this matters: If critics of a GEOLAND proposal can convince other editors that the proposal will exclude London, or another place that they subjectively feel is "very obviously notable", then proposal is doomed. It doesn't matter if the critics are right, and it doesn't matter if the GNG would protect the article in the end. What matters is that editors voting on the proposal would believe that the proposal does not do what they want GEOLAND to do. And what they – rightly or wrongly – want GEOLAND to do is authorize/protect any place that they'd call a city/town/similar label if they were on a driving holiday and said something like "I'm hungry. Let's stop at the next town for dinner".

If you can think of a place that obviously meets GNG but is excluded under the proposal above, then we need to decide whether that example would doom the proposal. If it would doom the proposal, we need to decide whether to amend the proposal or to abandon it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Again, you're asking the wrong person (and IMO, the wrong question(s)). If there is a settlement that is "very obviously notable" it is notable regardless of whatever GEOLAND might say. In fact as far as I'm concerned it does not matter in the least if there are "very obviously notable" settlements that are not included in GEOLAND. IF there are people with a mistaken understanding that not being included in GEOLAND means that no article can be written about such a place, that misconception should be addressed. What people need to understand is that GEOLAND is for all practical purposes a declaration that any and all settlements that are included get a free pass for article creation and that bad creations can subsequently only be removed with great difficulty. older ≠ wiser 19:12, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

To be clear, what I am saying is that any place whether a city or other that is "very obviously notable" should easily pass GNG regardless of how we (re-)frame GEOLAND. Simply because there are some "very obviously notable" settlements of a particular type that might not be included in GEOLAND, we should not necessarily assume that all settlements of that type are notable. Given the essentially automatic presumption of notability granted by GEOLAND and the challenges that poses for removing bad creations later, I think we need to focus GEOLAND on something more like an 80-20 rule where categories of settlements of which the vast majority could relatively easily prove notable are included, even if that means some smaller number of individual settlements in edge categories are not included and would need to establish notability without the automatic pass given by GEOLAND. older ≠ wiser 18:23, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

My view is that if there are any settlements that are obviously notable but don't get the automatic pass from GEOLAND then GEOLAND is not fit for purpose. Whether those settlements would meet the GNG or not is irrelevant. Thryduulf (talk) 20:29, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

That is practically an impossibility (other than to have a guideline so vague such as it is now that virtually any place where people have ever lived can be deemed notable and get a free pass for creation). That is to say, no notability guideline will ever be 100% perfect in determining in advance what is or is not notable and there will ALWAYS be edge cases. It is nearly always a bad practice to base guidelines on edge cases. Better to aim for giving clear guidance regarding the majority of cases and the rest can be sorted out on a case-by-case basis and if a new category is identified, that can be added to the guideline. older ≠ wiser 20:34, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Everything is impossible if you throw your hands up and declare it to be so without even trying. Which is exactly the issue I'm seeing with masscreation - oh no we can't possibly stop people mass creating things (I don't like) so we can't even think about trying. Instead we'll have to change the guideline so nobody can create things I don't like in any amount.

All it needs is to look at the world country by country (ish) and determine what settlements in each are notable and which aren't and correlate that to the local jurisdiction, and in parallel deal with the problem of mass creation by fixing the policies and enforcement related to mass creation.

Will this be a lot of work? Yes.

Is there an alternative? Yes, the status quo

Is there an alternative other than the status quo? No. Thryduulf (talk) 20:44, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

No, talk to anyone with experience in formulating policies and procedures and it is understood that no guidance will ever be perfect and your argument is essentially WP:STONEWALLing: i.e., we cannot make any meaningful change to GEOLAND if that means my precious very notable place would not be included (even though it would be considered notable regardless of whatever GEOLAND says). older ≠ wiser 20:54, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not doing anything of the sort. Meaningful changes to GEOLAND are possible it's just they will take more work than you are apparently willing to put in. A single global guideline will either be as vague as the current one or unworkably complicated.

The only alternative is to have per-country(ish) guidelines. The real world is incredibly complicated and what works in one country doesn't cleanly map to another. Heck there are aspects of administrative geography that don't cleanly map from one part of the UK to another. What works in the United States (the status quo) doesn't work for e.g. Iran. What would work in Iran wouldn't work in the United States. Thryduulf (talk) 21:03, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to country-specific addendums, but considering the differences of opinion in the long history of this page and even the lack of agreement on just what notability is in general, any such detailed guidance will be a LONG, LONG time coming and without a default baseline it is unworkable. older ≠ wiser 21:12, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think so. The biggest barrier to its creation right now is finding editors who have the relevant knowledge and the time to write it down for the rest of us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:57, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

The biggest barrier to its creation right now is finding editors who have the relevant knowledge and the time to write it down for the rest of us Color me surprised if there are more than a handful in a year that gain wide acceptance. older ≠ wiser 01:02, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Right now we've got a bunch of Russian stubs going through AFD. 95% go through no problem. 5% are bitterly opposed on the grounds that a railway station with a recorded population of 2 is GEOLAND-passing "settlement" (ironically, exactly the argument that some people said no-one makes at AFD, and was in fact "only advanced by people seeking to discredit" GEOLAND).

If we don't fix GEOLAND first, we're just making whatever discussion we have regarding Russian rural localities a one-stop-shop for the bitter-enders fighting out that 5%. We'll just create a guide that will be someone's no-excuses-needed justification for going to a directory of "settlements" and creating an article for every one on the list. The guide has to change for such work to be meaningful in the first place.

We can already see this for the proposed Bangladesh guide, which is, yes, a no-excuses-needed justification for going to some pre-existing list of 68,000 Bangladeshi villages and adding every single one of them to the encyclopaedia to create a no-content stub like (literally just picking one of our existing Bangladeshi village-articles at random) Jaykul (EDIT: since updated - see here for the version I was looking at), which is exactly the kind of article that we should not be adding to the encyclopaedia. I'm sure it's morale-boosting to claim we have to have these articles because we've create similar ones for the United States, but this skips over the fact that we've been in a massive campaign to fix the US GEOSTUBs that has barely made any progress. FOARP (talk) 09:45, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

"ironically, exactly the argument that some people said no-one makes at AFD" And surely the admin who closes the AfD will disregard such a ridiculous !vote. –dlthewave ☎ 15:11, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

The argument that is "only advanced by people seeking to discredit" is that all houses are notable because they are legally recognized. When linked to an AfD about a Russian settlement with a population of 2, that editor said, "What I see is an argument that 17km is verifiably listed as a populated place by the Russian government, and that it has had a (small) recorded population (with a WP:VAGUEWAVE to higher population in the past). I don't see an argument there that inhabited houses are inherently notable, which is the caricature CMD in particular has produced in this discussion". Kelob2678 (talk) 15:48, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

"All houses are notable because they're legally recognised" versus "All legally-recognised houses are notable" is a distinction without a difference: if it is possible to have a house/railway station/farm legally-recognised as a "settlement" then you are arguing that single houses should be automatically notable just because of the way a country decides to structure itself administratively.

And yes, in some countries, census-data is produced for individual houses (e.g., the UK). FOARP (talk) 13:38, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

@FOARP, I wouldn't say that what I drew up for Bangladesh is a guide as such, more a worked example for discussion. Where would you draw the line - no villages in Bangladesh may be presumed notable under GEOLAND? Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 14:58, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

I would say that villages in Bangladesh, just like villages anywhere, are notable when we have something actually notable (e.g., history) to write about. I don't think every village in Bangladesh (or anywhere else) necessarily should have a stand-alone article, if the only thing that can be written about them is their location and their population. FOARP (talk) 15:16, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

How would you propose to word that in a notability guideline? Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:51, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

Biorka, Alaska, Kashega, Alaska, Makushin, Alaska and Ardifuir in my view are all examples of settlements that fail the current version of WP:GEOLAND and would likely fail any revised version as well, but are clearly notable and its been fairly easy to find good sources on them. Giulio 11:57, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

How would they fail the current version of GEOLAND? Katzrockso (talk) 12:27, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

It is not clear to me that any of them ever had any formal legal recognition as populated places. Giulio 12:37, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

The U.S. Bureau of Fisheries recorded “Burka” in 1888, and in the 1890 census Samuel Applegate of Unalaska spelled it “Borka. . Recognition by the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries qualifies as legal recognition.

It was also recorded in the 1920 and 1930 censuses. I would suggest that the information in the article already shows that they were legally recognized - how could the government decide not to resettle somewhere without legally recognizing it? Katzrockso (talk) 23:47, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

I think that we have something more substantial in mind for "legal recognition" than just getting mentioned by a government agency whose purpose has nothing to do with regulating or recognizing towns. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Under the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's duties includes geographic surveys. Presence in U.S. census is typically how distinct villages were distinguished in this time period - we are talking about the late 1800s before the concretization of a bureaucracy in Alaska, since it was still a territory.

For what it's worth, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act lists Biorka as an Alaskan village .

Villages and towns like these that were depopulated prior to the standardization of administrative geography fall into a limbo area - they would clearly be listed in official administrative geography if populated in modern times, but they were depopulated before this become widespread practice. This has been my objection to the "legally recognized" standard in the past - it doesn't do well when "legal recognition" wasn't the primary concern of any administrative body. Katzrockso (talk) 00:13, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

The census feels like an important point for me, but I'm less sure about the FWS. They could be recording place names without implying a settlement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:51, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

These are good examples, I think. Personally, I don't see any basis for challenging these under GNG and I at the same time would not want GEOLAND to provide a free pass for the creation of articles for every such settlement without the supporting references that these have. older ≠ wiser 12:45, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree, all of these settlements would pass GNG. I also do not think there is anyone suggesting a change to how we evaluate abandoned settlements. - Enos733 (talk) 15:15, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

This seems to be a common theme with all of the real or hypothetical settlements that have been brought forth as examples of what we'd lose if NPLACE were abolished. They either meet GNG or they're places like Randalls Bluff, Mississippi and Oscar, Pennsylvania which don't have enough information in the sources to even describe them accurately. –dlthewave ☎ 16:53, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

Biorka obviously satisfies the second clause of GEOLAND as we have fairly consistently applied it. There's a tag on GMaps for the place, and it links to this NPS webpage on "lost Aleutian villages" which gives a history of it and several others, so it isn't as though there isn't sourcing which obviates reference to the first clause; and we wouldn't care if page came from a non-governmental source as long as we found it reliable, so the fact I got it from the NPS is irrelevant. See, for me, the person who is doing the most work of reviewing all of these stubs, the biggest presenting problem is that I am having to do all the work that the original authors couldn't be bothered with. The history of looking at these governmental listings— which, as a rule, are not law per se, so I don't think they count as legal recognition— is that we've found over and over again that they list things which aren't actually settlements, and never mind the more fundamental problem that they are more or less rife with outright errors. The whole point of GEOLAND from the perspective of article creation is to not have to bother with looking for other sources to validate what's in these listings, because that's the kind of articles that get written which attract attention. And the fact behind the "legal recognition" clause is that places in the USA that are or were incorporated in law have websites and are written about in histories and have boundaries drawn on maps, so that even when the article starts out as a stub (and in my experience these are almost never stubby when I come across one) there's no real doubt that other, adequate sources exist beyond names on maps and in listings. I don't know how true this is of villages in Bangladesh or especially in Somalia (where there were endless issues), so I really think we need to be considering whether these could be better served with a map and a table of villages in a region, with populations and such basic data, rather than writing an article for each that doesn't get beyond a more verbose version of the same information. I don't see the issue as being of "losing" articles; my position is that we need to have an expectation of writing articles in the first place that do not need the review that we are having to put them through now. And not because of notability, but because, as I've had to say every time we go around this, people are writing articles which are untrue. Mangoe (talk) 14:37, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

• In any case, it seems obvious to me from the discussion above that one of the cruxes of the dispute is whether databases can be used as sources to establish notability under GEOLAND, so that should be one of the primary questions that gets asked, separately from everything else. It's a simple, straightforward thumbs-up thumbs-down question that would cut through a lot of the disputes above. --Aquillion (talk) 16:20, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  Define "database".

  We do have a couple of editors who are firmly committed to the principle that databases are never SIGCOV. But:

  • See User:WhatamIdoing/Database article, which I wrote from a single database entry and is longer than a third of Wikipedia articles. If you can write that much content, it's SIGCOV.
  • See https://omim.org/entry/613093, which contains more paragraphs of prose than most Wikipedia articles (and densely cited, too).

  I think this is one of those things in which not every database is equal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

  Also, as has appeared ad nauseam in AfD discussions following NSPORTS22, some editors can classify almost any source they don't like as a database (or failing that, as a primary source). Ingratis (talk) 17:17, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Have we gotten anywhere here?

Discussion seems to have petered out, and maybe it's just me but it seems like it has been so diffuse as to not get us anywhere. Do we have any sort of conclusion? Mangoe (talk) 14:38, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

I think the conclusion is zip. 2 although started out as being ok, the naysayers who arrived pooped it as it wasn't tough enough. Then we have gone down the rabbit hole of legally recognised national list which has been argued profusely but without a leg to stand on that it would work. Then we have the delights of what id notable and what isn't, and should we just have lists for settlements that are not notable. And thats without even discussing Administrative areas......15:34, 18 May 2026 (UTC) Davidstewartharvey (talk) 15:34, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

What I got from the discussion:

• We rather digressed from "What are some replacement GEOLAND options that we can put forward to the wider community for discussion at an RFC?" to discussing, at length, the merits of individual options and our personal preferences.
• I think that there is some agreement (I am not going to use the c word) that the current GEOLAND is not helpful because of the "legally recognized" constraint and its many possible interpretations.
• The other sticking point that became apparent to me is the intersection between WP:N and WP:PAGEDECIDE, so it is not only "Is the village Tinyville notable?" but also "Should we have a page on the village Tinyville?" - and again, opinions differ quite widely.

I should say that I don't have a particular axe to grind on exactly what kinds of places GEOLAND should cover, only that it would be nice if it were a lot clearer about what kinds of places were notable. Whether that be really constrained so that only, say, tens of thousands of places in the world were covered by the SNG, or quite unconstrained so that millions of places in the world were covered by the SNG. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:06, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

I think that expanding User:SunloungerFrog/sandbox/GEOLAND notability and sources supplement is the next thing we should try. Maybe it won't work, but probably it would help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:39, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

My plan remains to just try to synthesise what people have said about the various options and put forward any that are flyers here. Yeah, the splurging of the discussion along a whole load of different avenue (with myself as guilty as anyone) doesn't quite help that, but that's what I intend. FOARP (talk) 15:03, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Passing loops

I came across a bunch of articles about Russia that say they are a rural locality (a passing loop). Examples are 31 km and other contents of Category:Rural localities in Kemerovo Oblast. Is there anything notable about a passing loop on a railroad? Melozone crissalis (talk) 22:42, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I would say only if it meets the GNG. Donald Albury 00:48, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

It looks like User:Nikolai Kurbatov has been mass creating these stubs, with over 1000 in the past week. –dlthewave ☎ 02:26, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

The villages and settlements seem notable, but I don't see the importance of the passing loops. Melozone crissalis (talk) 02:31, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

The settlements are hit-or-miss. Sklyanka appears to be a single farm with a population of 9 and no sign of legal recognition or GNG-level notability. Even the more populous villages just have statistics copied from the census and two data aggregation sites which aren't usually considered reliable. –dlthewave ☎ 02:48, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Another issue is that the coordinates are being pulled from MapData.ru example which only lists locations to the nearest minute (~1 mile) instead of komandirovka.ru example which uses 0.0001-second precision. Neither source is great, but I think it's reasonable to ask that the more precise one be used. –dlthewave ☎ 03:51, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

So, this is exactly the phenomenon that people keep telling us isn't happening, or was only the activity of a few editors in the past....FOARP (talk) 15:28, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

This is a settlement (it has a street and is visible on Google Maps), it is legally recognized (census data is available). Therefore, it passes WP:GEOLAND. Kelob2678 (talk) 06:56, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

What counts as "legally recognized" is still being debated (see above), but census tracts by themselves are not accepted as confering legal recognition. Looking at the Google satellite view for the coordinates for Sklyanka, I see this, which looks to me like a couple of adjacent farmyards. I certainly want to see more than a census report establishing that Sklyanka is a legally recognized settlement. Donald Albury 14:26, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Why is inclusion in the census not enough? I think it is always enough unless there is evidence that the place is not actually a settlement, here we have confirmation from Google Maps that it is, and Sklyanka is also included in the OKTMO. Kelob2678 (talk) 18:45, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:GEOLAND states, Census tracts, abadi, and other areas not commonly recognized as a place (such as the area in an irrigation district) are not presumed to be notable. Also, if the class of division is not notable (e.g. townships in certain US states) its members are not notable either, even though technically recognized in law. A place having a name does not make it notable. A place being listed in a census does not make it notable. We do not have a good working definition of what "legally recognized" means in every country, but I argue that having a name and being listed in a census does not meet our standard of "legally recognized" anywhere. What reliable sources have you found that specify what Sklyanka's legal status is? What reliable sources have you found that tell us anything about Sklyanka beyond that nine people live there? Donald Albury 20:10, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

I don't really see how it is relevant to this case, unless it can be shown that these settlements in the Russian census are akin to abadis, which I don't think is the case. Sklyanka is legally recognized because it is included in the Russian Classification of Territories of Municipal Formations. In addition to the 2010 census, we also have 2002 census that says it had a population of 29 people back then. Presumably, there are similar data from previous Soviet censuses. Kelob2678 (talk) 20:20, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

When they are listing single buildings, railway stations, and individual farms with a population that never rises above 2, yes, these are like Abadis. FOARP (talk) 09:30, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Our article on abadi says that 23% of them are non-residential. I see no evidence that no one lives in the places that are listed in the Russian census. Low population now may be due to depopulation, and more people lived there in the 20th century. Kelob2678 (talk) 16:53, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

"A growth of uninhabited rural localities was recorded in Russia. The 1989 census registered 9000 such localities, 13 000 was registered by the 2002 census, and 19 000 by the 2010 census. The number of uninhabited localities grew by 48% in the last inter-census period. The number of rural localities in Russia dropped by 8500 in the period between 2002 and 2010. This happened because many rural localities were included into cities, towns and urban-type settlements or were liquidated by the decision of local authorities by the reason of the natural loss and migration outflow of the population to other areas. According to the data of the last, 2010 census, there were 134 000 inhabited rural localities in Russia." - Rural Youth in Russia: Their Status and Prospects for Development, Mukhanova, Maria N., Eastern Europe Countryside, 2014

So the census clearly does include place that have been uninhabited long term, as well as many places that are low population with no evidence of actually having been villages, but which are instead individual buildings and farms. FOARP (talk) 20:19, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Right, I was wrong to say that there are no places in which no one lives, but presumably all of them were inhabited in the past, which in all cases I saw in AfD is backed by the census data. Kelob2678 (talk) 21:10, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

“Inhabited” in many cases by the population of a single farm, house, or business. These location do not need to have ever been villages.

This is exactly the same as Abadi. FOARP (talk) 21:35, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia:Editing policy#Mass page creation, which is not permitted without approval. User:Nikolai Kurbatov must stop creating thousands of articles in bulk without discussing it. I am seeing articles like Sarantuy with very small populations where satellite imagery indicates it is only a couple homesteads. This is NOT automatically notable. Existence in a census does not mean it passes GEOLAND and should have a standalone article. — Reywas92^Talk 20:21, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Sarantuy is also included in some local encyclopedia, so we have even more information than standard census data. Kelob2678 (talk) 20:23, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

They already had in the past their mass creation redirected, and a strong warning issued. Apparently, they decided that enough time passed, and nobody remembers it anymore. Ymblanter (talk) 09:46, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

This is always the problem with our bar on mass-creation. It doesn't apply to the articles already created and there's basically no consequences for breaking it. FOARP (talk) 15:29, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

I can't help but notice that their latest mass creation spree ended abruptly when this discussion was opened. There may need to be harsher consequence than "They've stopped, case closed, no action." –dlthewave ☎ 17:31, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

Only option would be to take it to ANI and propose something similar to the topic ban that ended Lugnut's mass creations - "Lugnuts is banned from creating articles that comprise less than 500 words, including converting redirects into articles". BilledMammal (talk) 07:50, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

WP:NOTTHERAPY obviously, but it would be far better to set down some actual rules about what can and can't be created. EDIT: it’s also very clarifying to see people making exactly the argument that we were told again and again that no-one makes: that GEOLAND confers near-automatic notability on single-building locations with single-figure populations just so long as they are recorded in a census as such. EDIT2: and yes, we discussed all of this three years ago, but any effort to do anything about it then was stymied. FOARP (talk) 08:02, 30 April 2026 (UTC)

Just to close this out, the following articles were deleted in the clean-up here:

AFDs

• Averinsky
• Razdolnoye, Zabaykalsky Krai
• Khaykan
• Uryupino, Zabaykalsky Krai
• Gidatlinsky Most
• Belovskaya, Vologda Oblast
• Kochurovo
• Yepifanovskaya
• Nechalovo
• Teplino
• 15 km, Kemerovo Oblast
• 13 km
• Uletka
• 1417 km
• 24 km Gorkovskoy zheleznoy dorogi
• 210 km
• Khryapnik
• Peski, Konyshyovsky District, Kursk Oblast
• 20 Let Oktyabrya
• Bezverkhovo, Yaroslavl Oblast
• Khokhlovka, Fatezhsky District, Kursk Oblast
• Baraban, Kursk Oblast
• Balychevo
• Kuzmino, Sudislavsky District, Kostroma Oblast
• Ivanovka, Polevskoy Selsoviet, Kursky District, Kursk Oblast
• Alekseyevka, Selsoviet Artyukhovsky, Oktyabrsky District, Kursk Oblast
• Razdolye, Kurchatovsky District, Kursk Oblast
• Kuzmino, Sudislavsky District, Kostroma Oblast
• Kalinin, Kursk Oblast
• Tyoply, Kursk Oblast
• Nizhneye Bartenevo
• Verkhneye Bartenevo

PRODS

• 147 km
• 137 km
• 96 km
• 2826 km
• 2647 km
• 2797 km
• 538 km
• 18 km
• Razezd 15 km
• 115 km
• 123 km
• 169 km
• 239 km
• 251 km
• 324 km
• 12th km
• 1490 km
• 2812 km
• 1205 km

For completeness the the 5km, Perm Krai AFD was closed as no-consensus. And this clean-up, which involved multiple editors for weeks, was a small clean-up by the standards of this field. And as always, we only really looked at the lowest of low-hanging fruit here. FOARP (talk) 19:37, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Notability vs PAGEDECIDE

WP:PAGEDECIDE provides us with context over whether a (presumptively) notable topic should be covered as a standalone article, or as a part of a larger article. Unlike WP:N, that decision can consider the sourcing that is available now, and SNGs can be used to inform that decision.

Perhaps as a complement to revising the notability criteria in this SNG, we should consider putting before the community a proposition like "Articles about places consisting solely of statistical and geographic data should be redirected to a list of comparable places until non-statistical information has been added to them." If that were ratified, it would be possible to boldly redirect many mass-created place articles to a small number of lists, without either having to take them to AfD or, if the redirection is reverted, re-litigate the meaning of "legally recognized".

This doesn't preclude any of the other measures being discussed (we might not actually want a list of every selo in Russia, for instance), but it might relieve some of the tension in the current process and make it easier to reach consensus on what criteria make a place notable. Choess (talk) 06:08, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

My first thought is that this would remove almost all the statistical and geographical data, which is what some people are coming here to look up. For example, I frequently go an article about a place to find out where it is, what subdivisions, etc it's in and/or what the population is). It would also likely see the redirection of places like Remlap, Alabama, even though that has a sentence that is unarguably not statistical information (origin of the name) and one that is arguable either way ("It was first named as a CDP in the 2020 Census which listed a population of 2,624."). Thryduulf (talk) 10:45, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I think that etymological sentence would save it, but articles like that had crossed my mind. What if we limited it to "For countries without an established SNG for places..."? I'm using "list" in the broad sense: for things like the Russian selo stubs, I'd expect a table with name, coordinates, and population at the two censuses, probably not that different than the Excel sheet of the original source.

I think this is inferior to developing country-specific guidelines within the SNG, but it's going to take a very long time to complete that process. If we don't do something pragmatic to deal with mass-creation of permastubs for every isolated farm in an Eastern European census, I think it's likely we'll have a well-attended, bitterly-fought RfC in the NSPORTS style that will end in a community consensus breaching the principle that notability is independent of current sourcing. I'm open to other ideas, but I don't think the status quo is sustainable over the period it will take to develop worldwide guidance. Choess (talk) 15:29, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Your first paragraph highlights how important defining terms like "list" and "non-statistical information", and what is expected of a merge if there is to be any hope of a consensus.

I still think the answer to the problem of mass creation lies with changes to the rules and enforcement of rules regarding mass creation, not changes to notability guidelines of each set of subjects that gets mass created. Thryduulf (talk) 21:53, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think that would improve things. It's essentially "Hi, I'd like to repeal Wikipedia:Notability#Article content does not determine notability for geographic articles, okay?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:48, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

No, I don't think it is; the proposal is framed so that no one has to surrender any claims to notability by assenting. It doesn't propose to delete data. It doesn't require that you produce IRS SIGCOV written by a person who secretly loathes the subject to turn a redirect back into an article. You just have to have something to say about the place that wasn't pulled from a census spreadsheet, and hence doesn't fit into the table. And if no one is ready to do that for a while, the census data is in fewer places and easier to keep updated (see and ). Choess (talk) 04:39, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

"You just have to have the current article content (e.g., whether it says something about the place that wasn't pulled from a census spreadsheet) determine whether it can have a separate, stand-alone article". Which contradicts WP:ARTN, which says that the current article content doesn't determine whether it can have a separate, stand-alone article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:05, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

WP:ARTN does not include the words "separate", "stand-alone", or anything related to them. It states that "Article content does not determine notability". I agree. WP:PAGEDECIDE says that "...at times it is better to cover a notable topic as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context (and doing so in no way disparages the importance of the topic)."

Maybe my proposal isn't prudent, but I don't think it breaches our guidelines. Can you suggest a situation when you would find it appropriate to redirect a notable topic to a page about a broader topic, so I have a point of contrast to understand your viewpoint? Choess (talk) 04:29, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

This doesn't attack the fundamental issue, which is that mass creation of these articles is a problem because it adds a lot of misinformation to WP. On one level (to go at this from a US angle) I might have suggested taking the lists in each US county of the cities, towns, and unincorporated places, and adding the coordinates and census data. The problem is that these lists already contain the same misinformation that's in the separate articles: that so-and-so is an "unincorporated community," when it is nothing of the kind. So it's really a license to mass-create misinformation that we don't forbid. What's happening now is that, on the one hand, deletion of incorrect articles eventually tends to lead to delinking (unfortunate) or removal (the desirable response) as cleanup; on the other, people reflexively apply to "merge to higher level" AtD which I want to strike, and the article gets redirected to the list which still has the incorrect claim in it; so that redirect then needs to be deleted anyway and the entry removed. So I'm not seeing this necessarily helping at all. Mangoe (talk) 12:17, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

That seems like an easy fix: properly describe title the lists to make it clear that this may or may not be a coherent community. I was thinking about this last night and pulled out my hard-copy Delorme Atlas of Maine. They use the evasive term "locality", which doesn't imply a community. I think the other advantage of a list like that (at least in a US context) is that it's a better repository for the kind of information you pull up on your deep dives trying to determine notability than AfD. e.g., if someone sees a "Goose Hat, Nebraska" postmark on Great-Grandma's letter and looks that up here, they will have a better idea of what it was (or wasn't) if we redirect to an anchor on a list item that says: "Goose Hat: post office 1894-1927. Railroad junction on CB&Q" than if they just hit a redlink.

Outside the US, I'm not very convinced of the overall encyclopedic value of a list of all the official census tracts in some region of Siberia or Khuzistan or whatever. I don't intend this proposal to foreclose debate on their notabilities. But we have not been able to get a durable consensus to remove this material wholesale after mass creation, so there is a de facto, if not a de jure "license to mass-create". I think having this data in tables under a piece of boilerplate that says "these are census tracts, many of which are not associated with populated communities" is less misleading to our readers than having it spread across a galaxy of stubs.

From observation of the NSPORTS debate, I think the sheer number of stubs also raises the emotional temperature (on both sides): editors feel like they can't keep up with the mass creation or mass deletion of stubs and I think that pushes them into very dogged, hard-line positions. I am hopeful that being able to consolidate articles without loss of information would make the overall notability debate somewhat less fraught. Choess (talk) 16:27, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

"Populated places without legal recognition"

I'm currently in a losing battle at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randalls Bluff, Mississippi. The criteria for "legally recognized" is unclear, and in my opinion, would wipe out thousands of small communities that had people living there. I'm not here soliciting votes in the AfD, just want others to recognize that many tiny communities like Randalls Bluff, Mississippi...which had small populations and a post office...face removal from the project. Thanks for your input. Magnolia677 (talk) 10:42, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

A deeper dive...

There was a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)/Archive 12#Confusing wording of NPLACE, and from that, User:Mangoe then added the following to the guideline: "Settlements are not to be inferred from the presence of post offices, schools, churches, or other such facilities, as these often are found in isolation."

Was there a consensus to make this addition? Magnolia677 (talk) 13:51, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I followed that discussion, and I certainly agreed with that addition. It is a simple fact that post offices, schools, churches, railroad stations, country stores, and other such facilities have sometimes been isolated from any populated places. For examples, Dudley Farm was the site of both a post office and a general store, but it is not notable as a populated place. It was a farm which has happened to be preserved and made into a park and designated a historic place and landmark. I know of a number of churches that are located at a crossroads, but the nearest other buildings are farm houses and buildings on neighboring farms. They do not make a their location a populated place. Country schools were also sometimes isolated from any occupied places. Determining whether names that appear on maps or on lists of post offices, schools, etc. are actually populated places requires work. Donald Albury 16:45, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

No, there was not consensus. It is not accurate to claim that a settlement cannot be inferred from a medieval church. There were no trains or motor vehicles in the middle ages, so churches would not have been placed in "out of town" locations intended to be visited by such means. An isolated church, such as the ruins of an abandoned medieval stone church, is considered potential evidence of a depopulated or shifted medieval village: and other sources that come up on a search for "lost village"+"isolated churches" in Google Books and the Internet Archive. The word "churches" should be removed from the guideline or carefully qualified. James500 (talk) 17:21, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. For historical settlements no longer in existence, I would expect that these would absolutely require reliable sources to establish both what they were and their notability independent of whatever remains such as a church or a graveyard left behind. IMO, these should not be given any sort of automatic pass for notability under GEOLAND. I could see some separate guidance about historical places might be helpful, but the main thrust of GEOLAND becomes meaningless if it tries to address every sort of populated place that ever existed. older ≠ wiser 17:59, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. This guideline is written in such a way that, if an archaeologist wrote "I infer the presence of a former settlement here from this isolated church" in a book, we might not be able to use that book. I think that is clearly a step too far. James500 (talk) 18:11, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Creating an entire article based on a single inference I think is not warranted. older ≠ wiser 18:37, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Both of these can be true:

• The existence of the church implies the existence of a settlement.
• It's not necessarily a good idea to create an article based on so little.

Still, it's probably a bad idea for a Wikipedia guideline to make that statement, because that statement is factually wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

The point is that the existence of an isolated post office, church, school, etc. without other evidence is not sufficient to establish the notability of a place, and I think that any guideline should reflect that. Donald Albury 14:30, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

We would have to look at the specific situation, but there's a huge difference between a Wikipedia editor saying "This church implies the existence of a settlement" and an archaeologist saying the same thing. That would be a reliable secondary source describing a settlement, which is the kind of sourcing we can actually use to build an encyclopedia. We don't use primary sources to create settlements out of whole cloth. –dlthewave ☎ 19:01, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes exactly. And is there anything to say about the settlement other than it was near some particular church? I mean, if there is something substantive to say about the place, that is great. But do we really need a separate article that says in sum "archeologists/historians infer that there was a settlement near this church? older ≠ wiser 19:17, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

This is also an issue of accuracy, not just notability. There's often so little information available about a place that we can't even accurately describe what it was. For example in the Western US, the railroads often built stations every 10 miles or so to serve dispersed rural populations because that was about how far folks could reasonably travel in a day to deliver crops and livestock or pick up supplies. They usually had a grain elevator, sometimes a post office and general store (because that's where the train dropped off the mail) but rarely anything that could be described as a settlement. We've spent vast amounts of time and effort cleaning up after editors who assumed that these were "unincorporated communities" because there was a name on the map and a post office. –dlthewave ☎ 19:34, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

And what the heck is "legal recognition"? A post office? Mention in an atlas? Just today at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oscar, Pennsylvania, the nominator said that "unincorporated communities are rarely notable", and then cited this section of the guideline! Well look out East Los Angeles, California, you may not be notable. This entire section is confusing and unnecessarily wordy. It would be nice to return to when proof of people having lived there meant notability. Magnolia677 (talk) 18:32, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

How exactly does Oscar fit into all of this? We're talking about populated places, not post offices. –dlthewave ☎ 19:11, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Many of the "post offices" articles were originally accurately described as "unincorporated communities" before someone went in and inaccurately changed them to solely be "post offices", despite evidence of other functions of a community present. In the case of Oscar, a store was present and it has been described as a "settlement" Alexander White built in 1828 the first gristmill, and in 1832 a sawmill, both on Pine creek, between the present sites of Oscar and Pine Furnace settlements. Katzrockso (talk) 19:42, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not aware of such systematic changes, but if the article as written was about the post office, that is what it should be described as. And the mere existence of a store (which often also served as the post office) by itself does not establish that there was a community of any enduring significance. At a time when there was no home delivery in a rural area, the post office was just a place where folks could come to pick up or send mail. There was no special significance to a post office, and the office often times would change locations as different persons were selected as postmaster. older ≠ wiser 19:48, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

This is even setting asides all the mines, mills, camps, logging facilities (etc. etc.) that had post offices for serving their workforces.

And yes, if all the sourcing shows is a post office, then it is inaccurate to state that there was an “unincorporated community” at the site. FOARP (talk) 06:10, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Speaking from the US POV, a 19th-century post office in a rural area did not necessarily mean a settlement. A whole "post office" could fit in a single cabinet in someone's home.

19th-century rural schools in the Western half (or two-thirds) of the continental US were usually one-room schools that were organized locally whenever there were enough kids within walking distance and someone was available to teach. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about teaching school in a rural area: there were a handful of kids, and the school was just a little wooden building on an empty bit of land. Years ago, I talked to someone who attended such a school. He said that the school building was on the edge of one farmer's field, and one of the farming families had a daughter who taught there. One time, some of the big boys wanted a few days off from school, so they burned it down. Their punishment was having to rebuild it, which I believe took them just a few days. In such cases, such a school implied the non-existence of a village/town, because if there had been anything like a small town nearby, the school would have been built in the town. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Similarly, railroads in the Western US would build stations every 10 miles or so to serve dispersed rural populations. Even though they were shown on maps in the same typeface as towns, they were typically just a grain elevator, corral and perhaps a general store and post office.

I think the root of the problem is a misunderstanding of how rural populations work. Particularly in agricultural areas around the world, people don't live in any sort of town or settlement but services still exist to support them and the census still divides them into units for counting purposes. –dlthewave ☎ 02:58, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

I just voted to merge, it was a hamlet as per ref I just added to the AFD. This is another why GEOLAND needs to be amended.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:09, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

What is largely forgotten here is that just because a place is "notable" according to a guideline, there still needs to be sources about it in order to write an article. That eliminates places that are no more than names on a map. Also, the example that prompted this discussion demonstrates again that "legally recognised" is not a useful criterion. Railway halts or schools in the middle of nowhere usually are "legally recognised". Zero^talk 14:40, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunately that requirement is rarely enforced until we have thousands of factually incorrect articles. New Page Patrol rubber stamps geographic articles as long as there's an "official" government source such as a census or geographic database, and Wikiprojects often defend them as well. At AfD, it's often claimed that sources don't have to actually be in the article (which begs the question of why the article creator wouldn't include them if they've checked) and I've seen WP:NEXIST invoked with no evidence of sources actually existing. This is exactly what we saw with the WP:NSPORTS debacle, which wasn't resolved until we added an explicit sourcing requirement to the SNG. –dlthewave ☎ 15:36, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

• It's simply wrong to state, even in the medieval era, that religious establishments were not located outside settlements. Numerous chapels, shrines, monasteries etc. were explicitly located outside settlements, either to serve travellers or soldiers, or because of a supposed miracle at their location, or because their remoteness was the point of their existence, or for other reasons.

The same goes for post-offices and schools.

And yes, there was a consensus to this effect that can be seen from the discussion where most contributors agreed that the existence of a settlements can't just be inferred from the presence of a post-office when post-offices often were simply part of a general store located at a cross-roads outside of a settlement. Not every consensus need be in an RFC or with a formal close. FOARP (talk) 21:24, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

• I've been out of contact for the weekend so I'm coming this a bit late, but I have several things to say here:

First, the issue of of inference as stated in my change is a simple matter of fact. All of these different facilities we have found, over and over, appearing in isolation and away from settlements. In the case of rail stations and post offices in the US, we've explained many times now that operational considerations often place those in isolation. I do not feel this is a contestable point. I suspect this may or may not be true in other countries, but expect it is likely.

Second, if a "reliable" source is stating that a settlement can be so inferred, from my perspective that casts doubt upon its reliability. This is a fundamental problem with GNIS and other such national gazetteers, particularly as we have tended to reword them in ways that themselves are inferential (e.g. the pattern of translating GNIS's "populated place" as "unincorporated community") because the phrases are, as a rule, not synonymous, even before the inaccuracy issues in the classifications. It has also be a running issue with placename books, and yes, there has been a certain degree of misstating their classifications as well.

Third, in the case of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randalls Bluff, Mississippi we have one of those turn-of-the-century local histories, which as I rule we have accepted as authorities in spite of the fact that, in the larger scheme of things, they are essentially amateur works. The thing that makes we wary in this case is that the population figure leads me to be cautious because it's hard for me to see where the author could have gotten this number: I've looked at the census report, and they do not appear to report counts to that level of detail. But to me it's an argument over sourcing, and if we accept that source, then there's no inference going on. So I'm not seeing the relevance here.

Fourth, the case of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oscar, Pennsylvania is more germane, but fundamentally the argument there is over the lack of sourcing except for the name, the location, and the existence of the post office. Given that it sits on a rail line, it being an isolated station with a post office is not out of the question. Until someone can come up with better sourcing, I see no reason to claim this to be settlement. Mangoe (talk) 04:17, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

What are you talking about "amateur works"??? One of the sources, A History of Mississippi--which lists Randalls Bluff as one of the notable towns of the county--was written in 1891 by Robert Lowry, who became governor of Mississippi. "Amateur works". Oh please! Magnolia677 (talk) 10:30, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger a reliable source for what is and isn't a town in California? FOARP (talk) 12:39, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Quite possibly, since he was the governor of California. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

Well as per the ref I left at the AFD, in 1907 it is was listed as a hamlet! Local historians can cloud the picture. Southend-on-Sea historian, Dee Gordon has in her book that Thomas Brothers was a sprawling department store, however images show it to be two smaller units and probably just a drapery, while there is no mention in the press at the time it was a department store. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 14:06, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

The 1890 United States census was mostly destroyed by fire. What "we" see in the census report is not what contemporary authors saw in the census report. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:55, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

...which makes their work unverifiable, but that's not the point at all here, and the focusing on the differences of opinion about one article is entirely missing the point which is right there in my comment about it here: namely, that none of this disputation is in anyway relevant to the text I added to the guideline. As soon as you're saying, "these sources document that it was a settlement", then we have stepped away from the inference that the clause rejects, and it's not applicable in this case. The Oscar, PA case is relevant because there just aren't sources beyond GNIS and Jim Forte, and in this rare instance more contemporary sources which do no more than ratify Forte's listing. The topos suggest that there was a train station there but again, that's inference. So how do you justify claiming that this was a settlement? I will continue to insist that, as it stands, it can't be justified. Mangoe (talk) 02:47, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

What do you mean, "makes their work unverifiable"? Wikipedia editors are not expected to double-check a book against the original census reports. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:52, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

I mean it makes their work unverifiable! If you want to argue that it's OK, that's up to you. And yet again, you're talking around the actual point, which is, to state it again, that inferring a settlement from a school or church or post office isn't warranted because all of those facilities (and we can up this to stores and inns too, as have found plenty of those along the way) have been commonly found in isolation outside of settlements. That's why Oscar is a problem, and how Randalls Bluff is irrelevant to this discussion, because in the latter case the only argument is about trusting the sources that claim it to be a settlement. There are no such sources for Oscar, and it needs to go entirely. Mangoe (talk) 14:35, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Unverifiable is Wikipedia jargon, no point in trying to mix up the other meaning of the word.

Something being WP:Glossary#unverifiable is against policy, but a source itself being wikt:unverifiable against other sources is not.

There are plenty of reliable sources written about documents, artifacts or places that no longer exist. Do we consider everything written about history unverifiable because nobody can go back and check if the events contemporary people wrote about actually happened? Katzrockso (talk) 15:41, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Um, yes, to the extent that the authority to which we are tracing the claim cannot be checked for accuracy? I mean, I talked to my has-a-degree-historian wife and she doesn't she the problem with what I'm saying, and so it keeps coming back to you and the others in this thread not seeing the need for some other verification, which as I also said at least a round back if not two is a fair argument to have. And again, it's beside the point about Oscar, so I really don't care to bother with this further because you keep digging at this irrelevancy. Mangoe (talk) 03:02, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

See the FAQ:

Are reliable sources required to provide a list of references?

No. Wikipedia editors should list any required sources in a references or notes section. However, the sources you are using to write the Wikipedia article do not need to provide a bibliography. Most reliable sources, such as newspaper and magazine articles, do not provide a bibliography.

So, nope: Wikipedia editors are not supposed to be checking to see whether the source cites its sources, much less fact-checking our source against its cited sources. If you go look at the cheat sheet for reliability, you will notice that our rules are about formal aspects "around" a source (e.g., is it self-published?) rather than the contents per se (Does it have the right POV? Does it cite sources that convince me that its claims are reasonable and proportionate?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:57, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

There is no general requirement that a "reliable source" must cite its sources, but there are plenty of times when we can and should look at how claims are supported by a source. One such case is when there are lots of sources for some issue and we need to decide which of them are the most reliable; in this case, for example, a source going into the issue with evidence will usually beat one that mentions it only in passing. A newspaper article by a reporter who was at the scene will usually beat one that repeats rumors. And so on. Another case where looking at a source's sources is appropriate is given by WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Zero^talk 07:38, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS explicitly warns editors away from doing this sort of "peer review". Sure, you might occasionally want to decide which among many sources are the WP:BESTSOURCES, but you should be skipping both the reporter who was at the scene (WP:PRIMARYNEWS) and the one who is repeating rumors (WP:NOTGOSSIP). Also, most editors make such decisions based on reputation (The New England Journal of Medicine is more reputable than MDPI's newest journal; The Times is more reputable than an entertainment weekly) and especially on what's free to read, rather than whether the source cites its sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

MEDRS is a special case that has its own rules for very good reasons. My comment was not intended to apply to it. In other cases, if the guidelines really say that books should be judged by their covers, good editors should ignore the guidelines. Unfortunately, a lot of the guidelines are based on false beliefs such as that academic publishers "fact check" what they publish. Zero^talk 05:46, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

According to our guidelines, editors should be judging books by their publishing processes.

(Academic publishers usually engage in post-publication fact checking, i.e., they issue corrigenda when someone brings an error to their attention.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

We can't go fact checking newspapers, sure, but Mangoe is quite right regarding the historiography. Here was a recent discussion where some checking revealed that the source was unreliable . And in other areas of history, I've been involved in cases where later sources have even cited earlier sources, but the earlier sources turned out to be spurious or wrong. The diligence with which we do this may vary, but the reliability of a source is not determined by tick box exercises. Critical handling of sources is right there in the guidelines. And sources that cite their sources are going to be better, as a rule, than sources that don't cite their sources (which sources are often either primary or tertiary). Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:08, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Of course there will be some variation in how citations in a source impact its reliability, but this is rather off-topic from the original scenario, which is more like how Aegyptiaca is no longer extant but there are many authors who have quoted it than your scenario of a work potentially not existing. Katzrockso (talk) 08:15, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

I was answering the "Wikipedia editors are not supposed to be checking" comment, which is wrong. Diligent editors should be checking. However the case I cited is not totally dissimilar. C.f. There is reputed to be a volume entitled 10 Lost Tribes in French by Counsellor Le Loyer published about 1590. I have never been able to locate a copy. from one of the sources in that discussion. Le Loyer's alleged work is no longer extant (presumably because it never existed in that case). But, of course, with ancient texts we often only have references to the work or fragments. But wait, who is talking about Aegyptiaca? Aren't we talking about the 1890 census that was lost to fire? I don't think it is helpful to compare that to the study of ancient authorities, textual reconstruction and textual criticism. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no comment here on the reliability of information that is purportedly derived from the lost census data. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:57, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

No, diligent editors should not be checking to see whether reliable sources are correctly (in the opinion of a Wikipedia editor) following the reliable source's sources. If it's reliable, then you should rely on it. Editors should not dig into the reliable source and say "Well, I think that they should have excluded all the sources funded by this company, and I think they should have included this other source, and I think someone should re-count all the beans in that bucket, because what if the reliable source didn't do it correctly?!"

In my experience (which is mostly around medical/health subjects), editors who believe that they should be vetting the reliable sources' sources are frequently engaged in POV pushing. There's nothing wrong with looking deeper so you can make sure you're not misunderstanding the material, but you shouldn't be trying to prove that the reliable source is right or wrong.

Additionally, specifically for this particular source, worrying about the original records being destroyed is misplaced. Although it's true that fire destroyed most of the original, hand-written 1890 records (see a scanned copy of one of the surviving records at newspapers.com so we all know what we're talking about), it did not destroy the many reports that had been written and distributed all over the country in the intervening years. Presumably the book mentioned in that AFD was actually relying the reports rather than the original, hand-written individual records. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, no, this is tautological nonsense. The presenting issue that set this all off in the first place is that we discovered the supposedly reliable sources (a) were being misinterpreted to a crucial degree, but also (b) were not as reliable as people expected. GNIS and GNS are the poster children for this discovery, and in the process of looking into the former we also discovered that the topo maps, which were its principal source, had the same issues, because the map editors made mistakes copying from one edition to the next, and they had inconsistent standards about what should and shouldn't have a label. And in the later versions of GNIS, they went and copied in material from sources that our checking quickly showed to be unreliable. Beyond that, the classification of "populated place" encompassed lots of things that maybe ought to be labelled on the maps (and maybe not, because again they were inconsistent about this) but which weren't and aren't settlements, so it couldn't be relied upon to identify settlements. GNS was worse from the start because as far as we have been able to ascertain, they used a lot of old materials that were always untrustworthy, because it was all they had.

So no, it's nothing like the medical case at all. And yes, you're begging the question. Did he rely on a report which I could not pry out of the census website? My answer is going to waver between perhaps and probably; but he doesn't say. Do you want to give him the benefit of the doubt? It's up to you to argue for that. But doing so is plainly giving up on the possibility of verification, which is all I ever said. He is the source, not something or someone else. And for my part I have generally trusted these histories to a fair degree; but I've rarely come across one that doesn't have a strong odor of boosterism, which makes me, and ought to make you, at least a little cautious in using them. Mangoe (talk) 11:59, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Mangoe has answered on the specifics, and that's where the interest here lies. However, on the general, If it's reliable, then you should rely on it is tautological but not helpful. All sources can be mistaken. When they are mistaken, and can be shown to be clearly in error, they are no longer reliable. They may still be generally reliable as a source, but if they are clearly and demonstrably wrong on a particular matter, they are not a reliable source for that matter at all. And all sources contain errors. Consider the widespread use of newspapers as sources on Wikipedia. Some very reliable newspapers have managed to write some articles based on completely false information. Demonstrating the article was a hoax or false is sufficient to stop using that article. We don't have to keep information in an article based on a known hoax article, simply because the newspaper is reliable. And, indeed, anyone who has been written about in a newspaper is probably aware that even pretty good articles still contain errors (often small). Nearly all the time! We should not be uncritical of sources.

POV pushing is a thing, of course. But fear of POV pushing is not a good reason to fail to be diligent in evaluation of a source. The POV pushers will try all kinds of ways to do this anyway. They will make an ad hominem argument against the writer, or they will appeal to a general assessment at WP:RSN, or indeed, they might try to argue that the writer didn't know what they were talking about. But there is no tick box exercise. We rely on editors to critically review sources, and yes, where they are unreliable on a matter (even if generally reliable elsewhere) we should have the ability to discover that and act appropriately. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 14:30, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I partly disagree. If you've got a source that you're not willing to rely on, you shouldn't be citing it as a reliable source. Use some Wikipedia:Editorial discretion, and maybe even try to persuade others that the source isn't reliable if they want to use it. But don't say out of one side of your mouth that it's a reliable source according to all of Wikipedia's usual standards and you have no actual evidence of it being wrong, and out of the other side of your mouth you just don't trust it because you can't read the original sources that your source cited. A source is either WP:RELIABLE for the claim or not. Whether you can read the original hand-written data behind the report that's behind the book is not one of the criteria the community accepts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:58, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

The reliability or otherwise of the source is determined by a critical evaluation of what the source says, not by consulting a list. Historians ask who created it, when and why it was produced, what audience it addressed, whether its claims are internally consistent and, crucially, whether their claims are corroborated (i.e. whether the sources they use check out, or whether other sources corroborate). Of course, although articles are often historical here, they are also tertiary. If we are using secondary sources, as we should be, critical evaluation of the occasion of the sources is not as important. Nevertheless, not all secondary sources are alike, and critical evaluation is still an important editor skill. I am not sure that you would really disagree with any of that, mind, as we are drifting from the specific case to a general. But I maintain that diligent editors read, check and evaluate their sources. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:47, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Then if you think that all of history is wikt:unverifiable in this sense, but we can still write plenty of statements about history in wikivoice (indeed everything becomes history at some point...), what is the issue with the 1890 census no longer being available? Katzrockso (talk) 08:09, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

And while we had our backs turned

Going through now in AfD are a series of articles on Nigerian "villages" taken from a couple of who-knows-how-reliable websites (allegedly: I suspect the real original source is GNS) and stubbed in over a very short time span back in November by a single user. Fortunately they didn't make many of them. Are we actually ever going to do something about this? Mangoe (talk) 19:10, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Nothing will happen about mass creation as long as everyone who wants something done about mass creation throws their hands up and says it's not possible to do anything about mass creation so we need to make changes to something else instead, and then do nothing when it is pointed out that their proposed changes either won't actually fix the problem they want fixing and/or will introduce other (often worse) problems instead. Thryduulf (talk) 19:23, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

I've just opened an informal discussion here to gage if this is an avenue worth pursuing Wikipedia_talk:Editing_policy#Would_something_like_WP:LLMPROD_provide_a_reasonable_course_of_action_for_dealing_with_mass-created_articles?

For what its worth I think the problem is two-fold:

1) We need to prevent future non-community approved mass-creation campaigns to stop the backlog from growing faster than we can deal with it, and maybe working on WP:MASSCREATE might help if a change gets community approval (and perhaps WP:LLMPROD gives us something to build on).

2) I don't think any such change would gain consensus were it to be applied retroactively, therefore we need to update WP:GEOLAND to give us better guidance on what to do with the likely hundreds of thousands of existing mass-created geostubs, and I think we have some reasonable proposals in the other discussion. Giulio 21:19, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, the issue is inevitably that it's always a retroactive thing because nobody seems willing or able to stop them. So I think the only thing for it is a new speedy deletion criterion against stubby place articles with no references beyond these geographic databases and similar websites. Mangoe (talk) 03:07, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

• The problem is, if you suggest any change that would place a line that would bar previous mass-creations, the people who argue in favor of database-generated stubs will inevitably say "well you say that now but if we allow this then you'll have your foot in the door, and a year or two from now, once this new red line is thoroughly accepted, someone will swing back and say hey, let's apply this to all those stubs." Which, I mean, to be fair, would happen. Once we have a clear-cut red line that has consensus, anything grandfathered in is going to be on borrowed time - we don't have the ability to irrevocably bind future hands per WP:CCC, and "this old thing wouldn't pass widely-accepted standards today, let's fix it" is always going to be a strong argument. I mean, I'm all for that compromise, don't get me wrong, but it's fair to expect that grandfathering something in will not last forever, simply because "we grandfathered this" is going to be a weak argument in any future discussions. --Aquillion (talk) 22:00, 20 May 2026 (UTC)
  • Could we define a period of time that it will be grandfathered for? If we say that it will be grandfathered in for three or five years, then that gives everyone a clear timeframe in which to fix the issues with the articles, and makes it harder for people who want to apply the new criteria to the old articles before the grandfathering expires to do so, as the argument "We agreed on a three/five year grandfathering window, what has changed that means we need to do this now rather than when it applies?" is a strong one. BilledMammal (talk) 02:03, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

    Honestly I have to oppose any grandfathering. The presenting problem is accuracy, not notability; the guideline only figured into things because it encouraged people looking at anything like a tabulation of places as a list of notable settlements, especially if the list came from the government. People generated lots of stubs that weren't true, and they will stay untrue if they are grandfathered in, until someone gets around to reviewing them and putting them up for deletion, which is already a lot of work to do and which makes other people do work checking the nominator's work, and then some people will come along and ignore the inaccuracy issue and push for redirect/upmerge as on the principle that AtDs are always preferable to deletion even if they serve to preserve the inaccurate claim that set the whole thing going. I can't keep doing this forever, and I'm finding myself burning out over and over again, and I've barely started Illinois after the Indiana slog that took over a year, and there are still plenty of states that haven't seen any systematic review. We're doing nobody a favor by forcing this labor on whoever is left willing to go through thousands of articles just because the articles in question are older. I really don't care if they were created under assumptions that proved to be false; we had better not being doing that just to assuage the egos of people who might not be around anymore to care; and if they do care, well, sorry, but for the sake of the encyclopedia, they need to go, and be recreated so that one person does the research instead of seven or eight. Mangoe (talk) 20:46, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

    Without grandfathering any proposal will not achieve consensus. Whatever your or my opinions on whether grandfathering is a good or bad thing there are enough editors who believe it to be a good thing that there will not be a consensus to the contrary. Thryduulf (talk) 20:56, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

    Absolutely no to the idea that the 1000 articles that Kotbot dumped onto WP on some day in 2009 are in some way more valid than articles created by a human being later. FOARP (talk) 21:23, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

    I wonder if it would be more productive to discuss what questions we'd like to ask the community in a multi-part RfC, instead of trying to come up with a single airtight proposal as a committee. I would strongly opposed grandfathering but I think it would be a good thing to have consensus on, and including it as a separate question would avoid creating an unintentional poison pill. –dlthewave ☎ 22:08, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

@Thryduulf - Nothing will happen about mass creation as long as everyone who wants something done about mass creation throws their hands up and says it's not possible to do anything about mass creation so we need to make changes to something else instead so when we had a dedicated discussion about mass-creation, why was your top preference literally for “no change”? Where were your proposals?

I and many of the people supporting changes to GEOLAND *ALSO* supported doing something about Mass Creation. The people on this page - especially Mangoe - are some of the people doing the absolute most to combat negligent mass creation on this project and it is very unfair to them to imply otherwise.

Here’s some quick ones for you: which negligent mass-creator have you led efforts to deal with? Which mass-creation clean-up did you volunteer in? Who did you bring to ANI for mass-creation? Which ARBCOM cases on this issue did you participate in? Which way did you !vote on either of the LUGSTUBS cases? What substantive proposals have you created to address it? FOARP (talk) 20:39, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Disregarding the needlessly offensive personalisation, IIRC I opposed the changes to mass create as I believed that on balance, they would cause more harm to the project than the status quo and/or would not achieve the desired aims. Regarding LUGSTUBS, I chose not to participate in a witchhunt and chose to oppose the deletion of articles without determining that those articles actually should be deleted.

My proposal is below. Thryduulf (talk) 21:18, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

I found those stubs by searching "village" in the NPP Browser. This seems like a good resource for catching these early, and I'd like to keep an eye on how New Page Patrol handles them. –dlthewave ☎ 20:20, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

The real solution which is also what people intuitively think, and what Wikipedia / an encyclopedia is about which is ARTICLES, is that when someone is creating several articles, if there is some substantial unique custom work on the article by the creator, it's OK from that standpoint, and if not, not. And turning stats into sentences doesn't count. So attempts to define this by numerical "mass creation" criteria always will fall short. Probably trying to put what what's in the first sentence of my post into a guideline criteria would be a real solution to mass creation. And also prevents using this SNG as a back door to mass creation.

The other conflicting factor is that "notability" is the term used for the overall "should this article exist?" decision, which, while ostensibly only applying wp:notability guideline criteria, in reality includes other criteria which are not in the notability guidelines. Such as amount of unique custom work done on the article, real world prominence / impact, and degree of compliance with wp:not, and avoidance of mass creation. But the notability guidelines are written as if the only criteria is whether the subject meets notability criteria. If we ever could acknowledge how wp:notability actually works we could make more progress. North8000 (talk) 20:25, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

• I'm also finding Iranian village stubs that were deleted in the 2021 batch, re-created with census/GEOnet sources and patrolled by NPP without comment . –dlthewave ☎ 15:28, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

  The NPP editor who contributed in the RFC told us that they at least weren’t even bothering patrolling GEO articles. FOARP (talk) 21:50, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

  That was me. And, yes, I still, generally, don't choose to patrol articles about places when I do NPP things. That is principally because, given an article about {some small geographical location in a country that I don't know much about} that is thinly sourced, if I "mark as reviewed", then there's a good chance that an anti-gazetteerist will tut at me for permitting a non-notable place to pollute the encyclopedia, and if I do something else (mark for AfD or move to draft) then there's a good chance that a pro-gazetteerist will tut at me for excluding a clearly notable place from the sum of human knowledge. One of my aims in life is to reduce opportunities for people to tut at me, so I skip over geographical articles. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Censuses are not lists of inhabited villages

Someone's linked to the Iranian census enumerator's guide on the abadi page, and it make's for interesting reading. Particularly this section from page 49 of the PDF (page 59 of the pagination) which says:

"In this census, a settlement is defined as a set of one or more interconnected places and lands (both agricultural and non-agricultural) located outside the boundaries of cities and having an independent registered or customary boundary. Accordingly, not only villages, but also farms, coffee houses, mines, railway stations, etc. that have independent registered or customary boundaries are also considered settlements."

The thing is I don't think the Iranian census is very unusual in this. We can also see that the Russian census has railway stations and so-forth as "settlements". The idea has gone around that the Iranian census is unreliable - I think this is wrong. The Iranian census is reasonably reliable for the thing it is designed to be reliable for. It just was never intended to be used as a list of "villages". No census is AFAIK. I have not been able to find a similar guide for the Russian census, but instead this (wiki library access needed) very helpful article on so-called "Rural settlements with no population" which states (p.179, second para) that:

"A separate category for RSs with no population was first introduced into the All-Russia Census of 2002. This provoked widespread belief that such RSs had never been accounted for, but this did not reflect the actual situation. As early as 1979, 2860 places listed among RSs were recorded in the introductory text to the census data as not having a permanent population. Those settlements were not listed among the existing RSs and were not included in the summary file. A similar situation was apparently observed in 1989. The statistical digest published in Tver (Kalinin) oblast in 1990 accounted for 1006 inhabited settlements without a permanent population [12]. No permanent population was recorded whatsoever in 994 localities; 12 of them had a temporary population only."

From this we can see that it is indeed true that the Russian census counts population not just for locations that have become abandoned, and not only in the post-Soviet period, but counted population for temporarily-populated places even in 1979 and before. The paper goes on to discuss on p.182, at least some such locations are temporarily occupied collections of dachas, and local governments are incentivised to maintain the status of such places as they remain under their control if they do.
OK, what about the Polish census and its list of localities?

"Locality

Definition: A settlement unit or other settled area, differentiated from other localities with a separate name, and in case of identical name - different denotation of their type. An official name of a locality is given, changed or annulled by way of regulation of a minister relevant for public administration issues. The type of locality denotes the character of the locality, developed in the settlement development process, in particular: town/city, settlement, village, farmstead, hamlet and their parts.

So Poland legally defines the name of all settlement units, but these settlement-units can be simply a farm, a hamlet, or even part of a hamlet. Not a list of villages then. The issues of the US census and GNIS are well-known and have been discussed many times also. FOARP (talk) 15:37, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm only familiar with the New Zealand census which includes Pukekohe Hospital (statistical area), Palmerston North Hospital Statistical Area, a few universities, Inlet Manukau Harbour (whatever that covers), some industrial estates, plenty of 'east, west, north, south' divisions, and a shopping centre (https://bushinncentre.co.nz/)

I don't really think there is any census that only covers proper settlements true, because the census boundaries are unique and distinct from legal boundaries and often constantly changing. Even when the census is named after a proper locality the boundaries are usually different to it. Traumnovelle (talk) 22:31, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

• I'm not sure how to make the guideline any clearer since it already excludes census tables, census tracts, adabi and CDPs frome establishing notability. It's very frustrating to see census records repeatedly being used to assert "legal recognition" at AfD with no pushback from closing admins, but then editors in community discussions claim that's not how it's meant to be interpreted. The solution that comes to mind would be to eliminate the presumption of notability by default and then allow the community to propose sources that do meet our requirements. –dlthewave ☎ 16:40, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

  The more I see, the more I am convinced that the only way to prevent this is to go with the proposal above to have separate guidelines for each country which include statements about what sources to avoid. As much as I would like a short and clear guideline, the world is just too complex for that to work, and there is no way that removing the presumption of notability would gain community approval.

  The proposal to limit mass creations would help at least contain the problem and make it easier to mop up, but if someone goes at a slow enough rate that doesn't raise eyebrows for a while like the recent Iranian stubs then that won't be any help either. Giulio 16:59, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

  Whilst I’d definitely engage with the process of creating such an extensive guide, the basic fact is it’s got to have guiding principles. Whilst those guiding principles are GEOLAND, which in the face of it confers automatic notability on everywhere with some kind of status of some kind and at least one person having lived there at some point, it would just be an exercise in enabling mass-creation. FOARP (talk) 19:49, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

  I would cautiously support this as a way of addressing the concerns of editors who insist that such sources exist, while putting the burden on them to prove it. Ideally this would mirror the success of NSPORTS2022 where presumed notability is essentially eliminated, but specific SNGs can still be adopted if they're proven to be appropriate. –dlthewave ☎ 23:28, 31 May 2026 (UTC)

  "It's very frustrating to see census records repeatedly being used to assert "legal recognition" at AfD with no pushback from closing admins, but then editors in community discussions claim that's not how it's meant to be interpreted." - Indeed. It often just looks like a straight-forward bait-and-switch, where in the community discussion concerns about GEOLAND rendering literal railway stations with recorded populations of 2-3 people notable are dismissed as "straw goats" "only advanced by people seeking to discredit" the guide, and then we get AFD cases where people assert exactly that get closed as no consensus because there are "strong arguments on both sides" (EDIT: this is no criticism of the closer, who acknowledges that this is a "ridiculous" outcome imposed on them by the guide).

  A railway station described (in passing) in multiple sources as a railway station, is a railway station. The fact that Russia has a class of "settlement" for railway stations is neither here nor there because Russia doesn't require somewhere even to be populated permanently to be a "settlement".

  I'm really tired of this discussion where we pretend that GEOLAND doesn't have the effect of rendering minimally-populated non-villages, including individual buildings and railway/farm facilities, notable. A straight-forward reading of its wording say the opposite, let alone all the AFDs where it's cited that way. It feels like the people who dismiss this point are just having a laugh at the people who have struggled endlessly with this issue. FOARP (talk) 08:43, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  Which is why in the workshop i proposed that settlement has to be recorded as a village, town or city. That was pooped on by editors who want a massive what is a legal settlement table. That just won't work in principle. It needs to be simple and concise. Whst type of settlement it is, and evidence to back that up that it is just what we say it is. The problem is people don't want that because they don't want just "a is a village in b country, has a pop of 16 and a well". Well sorry but if that village passed the legal table plan it would have to be an article. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 09:26, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  Personally, I think that "recorded as a city, town or village" is a decent principle. I do think that there would need to be something on a country-by-country basis in addition, to help with situations like "Ruritania has huge settlements called polis and big settlements called oppidum; any settlement that isn't a polis or an oppidum is called a villaggio" and villaggio includes both small settlements that equate to what would be termed villages elsewhere, but also train halts, coffee shops and isolated farmsteads. To avoid the problem where an editor takes the incorrect maximalist approach and says "Villages are villagios, so all villagios are villages, so I'll work on creating an article for every villaggio in Ruritania". Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 09:55, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  There would also need to be something for "Country has massive settlements called cities, large settlements called towns, medium-sized settlements called villages, and small settlements called hamlets." A incorrect minimalist approach would say that hamlets are not villages and so must be deleted even though they equate to what would be called a village elsewhere. Similarly for a different country that classifies as "Class I", "Class II", "Class III" and "Class IV". None of those are "cities", "towns" or "villages" so none are notable. And Country 3 which has only "City" and "village" with the latter including things that would be called towns and things that would be called farmsteads elsewhere. Basically, this can't work without a per-country guide. Thryduulf (talk) 10:18, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  @SunloungerFrogI would be fine with this. Yes, ultimately it's non-great from my point of view that we'll still get a load of articles about Villagios that are just "San Redmus is a village-type Villagio in the Oppidum of Unobtanium, Ruritania. In the September 1973 census it had a recorded population of 32." but this would still be better than having to endlessly fire-fight creations and recreations of articles about Fuel Research Centres and Police Academies (two recent abadi recreations).

  @Thryduulf - OK. But then you have the issue of how exactly to decide what does and doesn't get kept which brings us back round to the essential problem that this hasn't be decided and until it is decided a country-by-country approach doesn't succeed. Until we flat-out state that we draw the line at what would, to the average English-speaking-person, be termed a "village", the door is open for people to argue that Russian railway station "settlements" with a population of 2 are automatically notable.

  If Country X has a Class Y of something that includes villages but also includes substantial numbers of other things that are not-villages, we have to be clear before we start writing any detailed guide that just being in Class Y doesn't confer notability. With that I think we would have a working arrangement. FOARP (talk) 10:32, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  Having a basic, easy to understand principle that could fit in a short paragraph to give editors who don't normally edit in this topic area a vibe check of what is likely to meet the guidelines, and provide a baseline four countries/regions not yet covered by the guideline is a must, the problem is that it assumes that definitions are consistent across borders and languages. The real world is unfortunately a lot messier, so at the very least we should provide some basic translation of equivalent terms in different languages. Also some countries might use the same word to mean completely different things, for example Township (United States) is a small administrative division that at least in some jurisdictions are not presumed to be notable, while in Myanmar it is a pretty large administrative division that should likely be presumed notable, and the word has a different meaning still somewhere like South Africa, and it is just impossible to capture this complexity in a brief guideline without significant additional material. Giulio 11:22, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  Like I said, I'm OK with doing this so long as we are clear at the start what the guiding principle is: we are identifying classes of location that, in the terms used by the local authorities concerned, correspond overwhelmingly to the English-language word "village". Not police stations. Not railway-sidings. Not post offices. Not farms. Not factories. Not single buildings.

  If people agree with that then I think we could dispense with a multi-part RFC and just go straight to a single-question RFC with the "cities, towns, and villages" amendment of GEOLAND + "country-by-country guide" supplementary guide as a bundled proposal. FOARP (talk) 12:53, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  I think it is the only way forward. Legal recognised is just impossible. Take South Africa. From what I can see is that only municipalities are legally recognised. So a place like Swinburne is not legally recognised, as it come under the municipality Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality. However, under the Village, Town and City rule, there is plenty of references calling it a village, although there are also a smaller amount calling it a hamlet. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 20:24, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf - What do you think about this? Can we finally close out this discussion by holding a single-question RFC along the proposed lines? FOARP (talk) 20:46, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  You don't need my permission, but I do think that any RFC question with any chance of achieving change of any sort needs to be carefully workshopped first. Not just the general theme or goal, I mean the exact wording. It needs to be very clear on what specific changes are proposed, why and what places that are currently presumed notable no long will be. If there are any places in that last category which most people consider should be automatically notable then the proposal will almost certainly fail.

  If you want to propose "City, town or village" then explain that this means the general English language concept of a "city", "town" or "village" as applied to the United States (which is what the discussion here seems to have implicitly used) not the literal legal definitions in any one country. If settlements like Birkby, North Yorkshire with a population of 40 are deemed to be notable, be prepared to explain why similarly-sized settlements in e.g. Africa are not. Thryduulf (talk) 21:33, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

  Birkby, North Yorkshire is actually an issue. Yes it meets GEOLAND currently as it is a civil parish (smallest level of local government area so legally recognised). However I believe it was a medieval village but is now classed as a hamlet. I have raised this on the articles talk page. Basing on what the US thinks is a village, town or city has the same issues as legally recognised which again was based on what happens in the US. There are incorporated cities in the US that like Monowi, Nebraska that have extremely tiny populations. I think the main determining part would be does it exist, is there more than one reliable ref (i would say at least 5) showing it is a village, town or city and is it permanent aka, not an abadi etc. The issue with Abadi was people took that it was incorrect, as it was in a census and translates into "inhabited place". But the Persian for village is vilij. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 07:15, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

  "If you want to propose "City, town or village" then explain that this means the general English language concept of a "city", "town" or "village" as applied to the United States (which is what the discussion here seems to have implicitly used)" - I am not an American. I'm using these terms in the only way I know how, which is in the UK sense.

  The "Cities, towns, and villages" standard is what should be understood by the average English-language speaker, and is not country-specific. The question is very simply, even if country-specific guidance can be given to help meet it: "is the settlement at least a village?".

  "If settlements like Birkby, North Yorkshire with a population of 40 are deemed to be notable, be prepared to explain why similarly-sized settlements in e.g. Africa are not." - The "this place has an article but this similar place in another country does not have an article" issue is even stronger under the present GEOLAND scope where we instead defer to wildly-differing national/regional law rather than any common standard at all. As has been discussed above, South Africa lacks any legal recognition for settlements below quite large ones, whilst Russia has legal recognition for railway stations with a population of 2. This is the question we see again and again raised at AFD. FOARP (talk) 11:10, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

  BTW - my proposed RFC question here would be -

  "Should the first sentence of WP:GEOLAND be replaced with the sentence "Cities, towns and villages are typically presumed to be notable, but their status must be backed up a reliable sources", and a supplementary guide established recording consensuses as to which settlement types do and do not meet this standard?"

  Frankly, if I were someone who favours expansive coverage of villages globally, I would accept this proposal. If this proposal fails, the next proposal is inevitably going to be something a lot more similar to GNG. FOARP (talk) 12:25, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

  @Thryduulf - You asked for the exact wording. There is a specified wording provided above. I'm not asking for your permission, but I am trying to get to a point where there's a basic proposal that can finally go forward (after further discussion on here making sure as many people as possible have chipped in) with some degree of acceptance even from people who do not favour a more GNG-style approach.FOARP (talk) 13:33, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

  That still needs explanation of what you mean by "Cites, towns and villages" given that they mean different things to different people in different places. Thryduulf (talk) 14:11, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

  The ordinary meaning in English of those terms. Otherwise, if we even can't define the term "village", this leads to a very large question-mark over all the articles we have which state "XXXX is a village in YYYY with a population of ZZZZ" since apparently the main identifying information in each of these articles is apparently too vague for us even to define and they should instead say something else. FOARP (talk) 19:21, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

  My point is that you need to say, in the RFC statement, that that is the definition of the terms you are using. If you don't then different people will !vote based on different definitions and the whole thing will end up a mess. Thryduulf (talk) 20:07, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

  What is your favoured definition of these terms? FOARP (talk) 21:35, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

  Again you misunderstand me, I'm just saying that you just need to explicitly say, in the RFC statement, that "city, town and village" have "The ordinary meaning in English of those terms." Thryduulf (talk) 23:37, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

  I feel “these commonly-used English language words carry their normal meaning in English” is implicitly stated in everything we do on WP. However, this does seem like something that could simply be addressed by a Wiki or Wictionary links. Would this address your concern? FOARP (talk) 08:45, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I've tried to come up with a form of words to replace the first paragraph of GEOLAND based on this discussion, thus:

• Our general principle is that cities, towns and villages are presumed to be notable under this SNG, when backed up by reliable sources. The Geographic Names Information System and the GEOnet Names Server are not reliable to establish a place's status as a city, town or village. A supplement that sets out on a country-by-country basis which types of settlement in that country may be considered notable, and which sources are reliable for their status as cities, towns or villages, is under development, and editors are encouraged to contribute.

References

Notes

Hopefully it boils down the intent of the discussion above, but I'm sure that it will need further refinement. Question: should we do this on a draft subpage, e.g. Wikipedia talk:Notability (geographic features)/Draft/Revised GEOLAND or some such, to make it easier to collaborate on the text for new GEOLAND? I think in a potential RFC we have to present the new text for the GEOLAND subsection of the SNG as a whole, not just asking about changing the first sentence. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 09:09, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I favour ordinary, dictionary definitions of city/town/village. I don't think there is any need to be any more complicated than that, especially not as these are the terms that are widely used in our articles without the need for further explanation. FOARP (talk) 18:28, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

To me, the benefit of defining what we mean by the three types of settlement within the SNG is that (a) editors have it there on the very page they're reading, and (b) there is less room for future argument. I take it, FOARP, that in using the Wiktionary definitions, you are not concerned that this opens the door to articles about Filipino exclusive gated [communities], which is one of the ordinary, dictionary definitions of village in Wiktionary. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 18:38, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

I think any highly specific usages like that can be dealt with in the supplementary guide, where we've already decided that (because there is already consensus that) barangays don't meet our notability criteria.

At any rate we do not bother to clarify that our article about Wickham isn't about a Filipino neighbourhood when we say "Wickham (/ˈwɪkəm/) is a village". FOARP (talk) 19:17, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

It will be interesting to hear others' points of view. I'm happy to go with whatever the consensus in this thread turns out to be. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 19:30, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

If we are to go with existing dictionary definitions, I think I would prefer the Simple English ones: city, town, village. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:52, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Given how nitpicking and sidetracking many of the relevant discussions have been over the last few years on these topics I think SunloungerFrog is absolutely right to advocate that the definitions should be tightened up as above to head off as many futile rabbit holes as possible. I also support the suggestion of a draft subpage, for clarity. Ingratis (talk) 07:52, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I concure to a point. The word "permanent" is good, but defining size is an issue. We have cities in the US with populations of a handle full of people, while some of the largest villages in the UK are between 10,000 to 30,000s. The other issue is as per South Africa and France, it is the municipal area or commune that the population is recorded for, so we dont have the individual figures for the places within them. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 08:22, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

As FOARP comments, anomalies such as those you mention can be dealt with in the country-by-country lists. Ingratis (talk) 08:37, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

Why are we inventing novel definitions of city, town, and village? Traumnovelle (talk) 04:20, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

As I said above: to me, the benefit of defining what we mean by the three types of settlement within the SNG is that (a) editors have it there on the very page they're reading, and (b) there is less room for future argument. If we do not try to write down (at the expense of conciseness of the SNG, I admit) what Thryduulf has called "the ordinary meaning in English of those terms", then I think we are just storing up the kindling for future arguments. The draft definitions that I suggested are what I think is "the ordinary meaning in English of those terms". If others disagree that those are the ordinary meanings, that sort of illustrates my position that leaving the interpretation to individual editors will be problematic. As another example, I would not consider settlements "with populations of a handle full of people" (Davidstewartharvey) to be cities in the ordinary meaning of the English word city. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:47, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I was copying FOARP's phrase. I agree that being explicit about the definitions is preferable to not being, but if we don't write down what definitions me mean (even if those are vague) in the RFC statement then an RFC is almost guaranteed to end up a mess. Thryduulf (talk) 09:04, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Well we could just use the Oxford English dictionary wording for what they are:

• Village: a collection of dwelling-houses or other buildings, forming a centre of habitation in a country district; an inhabited place larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, or having a simplier organisation and administration thsn the latter.

• Town: An inhabited place which is larger than a village, contains more businesses and amenities, and typically has more complete and independent local government; now esp. one smaller than, or not officially designated, a city.

• City: a town that has been given special rights by a king/ queen or the state government

I think we should state that these should be permanent settlements that can be evidenced under one of these headings by reliable sources. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 09:16, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Quite. I don't get why we suddenly have to get all metaphysical about this. These are commonly-used English words with commonly-understood meanings. If you want to know what they mean, look in a dictionary. FOARP (talk) 10:09, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

Nothing metaphysical about a simple suggestion that we include, in the SNG, "the ordinary meaning in English" of the terms city, town and village. If that is indeed "the ordinary meaning in English" of those terms, seems to me that it should be pretty straightforward. I don't really understand why you appear to be so vehemently opposed to this, FOARP. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 05:33, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

In any case, those definitions may not be as self-evident as they may appear within the Anglosphere, bearing in mind that they have to be appropriate for global application, where the usual definition of a city seems to be "a settlement of 100,000+ inhabitants". So it would be sensible at least to state what definitions are being put forward. Also, leaving that aside (since any large town is going to be notable anyway, whether or not technically a city), there is a cutoff point below village (away from the "GNG for everything" option): it's apparently envisaged that generally speaking villages warrant their own articles but any smaller unit has either to meet the GNG or be included elsewhere, either in a list or in an article on a relevant larger settlement or higher admin unit. So it's necessary to be able to distinguish clearly between a village and a hamlet or something smaller, which the above OED definition does not help with. Ingratis (talk) 08:25, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

So it's necessary to be able to distinguish clearly between a village and a hamlet or something smaller, which the above OED definition does not help with. exactly this. It's also worth noting that which dictionary you choose can have a large impact, e.g.:

• OED:
  • A collection of dwelling-houses and other buildings, forming a centre of habitation in a country district; an inhabited place larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, or having a simpler organization and administration than the latter.
  • U.S. A minor municipality with limited corporate powers
  • A small self-contained district or community within a city or town;
  • Hamlet: [? I can't access the definition]
• Mirriam Webster: a settlement usually larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town; an incorporated minor municipality; a territorial area having the status of a village especially as a unit of local government
  • Hamlet: a small village
• Cambridge: a group of houses and other buildings that is smaller than a town, usually in the countryside:
• Oxford Learner's: a very small town located in a country area
• Longman: a very small town in the countryside
• American Heritage: A small group of dwellings in a rural area, usually ranking in size between a hamlet and a town.
  • Hamlet: A small village. In New York state, an unincorporated community that is within a town and is not a part of a village.
• Collins: A village consists of a group of houses, together with other buildings such as a church and a school, in a country area.
• Dictionary.com: a small community or group of houses in a rural area, larger than a hamlet and usually smaller than a town, and sometimes (as in parts of the U.S.) incorporated as a municipality.
  • Hamlet: a small village. British. a village without a church of its own, belonging to the parish of another village or town.

Thryduulf (talk) 10:59, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't have any good suggestions for how to define these terms, but considering that a very large part of the confusion and discussion regarding this guideline is precisely about what these terms mean, it seems remiss to not include some sort of baseline definition (I think aimed more at what is not included, rather than what these often very vaguely expansive terms might sometimes be taken to include). older ≠ wiser 10:55, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

When we use these terms in articles - and we use them in hundreds of thousands of articles - are they unclear? If they are, then why do we use them? Or could it possibly be that we use them because reliable sources use them, which really should be enough for us.

It is also quite striking to see people who have fought tooth and nail for the "Populated, legally recognized places" standard so convinced that these commonly-used, commonly-understood terms - city, town, village - are unclear.

But fine. If people don't want to have a compromise then a compromise doesn't happen and we throw it open to a multi-question RFC. FOARP (talk) 12:51, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

One thing we need to make abundantly clear is that Wikipedia editors would not be applying these definitions. Rather, we would use reliable sources that describe a place as a "village" but only if the source is using the dictionary sense (or whatever we agree on) and not something else like adabi. –dlthewave ☎ 14:12, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Unless the guideline / SNG / whatever it is does include definitions, what Wikipedia editors will do is apply such definitions as suit them best, of course. And different reliable sources use these terms differently, depending on their differing contexts. It's very unclear why FOARP is so opposed to defining the terms. Ingratis (talk) 14:48, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Exactly. And differing definitions will matter. For example the Collins dictionary definitions say villages have "such as a church and a school", which could be used to argue for the deletion of places that have only one of those, or which have a school and a mosque. This will be countered by someone citing the Cambridge definition which includes no mention of those buildings.

Several comments here state that villages are notable but hamlets aren't, what's the difference? Well a village is defined as being a settlement that is larger than a hamlet, so we need to know what a hamlet is. A hamlet is defined as being a settlement that is smaller than a village, which doesn't help us at all.

Then there are issues of different reliable sources describing the same settlement as either a village or a hamlet without defining what they mean by those terms. Thryduulf (talk) 15:06, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

And punting to whether some sources have described a settlement as a village raises a number of questions too. There are certainly many settlements that are described as villages and would stay notable, but there are just as many that have the exact same features (population, community organization, church, etc) as those that are described as villages, but just didn't happen to have someone use the right combination of words in a newspaper or government report somewhere. Katzrockso (talk) 16:00, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Do we happen to have a large number of these already described as "villages" without any source saying that's what they actually are? The answer is yes. FOARP (talk) 16:23, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Then if no one calls it a village, then it has to go through GNG. Simple as. Because some editors think its a village does not mean it is. The real world decides that. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 18:50, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Right. If no source even says it’s a village, why would we have an article calling it that? FOARP (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

As we seem to be hung up on how to define "village" and "hamlet", I suggest we drop the use of "cities, towns, and villages", and use something like,

"A populated place is presumed to be notable if, at any time in its history, it has consisted of multiple dwelling units in close proximity and non-residential structures such as schools, places of worship, stores, mills, etc."

I think the list of non-residential structures should be kept short, but should be flexible enough to be applicable world-wide. Donald Albury 16:23, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

As per previous discussions "place" is the issue. The word settlement is also an issue for editors because this could mean just 1 house and a train station. The idea of the change away from place was because of the current situation of creating articles based on census (Russia / Iran). The issue is that most people keep referring back to what a village, town or city is. Well as per the original proposal, if several reliable sources show its status, then thats enough, because it is not down to us to decide the settlements status, but what the real world term it as. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 16:53, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm concerned that this would invite editors to create "populated places" out of whole cloth by pointing to a spot on the map that has a name, a few houses and enough non-residential structures to meet the criteria. This is exactly how the whole GNIS debacle happened. –dlthewave ☎ 16:54, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Well, if we cannot agree on what it is we are defining, why not just drop the whole SNG and say GNG applies? I am rather tired of this mess. Donald Albury 17:33, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm feeling I have to agree with this. The inevitable course of trying to deal with the current wording which there is a consensus among some of us that it is unsatisfactory is that we then devolve into one or more of several arguments about the wording which themselves devolve into regional variation issues about which some are adamant in forcing the guideline into a single, succinct statement, which is plainly impossible because we have tried to follow through with that multiple times, and the attempts always fail to resolve and always fade out due to exhaustion. It's plain that even with some vague agreement over what the notion we might be trying to capture here, consensus on how to state it is likely to ever elude us. And I have to object that, lacking consensus, we are stuck with the current guideline, because it's clear that whatever consensus there was when it was written (and I think there wasn't so much a consensus as there was a lack of any understanding of what the sources actually looked like and what their problems were, so nobody knew enough to object or even suggest refinements), it has been gone for some years, so I don't see how it can be retained in the face of the extensive criticism, especially since the strongest critiques come from those who have been trying to deal with the problems it has enabled. Just wipe it all out and if we ever come up with something we can put up a new guideline. Secondary schools lost their guideline, and the sky didn't fall there either. Mangoe (talk) 19:00, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm happy with GNG. Always have been. I've been trying to find some terminology that's acceptable to the people who don't want it.

If there's no form of words that's acceptable, that includes "populated, legally recognized place", then GNG is where we have to be. FOARP (talk) 20:52, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

And no one will want that either who work on settlements Davidstewartharvey (talk) 05:08, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

They should. Because they should want Wikipedia to have articles with actual content about places. FOARP (talk) 11:53, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Well thats Wikipedia editors for you! The elephant in the room is going to be administrative areas. Currently they full under the "legally recognised" rule. The issue is difficult due to the nature of local government being so complex in every country. I would say that administrative areas must be managed by local government that delivers more than one service, to stop the like of school boards, development areas etc Davidstewartharvey (talk) 12:38, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm happy to leave administrative areas to another discussion and at least get settlements out of the way. FOARP (talk) 14:06, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Let's not give up quite yet. The GNG would be a disaster, if only because it would raise a huge systemic bias question. How about "Cities, towns and villages (as further defined if necessary in the annexed country-by-country guidelines) are typically presumed to be notable, but their status must be backed up by a reliable source."? This builds on FOARP's suggestion above. This would sidestep the apparent problem with defining up front what the terms mean. (We then have the discussion about sources to look forward to, but one step at a time). Ingratis (talk) 06:46, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm OK with this. We can argue about whether the GNG would be a "disaster" - I don't think so, obviously - but that's not the point here. This standard at least excludes places that clearly are not "villages". FOARP (talk) 07:22, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

That's a decent form of words; clearly I would prefer some definitions as well, but to avoid stalling the momentum we have, maybe that is better discussed and included in the supplement. In an attempt to cover off @Davidstewartharvey's point about administrative areas too - I take your point about leaving them to another discussion, @FOARP, but I think we would be foolish to leave them hanging, because their absence would I'm sure be vocally noted in any RfC - could we say something like:

• Our general principle is that cities, towns, villages and the multi-service administrative areas that contain them (as further defined if necessary in the country-by-country supplement) are presumed to be notable under this SNG, when backed up by reliable sources. The Geographic Names Information System and the GEOnet Names Server are not reliable to establish a place's status as a settlement or administrative area.[ref, ref] The country-by-country supplement sets out which types of settlement and administrative area in each country may be presumed notable under this SNG, and which sources are reliable for their status. It is under development, and editors are encouraged to contribute.

There could be a bit in the supplement that sets out more definitely what a multi-service administrative area is, or maybe what it is not, based on existing consensus. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 15:07, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

No objections to this. Side-stepping the a lot of issues around admin areas by requiring the administrative areas be multi-service and at least include towns/villages within them looks OK to me. FOARP (talk) 15:16, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

Sounds ok to me. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 17:27, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm on board with that, but I might suggest separating the settlement and administrative area questions. This would avoid the issue of having the whole proposal rejected if editors don't like one part of it. –dlthewave ☎ 19:40, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

I like this version as well, it makes sense for the guideline to include administrative divisions as there is often overlap between the two and it would better cover things like Barangay which I feel fall in a bit of a grey area by now.

I also think separating the question about administrative areas is a reasonable suggestions, as it is something that could be a poison pill for some people and it would be a shame if something like that causes the whole thing to fail and leave us back where we started with no improvement.

If we are including administrative areas, we might also have to say something about electoral districts as at the moment something like UK parliamentary constituencies that exist purely to elect members of Parliament and don't provide any services would fall into a bit of a grey area. I would suggest possibly adding and electoral districts that send representatives to national level legislative chambers or something along those lines, or maybe better just high level electoral districts and let the discussion happen on a country per country basis as to what makes sense as I can imagine this is also something that would be difficult to have a blanket rule for. Giulio 23:43, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

My first thought was "high level" as things like European Parliament constituencies are not "national level" but have that level of notability and it's debatable whether things like Scottish parliament constituencies are "national level". It also allows flexibility for determining what "high level" means on a country-by-country basis - the States Assembly (Jersey) is the national level representative body for that island but each constituency represents only about ~10,000 people which is only about twice the size of the average UK local council ward (and about 2/3rds the size of the ward I live in) (we don't appear to have articles about either). Thryduulf (talk) 00:47, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

We seem to be doing the same thing where we debate stuff that should obviously be in the country-by-country guide again.

Let’s just focus on a clean amendment and not weigh it down with verbiage. FOARP (talk) 05:28, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Two clarifying questions on the intended meaning of backed up by reliable sources

• Clarification 1: does this mean 1) the entity is mentioned in reliable sources or 2) the entity receives significant coverage in reliable sources? This will be very relevant for villages. As an example, I checked User:SunloungerFrog/sandbox/GEOLAND notability and sources supplement and cannot imagine that many of the ~68,000 villages in Bangladesh have significant coverage in a reliable source
• Clarification 2: If we are going to use a plural here, we should specify how many, or this will be debated at AfD. Alternatively we could drop down to singular

NicheSports (talk) 17:24, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

By "backed by reliable sources", I had always taken this to mean something authoritative (maybe not a census) that established it as a village or town or city, and something authoritative (probably a census) that established it as being or previously being populated. My sense was then that these would probably be governmental or official from the country concerned. At least, that is what I would tend to look for if I were to start creating GEOLAND articles.

Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 17:52, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

The status of the settlement needs to be verifiable by reliable sources was I think the argument above. I do think we need two or three sources to confirm the status, as I know from doing settlements, that sources do vary. I wouldn't say we need significant coverage. I would base this upon WP:BASIC in Bio, which says "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not usually sufficient to establish notability". Davidstewartharvey (talk) 18:38, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Presumably we need also to keep a sentence about former places and admin units? For example (based on what's already in the SNG): "Abandoned places and superseded administrative units can also be notable, because notability is not temporary." Ingratis (talk) 07:49, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

For greater clarity, changing to "Abandoned or depopulated places and superseded administrative units can also be notable, because notability is not temporary." Ingratis (talk) 10:11, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes, whatever criteria we decide on if a place meets or formerly met that criteria it is notable. Thryduulf (talk) 09:35, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

The usual issue with the notability of administrative areas is that often there is nothing to say about them other than that they exist and to show a map giving their boundaries. This extends upward to townships in most states. Likewise, the usual issue with obsolete divisions is their notability in the first place. To take two examples: the township system in North Carolina was extremely short-lived and was essentially irrelevant from the start. I believe we do have an article on them as a whole, but articles on each individual township are unwarranted; there's not really any point to even having redirects, and we've generally deleted these articles when they appear. Another example is the hundreds in Delaware. These were real, but again the issue is that there's really nothing to say about them other than a general article and a map. Saying that such-and-such suburban development outside Wilmington (yes, we still have a bunch of these because people don't understand real estate advertising) is in so-and-so hundred is misleading because they were gone long before people started building housing on the outskirts the city. I don't think people need to be encouraged to create articles on extinct districts; I imagine that in Britain for instance the old counties all have articles, and nobody objects to that, because they all have significant history. The issue is rather, as always, to discourage people from creating reams of junk that we have to then sift through. Mangoe (talk) 18:40, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes. In many cases, administrative divisions are just arbitrary lines on a map subject to periodic rearrangement by the higher divisions. I'm not sure how to describe this, but in general populated places develop organically (in that a group of people settle in a place and begin to identify it as their 'home' residence). Of course, over time such places also change and can be merged together or into other settlements. And in this sense the status of a municipality and the municipality boundaries are similar to those of administrative divisions. But in most cases, there a separate sense of identity often remains for such merged places as neighborhoods or similar types of locales. I doubt that people very strongly identify with lower-level administrative divisions (other than knowing who to pay taxes to and who to approach to make specific types of things controlled by that particular division happen). older ≠ wiser 19:15, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I didn't intend to drive the discussion into another road block. SunloungerFrog suggested the wording "...cities, towns, villages and the multi-service administrative areas that contain them (as further defined if necessary in the country-by-country supplement) are presumed to be notable under this SNG...", which found some approval. In line with that I was trying to include/update the sentence in the current definition about former settlements. Perhaps the following meets any objections: "Abandoned or depopulated places cities, towns and villages and superseded multi-service administrative units containing them (as further defined if necessary in the country-by-country supplement) can also be notable, because notability is not temporary." Or else, for the sake of moving forward, leave out admin units, although they will have to dealt with in some way sometime. Ingratis (talk) 00:40, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd oppose any proposal that doesn't highlight the fact that depopulated places are still notable. Too often editors look at the current topographic maps or current population of a locality and assume it is non-notable. Katzrockso (talk) 00:51, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

I think the cleanest thing to do is to state what criteria make a settlement notable and what criteria make an administrative area notable, and state that any settlement or administrative area that currently and/or formerly met the criteria are notable. Ingratis' phrasing could be read to exclude superceded administrative areas that contain only presently-populated settlements. Fixing that without very complicated wording that doesn't accidentally introduce other edge cases or arguments (e.g. we don't want to give the impression that the presence or absence of deserted mediaeval villages or abandoned Roman settlements is determinative for the notability or otherwise of 20th Century administative areas. Thryduulf (talk) 09:52, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Again, the reason to have a more detailed supplementary country-by-country guide is to address those edge-cases. That is the correct place to address this.

One thing working on the Iranian cases has highlighted is that the borders of Rural Districts changes very, very regularly there, to the point where you can bloat out an article just describing (in primary sources, not secondary because they don't treat this as important) the changes in what rural district a locality is in the period 2006-2016. I don't see why previously-existing Rural Districts that maybe only existed for one cycle of the Iranian census should necessarily have stand-alone articles in every case. FOARP (talk) 10:55, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

So - there seemed to be agreement around (a) SunloungerFrog's "...cities, towns, villages and the multi-service administrative areas that contain them (as further defined if necessary in the country-by-country supplement)..." and there seems also to be agreement around (b) the NOTTEMPORARY notability of cities, towns and villages. I'm happy, for the sake of progress, to leave out the NOTTEMPORARY notability of former admin units, although those should also be dealt with in the country-by-country guidelines, and have in any case to be dealt with somewhere eventually. This would give something on the lines of: "...cities, towns, villages (including those now abandoned or depopulated) and the multi-service administrative areas that contain them (as further defined if necessary in the country-by-country supplement)..." Is this any better? Ingratis (talk) 06:55, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Even though I know it's wrong I initially read the "(as further defined...)" as applying only to administrative areas clause. My first thought for fixing that is something like:

The following are typically presumed to be notable:

• Cities, towns and villages (including those now abandoned or depopulated)
• Administrative areas that contain the above types of settlements

As necessary, these terms are defined in the country-by-country supplement.

I'm wondering if we need some language to state that definitions in the supplement are the controlling ones for the country concerned? If so would that be better here or in the supplements? What we don't want is someone trying to argue that a settlement just has to meet either standard even when the definition of e.g. "village" is more restrictive in a supplement. Thryduulf (talk) 23:13, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

• So should the proposal read:

Cities, Towns and Villages" are presumed notable, and their status must be backed up by several reliable sources. Abandoned Cities, Towns and Villages are presumably notable (see: WP:NOTTEMPORARY) and their status must be back up by several reliable sources. "If the depth of coverage in any given source is not substantial regarding Cities, Towns and Villages, then multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability; trivial coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not usually sufficient to establish notability". Administrative areas are presumed notable (see as defined in the appendix country by country guide) if they are supported by reliable sources as defined in WP:V. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 05:30, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

• Anything that requires "several" reliable sources is unacceptable. It means that a whole book written about the locality isn't sufficient, which is ridiculous. Also, the dictionary definition of "several" usually says "more than two", so two whole books written about the locality wouldn't be enough either. Anything that counts the sources rather than the amount of coverage is fundamentally broken. Zero^talk 01:47, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Recreated geostubs discussion

I opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Recreations of Carlossuarez46 geostubs regarding CS46's Iranian geostubs which were mass deleted and subsequently recreated with poor sourcing. –dlthewave ☎ 00:14, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I think this strikingly honest comment from the article-creator in question deserves full attention. In it they describe:

1. Being inspired to create failing GEOSTUBs by the existing failing GEOSTUBs created by C46.
2. Being inspired by a naïve (but frankly not unreasonable) reading of GEOLAND to create failing GEOSTUBs.

These two things are exactly what people opposing changes to GEOLAND told us repeatedly doesn't happen, or anyway doesn't happen nowadays.

No. 1 of these means we can't wait decades to slowly fix the GEOSTUBs, because as soon as we turn our backs thousands more are created. The task is impossible.

No. 2 of these means that saying that mass creation is the real issue here, and that there is no problem with GEOLAND, is misguided, because GEOLAND is driving mass-creation. FOARP (talk) 13:21, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Looking through this editor's talk page archive, concerns were raised about their mass creation in October 2022 and April 2023, followed by an admin granting Autopatrolled in May 2023 without them requesting it. This means that these articles were passing New Page Patrol, and I don't see any negative comments from NPP reviewers. This seems to be a common thread with all of these problematic mass creators: Articles pass AfC and NPP, concerns are raised by editors active in geostubs cleanup, Autopatrolled is rubber stamped and then they go on to create thousands of articles with no oversight.

I've raised this concern on the NPP talk page in the past as well as with individual reviewers and it's usually met with confusion since other reviewers are approving them and a great many similar articles already exist - Are we supposed to delete all of them too? (The answer is "yes.") I think NPP is a massive weak link in the process. Reviewers are often admittedly clueless about the geography notability guideline and their approvals lead mass creators to believe they're doing the right thing. –dlthewave ☎ 14:50, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I also flagged this issue to them in 2023. I think NPP are just going to say that the guide is the problem. Which it is. If even experienced AFD closers can't close a 2-person railway station AFD as delete, why would NPP be able to do anything about it?

Also, LOL at the idea expressed in some quarters that NPP or indeed anyone is going to find it easy to apply a country-specific guide absent any new guiding principles. FOARP (talk) 15:00, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

@Dlthewave, if you consider NPP so deficient in this area, maybe you should consider joining up and patrolling some of these articles yourself. Cheers, SunloungerFrog (talk) 16:18, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Personally I'm very grateful for the work the NPP team do. I think something this complex is going to be very hard for NPP to patrol in any event, which is why the guide has to change to make it easier. FOARP (talk) 20:44, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

Speaking as an NPPer, easier by far for NPP to patrol against specific criteria per country than trying to wrangle a one-size-fits-all general standard. Ingratis (talk) 08:10, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

It's pretty amazing that we're now well into the fifth year of the abadi clean-up (and 12 years since CS46 stopped creating them) and there's still so much work to be done. So many of these articles clearly aren't villages but are described as such. Every time I look at this article-set there's a new example of this (the latest: CS46 labelled a bunch of industrial parks as villages, but hid this by using the Farsi words for "industrial park" in roman characters in their names). And it's only me and one other editor actually working on this issue. We're just never going to get to the end of this without a change in policy. FOARP (talk) 11:51, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

And another one: CS46 just wrote the Farsi word for "company" in romanised Farsi as the name for about 30 different articles, disguising the fact that these were really just companies with workers living on-site. It's like every time I look at this article set there's more plain garbage in it. FOARP (talk) 11:27, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Another example, alongside all the cafes and mines: Camp Office, Iranshahr. Just how on earth did anyone ever click "create article" on an article that reads "Camp Office, Iranshahr (Persian: کمپ اداره راه – Kamp-e Ādāreh Rāh) is a village"? FOARP (talk) 10:58, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Another one: Agricultural Pump Complex Behind Saddez Road. FOARP (talk) 12:20, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Aaaand another: Red Crescent Building Number 1. FOARP (talk) 14:38, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

35 people live there. Thats bigger than Monowi, Nebraska lol Davidstewartharvey (talk) 14:54, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I used to live in a building that had more people than Monowi, Nebraska. I didn't call it a village or try to write a Wikipedia article about it. –dlthewave ☎ 15:25, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

it was a joke Davidstewartharvey (talk) 15:32, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

The joke

My head –dlthewave ☎ 16:11, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Another one: Traffic Police Station. Yes, really. FOARP (talk) 18:00, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Wow. Just wow.

I think we need to make it clear that we're not just being picky about notability when we ask for better sourcing than just a census or geographic database. When these sources don't give enough information to describe what the place actually 'is', editors tend to "fill in the blanks" to create these erroneous villages, unincorporated communities etc. –dlthewave ☎ 18:13, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

And this is after years of different editors trying to prune this article-set. But sure, just do nothing to change the guideline that caused all this and I'm sure that will work... FOARP (talk) 18:58, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

the present issue is not a lack of desire for change, but a lack of clear agreement on (a) what would be better, and (b) how to word that to avoid future problems. Thryduulf (talk) 19:52, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Another: Agricultural Training Centre. Even where CS46 translated things, he often translated them wrongly. FOARP (talk) 08:08, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

OMG this is the worst of the lot (surely? please?): July 7 International Airport. It combines mistranslation, with misunderstanding, with the whackiness of what the Iranian census lists. The name in Persian does not mean July 7. There is no such airport with this name in Persian. Especially there is no such airport adjacent Imam Khomeini Airport. FOARP (talk) 10:55, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

I encountered these articles ~6 months ago after they triggered a malfunctioning LLM edit filter I was monitoring. It was obvious then that the articles were undesirable but because of GEOLAND I didn't know what to do and left it. I hope that people advance a proposal to address this problem NicheSports (talk) 15:40, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:GEOLAND really is the cause of this entire problem. FOARP (talk) 15:42, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

For the abadi stubs which do correlate namewise with villages, do we have any insight into whether the data boundaries correlate? You could presumably have a census tracts that go beyond a village, that include part of a village, that include multiple villages, etc. CMD (talk) 11:01, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Yes to all of these. There are abadis whose name is "[VILLAGE] no. 1", "[VILLAGE] no. 2" and so-forth, apparently representing sections of a village. There are also Abadis which potentially cover multiple settlements - "Plain of the Toilers" which covers an area of brick-factories, lime-kilns, and residential areas was a recent one of these.

The issue is that the Iranian census does not provide co-ordinates or borders for the locations named in it. Where the abadis that are parts of a village there is no source saying specifically that [Village] is a village per se, and the locations in the articles (where they are provided) are just ones that CS46 worked out via WP:OR by cross-referencing with GEOnet Names Server (GNS). GNS typically provides multiple names for locations, so the why CS46 thought that [Village] was a specific location with a specific name, and was sure that the name of the location was not one of the other names given for the location, was never clear.

For example I recently found a "village" article called simply "Agriculture" (Keshavarzi). GNS gives two names for the location, the first of which (Pas Qollat) looks a lot more like a real place-name and the second of which is Keshavarzi. How did CS46 know that the location in the census labelled "Agriculture" was this location? How did he know that this location is not actually called Pas Qolat and the location in the census was not just a farm somewhere else? He did not. FOARP (talk) 11:45, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

Abadis

I've tried to summarise the various issues with abadi articles in an essay that can be seen here: WP:ABADI. Please feel free to edit/comment. FOARP (talk) 11:56, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

@FOARP I would just tweek it to match https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abadi/ Davidstewartharvey (talk) 13:39, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

Probably best if you just go ahead and make the edits you are thinking about. FOARP (talk) 13:46, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:GEONATURAL

Hi. I know this may be something a bit difficult considering the current attempts at rewriting GEOLAND, but i think it does need more clarity. I recently tried to merge Thundersley Great Common into the main Thundersley article. It is a stub, and although a natural feature, the SNG says "often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist." The sources were from Natural England, being the body who gave it an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest), and Castle Point Council, who owns and manages the common so failing WP:V, as they are not independent of the subject. An editor objected (the person who created it) so I raised at AFD as a merge. This was objected to because SSSI are quote "recognised as notable". This is where I think the wording of the SNG needs to be amended. For GEOFEAT, we state that artificial features that are "officially assigned the status of cultural heritage or national heritage" are notable, but even then UK Grade II are not classed as notable, only Grade I and I*. I think we should be changing the wording to give editors clearer guidance on what is notable and that they should be meeting WP:V. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 14:25, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider Natural England a non-independent source in this scenario, unless they manage it or something. I don't think SSSIs should be automatically notable given their purpose is for conservation, not recognition. WP:GEONATURAL just says often, it shouldn't be used to insist a topic is notable in absence of sources. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:05, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Which is why I think we need better wording. SSSI are issued and reviewed by Natural England. In the case of Listed Buildings, Historic England dont actually give the grading, as it is the Secretary of State, so they are independent. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 05:13, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

I would agree that SSSIs are not inherently notable. They are often selected not because of the site itself, but because of some general feature that happens to be there, for example a particular protected species. The designation likely will make a place notable by attracting scientific interest, but it would not for our purposes be automatic. That said, the current guideline does not mandate them. "Often" is flexible, while "verifiable content for an encyclopedic article" is a perennial debate not restricted even to NGEO. CMD (talk) 05:56, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:V is policy not a guideline. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 06:24, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

This does not seem relevant to my comment? CMD (talk) 06:33, 18 June 2026 (UTC)