Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ted's Place, Colorado

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. There is no agreement about whether this should be covered or evaluated as a place or as a company, and whether it meets the inclusion requirements for either. Discussion quality is mostly poor, as there is little serious discussion of the quality of the sources on offer. Sandstein 07:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ted's Place, Colorado (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Ted's Place was a gas station; even the article admits that, and that's what any reference says, other than passing mentions used to locate other spots. Is it a notable gas station? Maybe, but it isn't a settlement, and it never was. Mangoe (talk) 00:02, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Colorado-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:28, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. CAPTAIN RAJU^(T) 00:28, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Generic local gas station, only known because it's a highway junction pit stop. Reywas92^Talk 00:29, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete It's a gas station, not an "unincorporated community". –dlthewave ☎ 01:49, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• I started the article because it was a red link, but if you want to delete it, that's fine with me. I don't know how red links are handled, though. Are they 'unlinked' if an article is deleted? --Marjaliisa (talk) 03:17, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep So, it's a gas station not a settlement. But that's not a reason to delete as it's still notable because it's easy to find sources which highlight it as "legendary" Andrew🐉(talk) 09:21, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The link is from Arcadia Publishing, who has local writers write about their community. If you've ever seen one of those books, it lists everything that could possibly be listed in a city, mostly non-notable things such as food trucks, theaters, local shops, etc. It doesn't show notability. --Darth Mike^(talk) 13:23, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's good that there are local historians and publishers recording the history of such places. Here's a detailed account with more pictures. The worst case would be merger of this landmark with some broader topic such as Poudre Canyon but notice how that latter article doesn't have any sources at all currently. Wikipedia is not built by wantonly deleting good-faith contributions for no good reason. See policies such as WP:ATD, WP:BITE and WP:PRESERVE. See also WP:INSPECTOR. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:40, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep

• A source cited in the article states that on the southern part of the settlement are "a number of log cabins built by forgotten pioneers".
• Ted's Place has received significant coverage, per WP:GNG, see [1][2][3][4][5].
• This location is referred to again and again as a place. Countless map books and county documents say things like "turn north at Ted's Place", such as [6][7][8].
• Even though the building (which appeared to have a living area upstairs) was demolished in 1983, the area is still called "Ted's Place" in official county documents [9], [10]. Magnolia677 (talk) 15:03, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep It seems to receive some coverage over the years, so I guess it could be considered historic. It should probably be moved to Ted's Place since it is a convenience station and not a town. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 01:11, 2 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, it is irrelevant if local sources refer to it as "a place". Being "a place" with a name is not sufficient to meet WP:GEOLAND, and if we're treating it as a historic building/location instead, it needs to meet WP:GNG, including at least some non-local coverage, of which there is none. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:06, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and Move to Ted's Place per the sources in the article like from the Fort Collins Coloradoan and the additional coverage found by Editorofthewiki. Just because it's a gas station and not a town doesn't mean it's non-notable. Like Tramway Gas Station and Shea's Gas Station Museum, gas stations can be notable. Oakshade (talk) 15:55, 13 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Undecided on notability, but "delete because it's not a settlement" is a poor argument when nobody's asserting it is. Smartyllama (talk) 14:43, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There has been a tendency to give any place that can be verified as a settlement something of a pass on GNG requirements, for better or worse. The issue, which I raised in the nomination and which seems to be being addressed, is that, as the service station that it is, whether or not it meets the GNG. Personally, I'm not entirely sold that it is well-known enough on a wide enough basis to satisfy the guideline. Mangoe (talk) 15:34, 15 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. And I don't like the ongoing campaign to delete places articles in the U.S. It is succeeding in pushing out a number of valid topics without them being defended, and others are being fought over before they end up being Kept. Most nominations in this drive are "achieving" Delete outcome. I for one don't like the drill; this is either forcing a lot of editors to do on-line research quickly without access to local libraries and their history files, etc., or it is losing the articles so not serving readers and making it harder for anyone in the future. These all are places listed in GNIS or whatever; it would be okay and far better than this to stop the compaign. --Doncram (talk) 23:19, 16 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It takes a bad case of WP:DIDNTHEARTHAT to miss being told over and over that GNIS's designations of "populated places" reflect a lack of care in the collecting, compounded by terminology which they use to mean something other than what the words themselves actually mean. Look, this service station is something of a borderline case. I am OK with others judging it to be a notable example of such, given decent arguments along WP:GNG lines. But a place with population it is not, and the evidence is that it never was. And the campaign is necessary, from my perspective, because people dumped a lot of crap in from GNIS without reviewing it and with no apparent intent to fleshing out decent articles. After all, years later, they still tend to be limited to the same possibly machine-generated text, with various mechanical improvements over the years but nothing done to improve the content. And to be fair, I have to think that when these articles were laid in, nobody appreciated the problems with relying solely on GNIS. But now we have these articles, and we know the problems, and the data does not become inarguable simply because it comes from a site with a .gov domain. At present, the discussion of place notability is, if anything, leaning towards getting stricter in its adherence to the primary guidelines, just as school notability was tightened (and that against my opinion, I would note). I also have to point out that, by and large, there's no significant information being lost in deleting an article whose sole source is GNIS, and if someone put together a better article using other sources, it would most likely survive an AfD challenge; more likely than not, there wouldn't even be a challenge. If you really want to object, start an RFC; but you've shown up enough times in these discussions to be aware of the issues that are driving the campaign. Mangoe (talk) 02:36, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Poorly-sourced stubs are not always as harmless as they may seem. When I do BEFORE searches on these places, I've noticed that sources such as Google tend to repeat Wikipedia's "Unincorporated Community" description which is almost never based on a published source. We're actually creating and propagating bad information by keeping these stubs. –dlthewave ☎ 03:01, 17 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and Move. Should not be listed as a place, but as a gas station/store it has some coverage, more that a typical gas station, and has some historic characteristics. The place is closely associated with Ted Herring, who is automatically notable per WP:NPOL as a Colorado state representative and senator. To avoid two very small articles on barely notable topics, I would put it all in Ted Herring and with redirects from Ted's Place. MB 14:46, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep: Meets GNG.--Milowent • ^hasspoken 22:20, 27 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.