Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Red Bank, California

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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. leaning Keep via WP:HEY due to improvements made to the article during this AFD discussion. I don't think prolonging this discussion will lead to any further resolution as opinion is pretty strongly divided. I do not recommend a quick trip back to AFD as I think it will have a similar closure or even a Keep.

This isn't the first heated AFD discussion I've closed that concerned GEOLAND guidelines and I think a well-worded RFC might help adjudicate these disputes. Liz Read! Talk! 04:12, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Red Bank, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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Another stub on a non-notable dot that once appeared on maps of California. PROD declined because of 3 references, but none of them establish notability or even that this was ever a populated place, thus failing WP:GEOLAND. Existence of a post office, as has been decided in several previous AfD's, does not count for notability. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and California. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:52, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's enough — barely, but enough – in the histories here to support an article. Uncle G (talk) 21:36, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - The question here is whether the article is appropriately sourced. It is not a GEOLAND pass as there is no evidence of legal recognition (simply positioning a post office there is not legal recognition of a populated place, as post offices can be located outside communities, as can schools, and more basically post offices are not automatically or presumed notable), so it needs to meet WP:GNG, especially, we need to be able to show significant coverage in multiple reliable, independent sources. The sources are as follows:
    • Tehama County Place Names - This is a self-published work and thus unreliable per WP:SPS. The authors have no evidence of expertise on the topic. The researchers involved in creating it include local high-school students. This is not a reliable, independent source.
    • LA POSTA: A JOURNAL OF AMERICAN POSTAL HISTORY - The sole coverage of the actual location here is two single-line entries in a list that read as follows:
        • "Eby 4 23 Apr 1894 23 Jun 1904 Was Colyer; M. to Redbank"
      • "Redbank 3 23 Jun 1904 31 May 1918 M. to Red Bluff"
    • This is the very essence of a trivial mention of the topic.
    • The USPS register - Again, the sole coverage of the location is:
      • "Redbank, Tehama: Beall, Chas S, PM $117 Red"
    • This is not significant coverage of the topic in any meaningful sense.
  • As such this article is a straight-forward failure of notability. FOARP (talk) 11:15, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Your analysis of the Hislop and Hughes source is fallacious, and I have already debunked it at length at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/El Camino, California. To précis: The authors are not high school students, and the sources that they cite, 9 pages of them, are not high school students either. Reading just one acknowledgement on the acknowledgements page and then claiming that that means that the thing was written by high school students is really quite a poor show. Uncle G (talk) 15:35, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Uncle G - Sorry, but you haven't actually addressed the substance of my point here: this is a self-published book by non-professionals based on information collected in part by high school students . It doesn't matter who it cites, the problem is, without fact-checking of the kind that an established and reputable publishing house gives, we do not know if the content we are trying to cite this self published work for is accurately sourced. Especially in this case, the authors tell us that some (all?) of the information about Red Bank comes from one Opal Thornton Mendenhall, apparently a local, - that was their source.

        If there is a more reliable source for this information, then cite that, not this source which, again, and underlined simply to stress this point, is self-published. FOARP (talk) 18:41, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

        • Nonsense. As I said, this wholly fallacious analysis is all debunked at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/El Camino, California, including your floundering around trying every which way, switching from mischaracterizing it as the work of high-school students, as you just did here again while falsely claiming that you aren't doing it, to how two professional historians are "non-professionals". This is a very poor show of not even actually bothering to read the author's names from the citation, even though I added them to it. Uncle G (talk) 08:21, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
          • So who published this book? Not the Tehama Department of Education. FOARP (talk) 14:52, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
            • This is yet another very poor show of not even bothering to read the top of the page that I pointed you to where it is published to this day, and not self-published. I have no evidence that Donald L. Hislop or Benjamin M. Hughes even have their own publishing houses or their own WWW sites to self-publish on. You want to claim that this is self-published? Point to Donald L. Hislop's or Benjamin M. Hughes's own publishing house or WWW site. This really is the most shameful try-anything-from-"kids"-to-"not historians"-in-the-hope-that-it-sticks-and-ignore-what's-staring-you-in-the-face repeated attempt to discredit a perfectly alright history by some historians. I suspect that the goal is driving the reasoning, not the evidence. Because having to explain to you four times over that the authors are on the title page, not the acknowledgements, and having to go into the very basics of what Hislop and Hughes publishing something themselves would look like, is ludicrous. Uncle G (talk) 00:45, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment in addition to the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce saying it existed, and the map I just added, and source saying it's essentially the area that used to be Rancho Barranca Colorado ("Red Bank Ranch"), there are 14,336 Matches · "Red Bank" from 1848 - 2020 in Tehama County, California in Newspapers.com. I'm about to dive in. jengod (talk) 00:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce saying it existed" - The quote describes it as a "center", not as anything else. Simple existence does not confer notability. Notably the other sources describe it as a "farm center", farms have to pass WP:NCORP.
    • Similarly a one-room school house does not demonstrate a GEOLAND pass, schools are not given presumed notability per WP:SCHOOLOUTCOMES. FOARP (talk) 20:29, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. reason is WP:GEOLAND. बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:07, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • @बिनोद थारू - GEOLAND requires 1) a legally-recognized 2) populated place. Neither has been demonstrated here. FOARP (talk) 20:22, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • Would you say a post office is a legal recognition बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:27, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, I would not. This is something that has been discussed many times at AFD: Post offices can be located inside stores, stations, farms, mines etc. and need not be located in an actual populated community. FOARP (talk) 20:31, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
          • The passage I believe to prove Geoland is:
            A 1909 guide to Tehama County published by the Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce stated "Being strictly a rural county, there are not many towns of much size...Paskenta, Henleyville, Manton, Lyonsville, Kirkwood, Proberta and Red Bank are smaller centers in different parts of the county
          • This is from article itself and sourced. बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:50, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
            • It describes the Red Bank as a "center", nothing else. Notably another source calls this a "farming center" so I wouldn't assume it refers to a town. It is also worth looking at the original source to see the multi-page gap between the word "size" and the word "Paskenta" that are separated by "..." in this quote - whoever posted this is taking distinct liberties. Red Bank was not a town and this source does not say it was one. FOARP (talk) 20:58, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
              • Grammatically, the sentence assigns the word town as well as the word center to Red Bank. बिनोद थारू (talk) 21:03, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                • Grammatically the original source does no such thing. The two phrases that have been misleadingly coupled with "..." are not in the same sentence. FOARP (talk) 21:05, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Hey @FOARP I hated the idea that I confused anybody by knitting those quotes together (it made sense in my head at the time!) so I just turned the advertorial of it into a image, cf File:Smaller centers of Tehama County.jpg|thumb|In 1909 a Red Bluff Chamber of Commerce brochure marketing Tehama County described Red Bank as one of the "smaller centers" of the county - Cheers jengod (talk) 00:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
          • I read the Wiki article and there is just too much separate sourcing that suggests this is a inhabited place to categorically deny the sources one-by-one as self-published or unreliable and at the end claim it's not inhabited. One or more source being self-published does not prove the place is not inhavited. In fact, there is a school named Red Bank, post office named Red Bank and one can verify (WP:V) today in street view that there is a Red Bank fire department at this exact site.

            I find the opinion that this is not a inhavited place very unconvincing overall. बिनोद थारू (talk) 20:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

            • The "post office" was the home of CS Bell, the "library" was also the home of CS Bell, the "school" was a one-room building which may also have been the home of CS Bell for all I know. Given the liberties taken with the sourcing I would check the original sources before coming to a conclusion - the self-published source was not published by the Tehama Dept. of Education but for some reason that was how it was posted, and the quote from the board of commerce is quite silly - the start of the quote isn't even on the same page or even the neighbouring page from the end of it.

              And let's remember: to pass GEOLAND legal recognition is required. No proof of such is provided here. FOARP (talk) 21:04, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. Additional mentions of Red Bank:
    • She was born July 30, 1909 in Red Bank, a small ranching community outside Red Bluff. She was raised in Red Bluff area and was a 1926 graduate of Red Bluff High School (Indian Valley Record. Apr 10, 2002. pg 14). This proves that it was inhabited.
बिनोद थारू (talk) 21:11, 4 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
--A. B. (talkcontribsglobal count) 05:02, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. WP:GEOLAND presumes notability even for now-uninhabited areas:
Populated, legally recognized places are typically presumed to be notable, even if their population is very low. Even abandoned places can be notable, because notability encompasses their entire history. [...] बिनोद थारू (talk) 23:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
बिनोद थारू, you're right except this place was never legally recognized. It never had a local government or any other form of American legal recognition. A. B. (talkcontribsglobal count) 00:56, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Everyone, please accept my apologies. I had no intention of starting a flame war when I nominated this article for deletion. Look, I sincerely appreciate the efforts of those who have added to the article since its nomination. It's much better now than it was a week ago. (I clearly need to work on my WP:BEFORE skills). Regardless, I don't want to withdraw my nomination because what we have now, though improved, is essentially a bunch of passing mentions taped together into an article-like shape, i.e. WP:SYNTH. Clearly this is/was a real place, but nobody has shown that this was a legally-recognized place (only that it had legally-recognized businesses, a school and post office), thus failing WP:GEOLAND. As for the Hislop and Hughes source, I think it's a distraction: even if it is RS, it's trivial, mostly just saying there was a school and post office there (and that it's a "District", which has no legal definition). The same goes for my other recent Tehama County nominations. But if this or those AfD's end up as keep, I won't be devastated...they are more informative than the ridiculous stubs they used to be. So can we all relax? This is approaching WP:LAME. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 02:28, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@WeirdNAnnoyed, you did nothing wrong. You are not responsible for others. You acted in good faith.
--A. B. (talkcontribsglobal count) 02:37, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GNG बिनोद थारू (talk) 02:54, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Hey man im josh (talk) 21:57, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep I would have swore this was a delete after my cursory research a week ago. But I have now circled back to see the research by Red-tailed hawk, Uncle G, Jengod and Cielquiparle. It seems an easy keep now after the article was tidied up. Lightburst (talk) 00:52, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per a classic WP:HEY. A few of the additions were less encyclopedic than others but help to prove the point that this is a reasonably notable subject at least worthy of inclusion on the project. ~ Pbritti (talk) 03:44, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.