Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coal, West Virginia

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

The result was delete‎ . Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:30, 27 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Coal, West Virginia

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A difficult "place" to search for, since "Coal" +"Kanawha County" brings up tons of stuff about coal mining in the county; but I'm not seeing reliable sources for a place of this name. The GNIS ID given in the infobox is invalid, and GNIS has no entry for a populated place named Coal or Cofoco in Kanawha County. Deor (talk) 23:41, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Google maps satellite view is showing a few buildings, driveway and a road junction, but that's not enough for a Wikipedia article imv. (t · c) buidhe 00:22, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - Can't find anything for a community named "Coal", although searching is impossible for obvious reasons. (Although I'm finding one reference to a "Coal Station" that is roughly in the right area, but probably something different), given that it seems to be further to the west). Cofoco was a small miner housing camp in the 1920s, named for a coal mining company, but the association of the two names in unsourced in the article and is marked as uncertain here. The user who created this article has had hundreds of similar articles deleted as problematic, and after discussions such as Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brows Defeat, Kentucky and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fish Pond, Kentucky, I don't think we can assume a hidden gem under this somewhere. Hog Farm _Talk 01:56, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and West Virginia. • Gene93k (talk) 08:04, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. While it is nearly impossible to search for "Coal," the alternate name "Cofoco" (Coal Fork Coal Company) yields snippets in Google Books, mostly in the 1920s through 1940s with the latest being 1984. Best guess is that Cofoco was a company town associated with a mine. It did exist, but there is very little to support WP:NPLACE, never mind GNG. • Gene93k (talk) 12:47, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I found it labeled as "Coal" on USGS topographical survey maps from 1931 and 1976, which are both citeable sources. It may be unincorporated and minor, but it is (or was) a populated place by this name, and readers may want to find where it is—and confirmation that it existed. That alone is enough to support a stub, which could possibly be supplemented by additional information in future. P Aculeius (talk) 13:17, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete The topo maps are the sources of the WP:GNIS which is already cited, and this is not sufficient for notability (WP:NGEO specifically excludes maps from establishing notability). It may have been a neighborhood near a mine, but without more substantive sources, existence is not notability per WP:GEOLAND2. Reywas92^Talk 14:33, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do not believe this is the correct interpretation of GEOLAND. What constitutes "legal recognition" is a nebulous matter; arguably being included on government-issued maps could satisfy this requirement. The two sources excluded may have relied on the USGS topographical survey maps, but that does not mean that the maps themselves are excluded, since unlike online databases, they can be used to verify location and population, and have a degree of reliability over a span of time that online databases may not. If all sources generated by the U.S. Geographical survey were excluded, the guideline would say that, instead of merely excluding databases extracted from various sources. Additionally, places without "legal recognition" may be considered notable; examples of places that might not be describe "subdivisions, business parks, housing developments, informal regions of a state, unofficial neighborhoods". Towns, even coal towns, separate rather than part of other entities, are not mentioned. It may be small, it may be unincorporated, but it is still a distinct place, rather than a nickname for an uninhabited area or neighborhood of an existing town.

This part of the guideline also says, "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." Now, if you consider it an "informal" place, it can still be included in an article about the next notable place in which it occurs. I cannot see this being done in the case of the article about Kanawha County, unless in a list of unincorporated communities—and in this case it should still include the location and citable sources. If it cannot be conveniently incorporated as part of a notable topic—Kanawha County, the magisterial district that contains this part of the county, or Cabin Creek—then it should remain as a stand-alone article. Otherwise data appropriate to an encyclopedia—the name and location of a populated place for which readers might be expected to search—would be lost, and that does not seem to be a reasonable position. If, however, the name and location of Coal—with a citable source—can be incorporated into an article about a notable place, and the current title made into a redirect to that article or section, then it might be acceptable to delete the contents of the article. P Aculeius (talk) 15:07, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've participated in hundreds of nominations and other discussions on places. It is decidedly not "legal recognition" for a place to merely appear on a map, not to the point that it is exempt from literally any other coverage beyond that mere appearance. This place is not a "town", which in West Virginia is legally defined as a type of legally recognized municipality (List of municipalities in West Virginia). This place is a neighborhood or informal area. Named and on a map yes, but with zero official or legal status. Kanawha_County,_West_Virginia#Unincorporated_communities does not currently have Coal on it, though many others on this list were mass-created by the same person and similarly lack notability. There is not currently a List of unincorporated communities in West Virginia that other states have, but that would be the place for this. Reywas92^Talk 15:58, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You may be confusing "recognition" with "incorporation": the guideline does not say who has to "recognize" it or what constitutes "recognition", but it seems that acknowledgment by an official government survey as a distinct place might qualify irrespective of incorporation—otherwise you could simply wipe the slate of all unincorporated communities for which limited information exists. I do not read "neighborhood" to mean "freestanding community", but rather a vaguely defined portion of another community. "Informal region of a state" certainly does not mean "village" or "town", whether incorporated or not. None of the language describing the things that are not inherently notable—although reliable sources may demonstrate that they are—describes the village of Coal, and thus the passage does not, as contended, exclude it from being notable.

But the best argument remains: it is a populated place that is not part of another community. Readers will want to know what and where it is. Deleting it without placing the information anywhere else in the encyclopedia does a disservice to our readers—and what is gained? The encyclopedia will have saved 3.5 kB!

I suggest that if information is useful to readers—such as finding out where a place they have heard of or read about might have been—then a stub article providing that information ought not to be deleted unless it is first saved somewhere else, in some other article that can be readily located by readers searching for it. It is not enough to say, "this could go in such-and-such article—if it existed—but it doesn't, so too bad!" That's actually about the worst rationale there could possibly be for deletion. So if you want to delete it that badly, you should first make sure that the useful and reliable information has been saved in an appropriate place, even if it means making it yourself. Until and unless that's done, there's no justification for deleting the article as it stands. P Aculeius (talk) 23:44, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There is very little value to readers if all that can be said about a place is it's coordinate location. USGS has a very low bar for listing populated places (a distinct place name where permanent residential houses are located). Even a mobile home park can qualify, and there have been AfD debates for those. The place has a name. The newspaper link provided above by Hog Farm indicates it was a site for worker housing built in the 1920s. Beyond that, there is a GNG fail with insufficient evidence Coal/Cofoco was a community. • Gene93k (talk) 00:32, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, exactly what do you believe constitutes a "community", besides the residences of a number of people in a location separate and distinguished from other places? The 1931 map shows approximately sixteen houses or house-sized structures along Cabin Creek at or just above the mouth of the Coal Fork, not including those that look like they might have been part of the coal mining operation; in 1976 there were about the same number of houses or similar buildings in the same location, although some of them are probably different from the 1931 structures. At a minimum that would presumably represent forty or fifty people living there over half a century or so; a number must have been born there and died there.

If all that the article says is where it was, that it had an alternative name, that it was built for the workers at the neighboring coal mine, along with which it was named after the branch of the creek where the village and mine were located, that it was built in the 1920's, still inhabited in 1976, and that only a few houses remain there in 2023, that's still useful information for anyone who doesn't know that "Coal" or "Cofoco" was the name of a coal company town on Cabin Creek in Kanawha County from the 1920's to the 1970's, and that some people still live in the vicinity.

And is your argument that it doesn't deserve even a stub article explaining any of this to people searching for information about it, or is it that none of this should be mentioned in any article on any topic in Wikipedia? Because it's already been pointed out that the geographic notability topic supports including information as part of other articles if the place isn't sufficiently notable to merit one of its own. The fundamental problem posed by this nomination goes away if Coal is adequately described as part of another article. P Aculeius (talk) 04:03, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Aoidh (talk) 07:42, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Delete and do not mention in any article unless SIGCOV sourcing can be found. Currently we only have GNIS and the "National Map" which only verifies that it is/was a place with a name, not that it was an "unincorporated community" or even a populated place. We need actual sourcing, not OR and speculation, to establish notability. –dlthewave ☎ 13:10, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Insufficient evidence to indicate this named place on the map was a settlement. The GNIS record disppeared because it was coded as a "locale", a named place with permanent human-made structures, not a "populated place". Locale entries like Budaghers, New Mexico are no longer in the database. Beyond it's place on maps, there is very little to satisfy WP:NRVE and overcome a lack of significant coverage. • Gene93k (talk) 23:59, 26 April 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.