Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Penghu Islands

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 redirect to Penghu. The only true "oppose deletion" rationale provided is without merit. The article in it's current state is a near exact replica of existing content and does not in even a single instance discuss the "geographical entity", but, entirely repeats the history taken verbatim from Penghu. Thus it is a Content fork.

It is reasonable to believe that a reader will search for "Penghu Islands" instead of Penghu. Thus the page should exist in its original and long standing "redirect" form (April 2003 - January 2012 and then March 2012 - January 2017) rather than be deleted outright.

I noted concerns that the article should exist as a separate entity to Penghu to distinguish between Geography and Political discussion. These are valid concerns, however, combining the issue of content forking with the other counter-argument of WP:SPLIT the concerns are overshadowed by greater issues. Articles like Iceland and Taiwan are 100k+ bytes long and require splitting, Penghu is a mere 12k bytes of readable prose. Size is not a reasonable reason to split, nor does the split introduce any new content to be merged - except possibly the infobox.

Raw numbers are irrelevant, but, for those interested; 1 outright oppose deletion, 2 comments that constitute keep, 1 speedy delete, 1 delete or redirect, 1 merge, and 2 comments of indiscernible opinion.

The reason for redirect is to restore the page to a useful state, again no new content has been added (barring a different type of infobox) and anybody searching "Penghu Islands" will be directed to half of an article instead of the whole. (non-admin closure) Mr rnddude (talk) 07:35, 20 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Penghu Islands

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Unnecessary fork of Penghu (from which the present text was taken). When a political division is coterminous with a feature of the same name, treating both in the same article avoids duplication and gives readers what they are searching for more quickly (cf Tasmania, Prince Edward Island, Jersey, Corsica, Sardinia, Crete, Hainan, etc). Kanguole 13:46, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: Geographical entity and political entity are two different things, and they should be separate articles for avoiding confusions and lengthy articles (cf Iceland and Geography of Iceland, Cuba and Geography of Cuba, Sri Lanka and Geography of Sri Lanka, and Jamaica and Geography of Jamaica, and Taiwan and Geography of Taiwan). --Matt Smith (talk) 14:52, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy delete (i.e. revision-delete) as copyright violation. Matt Smith, the editor who forked the article, did not follow instructions at WP:SPLIT. On the merits, this content fork is completely unnecessary, because readers are better served with a single comprehensive article. No such user (talk) 11:02, 5 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, but this looks like a false claim of copyright violation, if what you mean is that the article was "forked", i.e. copied from the other Wikipedia article, rather than copied from a copyrighted external source. It looks like you are just mad about the split of article. A "speedy delete" based on false premise of copyvio is not justified.
About whether the original Penghu article should be split or not, could people explain a bit more why it should or should not be split? It is okay to split an article for length reasons, for example. If an article is split, it should not be a near-copy of the original article. If the current Penghu Islands article is not properly set up to complement the original, then can it be edited to be compatible? Or is it necessary to delete it? --do ncr am 20:28, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't studied it properly, but offhand the Penghu Islands article does not seem to be about geography at all. There is only one sentence of geographical-type info, that it is an archipelago of so many islands. Then it is all history, which would seem to me to be naturally connected to modern politics, which i gather is covered in the other article. --do ncr am 20:33, 6 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, Penghu, from which this article is taken is about 2,500 words, well under the length where a split is necessay ie. "<40 kB Length alone does not justify division", see WP:TOOBIG, btw, examples given by article creator, that have splits, have approximate lengths of 12000 words (Iceland), 10,000 words (Cuba), 12,000 (Sri Lanka), 8,500 (Jamaica), and 13,000 (Taiwan). Coolabahapple (talk) 07:40, 9 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment There are four articles/redirects involved here, all older than 2008. Unscintillating (talk) 03:10, 10 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong venue Palm Island/Great Palm Island is another example of a valid article separation of political organization and geography. The article being argued for deletion here dates back to 2003, so a deletion makes no sense. Indeed, a look at the edit history shows that this dispute is an edit war. WP:Deletion policy#CONTENT is the applicable policy. Naturally, any attribution problems need to be corrected, by identifying in an edit comment the source article for the material. Unscintillating (talk) 03:13, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Taiwan-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Islands-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:51, 11 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I would like to keep this and distinguish between a geographical entity (the archipelago)) and the political entity (the Penghu county). Penghu should be about the political entity though. Penghu Islands should contain most of the geography and should point to the county article. Sections such as transportation and others should be only there in the county article. It's gonna be a bit hard though and I don't mind helping out if I have time. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 06:29, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
How does forking the Penghu article help readers? There are already small articles on Penghu County Government and Penghu County Council. Kanguole 08:06, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Article such as Penghu County Government and Penghu County Council can clearly be merged into the main Penghu article (which should be about the county). But an article about the geographic entity should be separate from a political entity. It does help the readers as it explains the difference between the political and the geographic entity. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 08:12, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Helps how, exactly? It is self-evident that an island or archipelago is a physical geographic entity first and foremost, but if it is inhabited it will also have history, demographics, economy and some kind of political organization. I don't see how readers are helped by having to jump from one article to another to connect the dots. Worse still, the article Penghu Islands as forked now is about history, not about physical geography. That is not helpful to readers at all.
The page at Penghu Islands had always been a redirect until the recent fork, more or less (save for this short-lived stub from 2012, which was quickly redirected back), and it should stay that way. The issue here is: what do we do with undiscussed content forks? My answer was "delete" (and create a redirect) so that we don't have duplicated history (and this does amount to copyvio). Technically, I could have !voted "Merge" or "Redirect" which would result in a similar outcome. No such user (talk) 12:17, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 07:26, 12 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 03:32, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

delete/restore redirect; there is no reason for this to exist as largely overlapping with Penghu which is the best place to cover it as not too long, not needing to be split.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:42, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to Penghu and redirect. Penghu County Government and Penghu County Council should also be merged into Penghu, IMO. There is no reason, yet, for all these separate articles as all the information can comfortably be dealt with on one page. Penghu is presently 12 kB and Penghu Islands is 8634 B, "readable prose size", 20.6 kB in total. Adding the tiny amount at the other articles makes it about 21 kB, so size alone doesn't warrant a continued split (< 40 kB). In terms of content, if Penghu Islands were primarily about the toponymy, geography and demographics of the archipelago then it could be justified as having a separate existence. It isn't: it's about the history of various peoples settling, invading and evacuating the islands, all of which belongs in the other article. Cf. Great Britain and United Kingdom — Iadmc ♫^talk 11:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Since all of the 8634 B of text in Penghu Islands was copied from the 12 kB of Penghu, the total would be 12 kB rather than 20.6 kB. Penghu County Government and Penghu County Council do at least have distinct content. Kanguole 11:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Fair point — Iadmc ♫^talk 11:58, 14 January 2017 (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.