Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sonora Junction, California

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. Missvain (talk) 01:39, 25 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sonora Junction, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log)

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This article was created by an author who engaged in a massive campaign of article creation based on data from GNIS and/or Durham. As has been discussed many times in many other AFDs, per WP:GNIS, the GNIS database is not a reliable source for the existence of a community (many of the locations labelled "populated place" on the GNIS database are not, and never have been, populated places). Durham probably is more reliable, but the author has repeatedly mischaracterised how Durham actually describes places (Durham refers to a "locality", a term which, as used by Durham, is not necessarily an inhabited or formerly inhabited place, but the author of this article has assumed this meant a populated place).

In this particular article the census data for the census block in which Sonora Junction is located is additionally cited, but census tracts are not automatically notable per WP:GEOLAND, and this reference only describes the census block which it calls "Sonora Junction Area". Sonora Junction itself appears to be just a road or railway junction.

This article fails WP:GEOLAND no. 1 because it is not a legally recognised community (e.g., it has not been incorporated), a listing on GNIS does not constitute legal recognition as GNIS lists many non-legally-recognised geographical features (e.g., mountains, churches, mills etc.). GNIS is simply there to standardise names, not confer recognition. It fails WP:GEOLAND no. 2 as it is not clear whether it is actually an inhabited community and even if it is there is no evidence that it passes WP:GNG. Searches on Newspapers.com and similar sources turn up nothing but bare mentions with no WP:SIGCOV of the topic. Notably many of sources refer to "The Sonora Junction" (i.e., to a road/rail junction) and are reports on road works or are directions for driving. FOARP (talk) 14:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 14:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Geography-related deletion discussions. Spiderone 14:37, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep My newspapers.com search shows this was clearly a former populated place. Incorporation is not necessary to be a "populated place" and this appears far beyond the other California stubs that are just railroad sidngs. SportingFlyer T·C 15:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi SportingFlyer. Per WP:GEOLAND the point about incorporation is legal recognition. Even if inhabited, Sonora Junction is not legally recognised and thus is not automatically notable under WP:GEOLAND - instead it has to pass WP:GNG. Did you find any evidence at Newspapers.com that it would pass WP:GNG? I could not, all I could see were bare mentions, not WP:SIGCOV. FOARP (talk) 15:22, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree with this interpretation. The US is weird that you can have incorporated and unincorporated communities, but an unincorporated community in the US may be equal to a very small hamlet in some other country. "Not legal recognition" really means buildings and neighbourhoods in my mind. I found a lot of evidence people have lived here like [1], and the stubby article is still more than "this was a place" such as this award of a contract to build a building. SportingFlyer T·C 16:35, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear the two mentions you've linked are:

• 1. "The Browns live in Sonora Junction 110 miles north of Bishop" (the subject of the story is the death of a baby at Northern Inyo Hospital, which is in Bishop, California)
• 2. "F M Santa of Bishop was awarded the contract for a workmen's cottage at Sonora Junction station on his bid of $2100".

Nothing further is said about Sonora Junction in either of those pieces. The standard for Sigcov is that it "addresses the topic directly and in detail" - neither source does that. Neither demonstrates legal recognition of Sonora Junction either. The second seems to heavily imply that Sonora Junction is just a railway junction/station. If Sonora Junction is legally recognised, what is it legally recognised as, and what evidence of this exists? FOARP (talk) 17:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Except there's no railroad within at least a few dozen if not a few hundred kilometres. WP:GEOLAND has probably the lowest standards for notability of any SNG on the site and is an alternative to GNG - was it a town? Was it populated? Would we expect to have an article on it? Again, the non-legal bit is subdivisions, business parks, housing developments, informal regions of a state, unofficial neighborhoods and this isn't that - it's a place where people used to live that's still referenced on maps by newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, unlike dozens of the other terrible GNIS stubs that we're picking through, which is all that WP:GEOLAND requires. I don't think we're going to agree on this, so let's let the AfD play out? SportingFlyer T·C 17:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Except there's no railroad within at least a few dozen if not a few hundred kilometres." - the article you've cited to defend your position above explicitly describes a "station" at Sonora Junction - I suppose this might be a station of some other kind than a railway station (farm station?) but in any event, it is not how you describe a community. WP:GEOLAND's lowered standard is only for legally recognised populated places - where is the evidence that this is a legally recognised place? The "subdivisions, business parks, housing developments, informal regions of a state, unofficial neighborhoods" part of GEOLAND are explicitly just examples and are a non-exhaustive list, and Sonora Junction could simply be a subdivision, housing development, informal region, or unofficial neighbourhood (or even just a junction). The burden of proof is on those claiming this is a GEOLAND pass to show evidence that it meets the standard. FOARP (talk) 19:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS - just to address this point: buildings("including private residences and commercial developments") don't fall under WP:GEOLAND, they fall under WP:NBUILDING, so the mere presence of one or more buildings at Sonora Junction also doesn't make it a Geoland pass. FOARP (talk) 19:23, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is instructive and describes several people who live in Sonora Junction, including people living at the "highway camp" there. This describes houses at the site. Aerials from 1980 show a row of houses along the highway - by 2005, those houses have been demolished. The station is probably the stagecoach station mentioned by Durham in the article. Also mentioned at the federal register as recently as 2013 "Sonora+Junction,+California". I am not saying this is a building - it was at one point a populated place, reflected in a gazetteer and by numerous newspaper articles. SIGCOV isn't required, and the "legally recognised" doesn't exclude unincorporated communities. SportingFlyer T·C 19:38, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Taking those mentions one at a time:

• "MOVE TO SONORA Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd Jordan have moved to Sonora Junction where he is employed by the state highway department at the maintenance station there"" - so it's just a highway maintenance station?
• "Mr. and Mrs. Lee Harvey of Sonora Junction, who recently celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, purchased a five hundred dollar bond in the fourth war drive for Mono county, instead of taking their trip to San Francisco. Mrs. Walter Mathias gave a luncheon at her home at Sonora Junction Tuesday of last week. Guests were Mesdames Nellie Har-,vey, Hazel Gould, Anna Sonnesyn "and also Lillian Deyo.". None of this is evidence of legal recognition. None of this even describes what Sonora Junction is.
• "The Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center is located on lands in Mono County near Sonora Junction. Again, this doesn't describe what Sonora Junction actually is.

Taken at face value your argument means that WP:GEOLAND would confer an automatic presumption of notability on any location, anywhere, that had ever anyone live there, ever, regardless of whether any detail exists in any source that would allow an article to be written. The entire reason legal recognition is a requirement is to avoid this - hence unincorporated communities (i.e., ones that have no legal recognition) are excluded.

I think it's also useful to consider how unincorporated communities are described in our article about them, particularly it describes them as neighbourhoods (i.e., exactly the language used in WP:GEOLAND to describe places without legal recognition). FOARP (talk) 20:11, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You're mis-representing my argument. Clearly, not every place where anyone has ever lived is worthy for an article - we've seen that with numerous deleted California place names during cleanup. But being incorporated isn't the requirement for WP:GEOLAND, and this isn't one of those places that were nothing then and are nothing now - it's a stub article we can write a blurb about. And while it doesn't appear currently populated, but it's a place someone might reasonably "sonora+junction"+california expect to find on the site. SportingFlyer T·C 20:52, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Unincorporated" literally means not legally recognised. Those articles only briefly mention Sonora Junction and describe exactly nothing about it. FOARP (talk) 21:05, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, "unincorporated" specifically means it's a locality that's not governed by a municipal charter. The majority of populated places in California are unincorporated! I'm not going to agree with you here - I firmly believe this is a place which needs to be included in the encyclopaedia per Wikipedia:Gazetteer, and you're not going to change my mind by trying to legal this into a different definition. This isn't one of those miscategorised GNIS stubs. Let's please agree to leave it. SportingFlyer T·C 21:12, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• leaning delete The problem I'm having is this: it's taking way too much interpretation to deal with this. The topos I'm looking at only go back into the 1950s, but they show all of the buildings next to a label reading "maint. sta.". That depot is still there, and at least one of the buildings from that photo is still there. Meanwhile around the corner to the south we have a label reading "Hardy Station", and while the topos go back and forth about it, the aerials all show the same single building that's still there. But since the GNIS entry calls it a "locale", it didn't get a WP article. The name suggests it's actually the "stage station" mentioned in the article, but there is of course no way to tell. Mangoe (talk) 06:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• There's not much there, but I'm leaning keep since it's clearly a current recognised spot on the map by both the federal government and newspapers around California, and it was once clearly populated. We don't need to call it a community. I'll work on adding a couple more citations. SportingFlyer T·C 09:35, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per WP:V, if we want to have an article which starts "Sonora Junction was a community in Mono County, eastern California", then we need a source which supports that. The GNIS is cited but this has been shown to be wrong in numerous cases so it's not reliable. There don't seem to be any other sources out there which can support this statement. We can't infer the existence of a community from passing mentions showing that somebody lived there - that would be original research, and somebody living there doesn't make a community. I know the notability standards for places are low, but they aren't so low that we can ignore basic policy. In any case WP:GEOLAND only grants near-automatic notability to legally recognised populated places, and I don't see any evidence that this is or was legally recognised. If it hasn't ever been legally recognised then it has to pass the WP:GNG, and the very brief mentions of it don't come at all close to doing this. Hut 8.5 09:20, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. No post office. Historic topos and this 1908 pub indicate that Hardy Station was at this location. The 1908 pub says "to Junction, formerly called Hardy Station". The topos show Hardy Station and Sonora Junction as being two slightly different locations. Searching newspapers.com for "Sonora Junction" finds [2], which has trivial mentions of people living at the Sonora Junction highway camp. An obit states that people lived at Sonora Junction. Newspapers.com offered some other hits, like the $500 bond and a number of mentions of the locale that did not state that there was a community at that location. Searching newspapers.com for Hardy Station found two trivial hits and another trivial hit that stated "Junction house, known as Hardy Station in the old days". JSTOR had 13 hits for "Sonora Junction", including a fascinating article about Fremont's cannon, but none of the articles stated that there was a community at Sonora Junction. JSTOR had 6 hits for "Hardy Station", none of which seemed to apply to this location. I found no evidence of Sonora Junction nor Hardy Station being legally recognized, so #1 of WP:GEOLAND is not met. I found scanty coverage of a community at this location, none of which is notable. I agree that people lived here, there is just no non-trivial independent coverage of Sonora Junction that indicates that it is notable. Thus, #2 of WP:GEOLAND is not met. Cxbrx (talk) 05:52, 24 December 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.