Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Longest streets in London (2nd nomination)

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 of the debate was DELETE Unverifiable - it has had long enough to show otherwise. None of the keep votes appeared to overcome this objection (few actually tried) -Doc ^ask? 22:53, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Longest streets in London

A map does not publish lengths, so analysing it to find them is OR in my view (but debatable), as it depends on the map chosen and the method of measuring. Further analysis to create an ordered list is more clear OR, though. Since the last Afd when references were requested, very few have found since, but the article occaisionly gets reverted as "trivially verifiable", where the main reference is the word "(map)" - not a WP:RS to me! Given the nature of the article, and the problems above, I can not see how it can be expanded without much original reasearch, so am putting it up for deletion. MartinRe 22:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Previous Afd, (Feb 2, 2006) which was closed as 'no consensus' can be seen here.

• Delete (As nominator, if it wasn't clear :) MartinRe 19:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as WP:OR and according to comments by User:ikkyu2 on his userpage. Brian G. Crawford 22:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per previous no consensus AFD Jcuk 23:48, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: Previous lack of consensus is not a permanent reason to keep an article. It's just a least-damage default course for admins to use in closing AfD's until the WP community gets evidence of meeting standards or consensus of not meeting standards. Barno 03:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete OR --Nick Y. 00:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• Unfortunately, there does seem to be a Crown Copyright problem on UK map data. So until a reliable source either publishes a list of all London street lengths (from which sorting longest streets isn't research) or publishes an article "Longest Streets in London" that WP can cite, we apparently can't use it under WP:NOR, a core policy. Weak delete pending a sufficient source, including a definition of either "in the City of London" or "in the London metropolitan area" (using some government standard similar to the US Census Bureau's Core Based Statistical Area). Barno 03:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Refers to Greater London obviously, which is what London normally means. Scranchuse 04:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - sources can be links to driving directions or the like. --SPUI (T - C - RFC) 18:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment The driving directions given as one source simply give a distance between two arbitary points, the source does not claim, and hence we have no way of verifying, that the two points chosen are the beginning and end of Western Avenue, as claimed. MartinRe 19:03, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Sure, if we wanted to make this textbook original research. The street numbers on those sites are usually pretty whack anyway, Google Maps and Mapquest list my house (and just about any house in my city) as being 0.1 to 1.0 miles away from the actual house (if you look at the satellite map on Google this is easilly confirmed). And that's the whole problem with OR... Wikipedia isn't a very good place to do it. --W.marsh 12:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per Barno. Additionally, three streets? Pretty weak list. Stifle (talk) 20:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. The article should be expanded and improved. As it stands, the article relies on no measuring of maps (although one reference is an enquiry to a mapping web site), and only uses source-based research (as encouraged by WP:NOR). All entries are properly referenced to reliable sources but I agree that "map" would be an unsuitable reference. No Crown Copyright information is involved but, in any case, infringement of copyright involves reproduction, not use. Ikkyu2's view, cited above, "...a truly garbage article that satisfies WP policy, can't be deleted, and is useless..." provides no reason for deletion. I have added Harrow Road to demonstrate how the article can be developed. Roads, and London, hold little interest for me but the article is at least potentially encyclopedic and currently infringes no policies. However, even I would not propose it for Featured Article status! Thincat 12:00, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Delete this has had every opportunity to show that it can grow to a verifiable and useful article, and that hasn't happened. If someone wants to measure the streets and publish their findings somewhere, great, then we should be able to write a good article. But it seems like no one but AfD voters is actually interested in this topic... so anything that's proposed as a solution sounds like original research. The article can always be recreated if the verifiability problem is actually solved. --W.marsh 13:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
• Keep could be an interesting article.  Grue  10:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Interesting? Sure. Whether it is verifable or even possible to be so is the problem, methinks! MartinRe 11:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment Are we looking at the same version of the article? Try clearing your cache. All entries are actually referenced to reliable sources and so are demonstrated to be verifiable. Above you criticised the lack of explicit reference to the end-points of Western Avenue ("we have no way of verifying, that the two points chosen are the beginning and end of Western Avenue, as claimed") and concluded that the information cannot be verified. A further click in Multimap verifies each end-point but if you really require more references these can be provided by referencing a reputable map or encyclopedia article, gazetteer, etc. If you want to challenge the sufficiency of references, please raise the matter in Talk:Longest streets in London rather than seek to have the article deleted. Thincat 11:42, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
      • Reply Of the roads with lengths, two have sources (time out). Your addition has sources, and would be a useful addition to an the road article. For Western avenue, you cannot say "Multimap says A, and map says B, therefore A+B=C", as that is an example of WP:NOR#Example_of_a_new_synthesis_of_published_material_serving_to_advance_a_position. The sufficiency of the references was challenged three months ago (by myself included) on the appropiate talk page, and I think three months is a more than reasonable time to wait for sources to be found, and if they haven't been found after three months, chances are they can't be found, which is why I nominated it here. MartinRe 12:59, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
        • Reply taken to User_talk:MartinRe#Western_Avenue. Thincat 14:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

• Delete- Original Research, non-encyclopedic material, Wikipedia is not an atlas and there are crown copyright problems. Whether the article could be interesting or not is neither here nor there.... 10:48, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

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.