Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mallard Lake trail

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 Yellowstone National Park. Daniel Bryant 02:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mallard Lake trail

Mallard Lake trail (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

A stub of two sentences- a non-notable nature trail. Very few edits, and no other articles linking to it. CattleGirl ^{talk | sign! | review me} 07:52, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

• Merge with some other article in Category:Yellowstone. YechielMan 17:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to Yellowstone National Park or merge to an appropriate article from above. --Wafulz 00:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wyoming-related deletions. -- CosmicPenguin (Talk) 01:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to Yellowstone National Park. This trail is beautiful (I've hiked it) but isn't especially noted and featured enough for an encyclopedic article. One reason (not mentioned in the nominated stub) that it's noted among a small circle of biologists is that it's been studied for regrowth since the 1988 fires that were reported worldwide; thousands of new trees have been growing among stands of utterly burnt trunks. A Google search shows that the trail is listed in some trail guides that are independent of the National Park Service (Yellowstone's caretaker), as well as less attributable sources such as personal hiking blogs, but I don't think there's enough. Maybe a Park naturalist could provide enough history and book citations (such as Aubrey Haines' and Lee Whittlesey's books, I haven't checked Google Books) to make a new article, in which case it should be welcomed. But this stub doesn't assert any notability nor provide any sources. I'm not aware of much historical relevance, and if the trail has some attributable sources that are more like "featured" rather than "passing mention" or "directory entry", this belongs in Yellowstone National Park which doesn't currently have a trails section, let alone a "Trails of ..." breakout article that Mallard Lake Trail might be merged to. Barno 15:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

• Keep or Redirect. I have hiked this trail too -- takes about three hours round trip if one goes slowly to take in the beauty. I think this would be a good article if expanded properly.

Billy Hathorn 03:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

• Merge/redirect to Yellowstone National Park as mentioned above. Barno has some pretty good arguments up there, but I also think there's room for expansion in the Yellowstone National Park article. I'm not 100% sure that every hiking trail merits a separate article, but when MONGO and I worked on Glacier National Park (US), we created sub-articles for the various areas of the park, such as Many Glacier and Two Medicine. Highline Trail got its own article, probably because it was one of the most notable trails in the park. For the most part, though, individual trails didn't get their own articles. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 17:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

• Comment: I see that NPS (and USGS) sources are the vast majority of references for the Glacier articles; they're reasonable authoritative, but not very independent. Some third-party sources would be nice. There are enough books about Yellowstone's trails, backcountry, and history to write a trails section if we can devote enough time to it. This would be better broken out as a topic than split among geographic regions, in YNP's case, because the best trails either link two or more developed areas, or start in backcountry and go deeper (such as Bechler). I'm considering starting a draft in a user subpage, and getting interested people to improve it there and cite the Haines and Whittlesey books, so it won't get AfD'ed like this stub. This trail's article exists because someone wanted a place to put one photo of a stump, with no other claim of notability or interest such as the fire-regrowth studies; it won't help for the YNP article nor for the "Trails of ..." article I might write. Barno 22:40, 22 March 2007 (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.