Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Salangbato, Philippines

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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 keep.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 14:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Salangbato, Philippines

Salangbato, Philippines (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article is a barangay. A barangay is the smallest political unit in the Philippines, a part of either a city or municipality, so they are NOT towns. So given the small size of barangays, naturally, almost all of them would not be notable, even though they'd have high populations. The only barangays that should be notable may be barangays that have large significant literature about them. This barangay doesn't have any. --Howard the Duck 03:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Note: This debate has been included in the list of Philippines-related deletion discussions. —Canley (talk) 04:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep geography based subjects should have inherent notability. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 05:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Our house is a geographical area, is that notable? --Howard the Duck 05:30, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
      • Not really. A house is something that usually is built on a geographical area. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 05:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
        • So the lot where our house stands is notable? --Howard the Duck 05:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Not necessarily. There comes a point when some geographical unit is too small or too trivial that it doesn't deserve its own article and should instead be aggregated elsewhere. A blanket statement like "X's have inherent notability" is not a good argument in itself. You have to back it up with more substantial arguments. --seav (talk) 01:40, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • "Smallest political unit" is still a political unit. The smallest political unit in the US are cities and towns (in some cases counties), and they are no-brainer keeps. The smallest political unit in Norway are municipalities, and they are covered in "real" encyclopedias, even municipalities which are smaller than this political unit. Applying a different notability standard for the geographical units in the Philippines will lead to a clear systematic bias. Keep. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
    • In Norway, the smallest political unit, the municipality, is the second-level division; in the Philippines, the second-level division are provinces and some cities. Barangays are fourth-level subdivisions, beneath the regions, provinces/some cities, municipalities/most cities, then barangays. See Table of administrative country subdivisions by country for details. --Howard the Duck 11:42, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
    • PS: On concerns about "clear systematic bias", I believe there won't be issues of systematic bias since there's practically nothing to say about barangays, and more importantly, if a barangay is said to be notable, it's notability is passed on to its mother city/municipality; the same way information (if any) would be handled concerning barangays; it'll go to the article of its mother city/municipality. --Howard the Duck 13:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete per nom. Having 41,995 stubs that can't be expanded due to lack of online sources (perhaps even offline sources) is a bad idea. Philippine towns are covered in the Wiki so there's no systemic bias on our country on this field.--Lenticel (talk) 08:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
    • Did you know that "real" (i.e. paper) encyclopedias have lots and lots of stubs as well, which cannot be expanded because they are written on paper? Sjakkalle (Check!) 09:40, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
      • The fact that "real" paper encyclopedias have unexpanded stubs doesn't mean that we ought to emulate it. There can be information in Wikipedia about various small topics but we generally group them into composite articles or lists instead of giving each one an article. --seav (talk) 10:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Somehow I get the feeling that your telling me that I haven't seen a paper encyclopedia yet, but I'll let that pass. Wiki isn't paper there's no limitations for us. However, articles are limited by WP:V, WP:RS and WP:N. Almost all baranggays fail these policy and guidelines. It is better to list them in their municipality's or town's articles.--Lenticel (talk) 12:15, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Lets just put it this way: Wikipedia is not paper. However, Wikipedia isn't toilet paper, either. --Howard the Duck 12:32, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. Almost all barangays in the Philippines are not notable enough in themselves to merit individual articles in Wikipedia and there is a problem of getting enough reliable sources to create a full-fledged article. A simple Google search does not turn up any non-trivial reliable sources that refer to this barangay. --seav (talk) 10:39, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Well, I browsed the first 10 pages of the Google search you pointed out and it doesn't turn up any non-trivial mentions about Salangbato. It's basically gazetteer-type info that could already be placed into the article on Famy, Laguna; no need for a separate article. And I would actually assume that any notability coverage would also be in English and not only in Tagalog, since Filipinos are quite versed in English (being a Filipino myself, living within 100 kilometers of Famy, Laguna). --seav (talk) 08:17, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't know what "gazetter-type" means. In any case, the ability to be placed in the Famy, Laguna article isn't a reason for deletion. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 12:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Yet it is. If the material about a sub-topic can be discussed in-depth in the parent topic, then there's no reason to have the sub-topic article. The raison d'être for sub-topic articles is because the parent article would become too long. I argue that the reliably-sourced info about these barangays is not enough to make them into their own articles. --seav (talk) 01:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Strong KEEP - Especially since the argument to delete is "Wikipedia isn't toilet paper". That one has to resort to this sort of patheticness in deletion accusations and rationale is revolting. It's been noted about having 49k stubs that will never be expanded. Don't we already? I mean, really... see fuzzy dice, tar baby, writing lines, vorpal, Fish of Oklahoma, cooties, house swapping, dibs, etc. for examples of worse articles. The "we don't want stubs", while it's emotive and sounds good, is a lousy argument. Let's use policy and precedent. WP:OSE applies here. Cities, towns, and even census-designated places have their own articles. For instance, Brooks, Oregon and Gervais, Oregon. These two places (one is a town, one is only a CDP) are both far, far smaller than this barangay, but have articles that are longstanding. Mount Angel, Oregon has an article, as does its even less-notable high school, John F. Kennedy High School (Mt. Angel, Oregon) (note, high schools have inherent notability). Places that aren't even inhabited places, such as Moolack Beach even warrant articles. So yes, the precedent is there. WP:Notability? Absolutely, as demonstrated by a host of other articles of similar (or less) notability. Lastly, it was stated that "if a barangay is said to be notable, it's notability is passed on to its mother city/municipality", but the same logic could be applied to say a city's notability would be passed on to its county or even state... so why even have county and city articles? Los Angeles' notability is passed to California, so we ought to AfD the Los Angeles page? No. Bad argument using fallacious logic. This is a keep article, plain and simple. VigilancePrime (talk) 07:51, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Now, can we please refrain from the childish comments about toilet paper
Using strawman tactics won't win any arguments like ignoring the part where I was "introduced" to the concept of a paper encylcopedia. As for your examples, it doesn't mean that just because those stuff exists then these baranggay articles should exist too. By the way I enjoyed your last argument. I think you'll figure out why in a calmer state.--Lenticel (talk) 08:22, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
As what was demonstrated earlier, you can't apply Norwegian standards on Philippine locations. Same here, you can't apply American standards on Philippine locations. Cities and municipalities everywhere are notable. Fourth-level divisions usually aren't. I'd even say the people who'd have sensible arguments are the Filipinos since they know what a barangay really is. All of the Filipino users that joined in these discussions all voted delete or merge. Those who voted keep are non-Filipinos. I'm not saying non-Filipino arguments are invalid; I'm saying that the Filipinos know the situation on the ground. I wonder what's next, all elected government officials are notable, so barangay captains can have articles? Weeeeeeee. --Howard the Duck 08:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
I live within 100 kilometers of this barangay and I can tell you first-hand that 99% of barangays are just generally not notable enough to merit their own articles. I can use your WP:OSE argument against you. There are no articles about the other 19 barangays of Famy, Laguna. Why should there be one for Salangbato? Just because someone was able to have bot-created articles about thousands of U.S. places doesn't mean that Philippine barangays deserve the same treatment. So invoking WP:OSE is not something you do lightly. --seav (talk) 08:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge with "Famy, Laguna". I have only found a population census as of May 2000 and nothing else. Starczamora (talk) 04:03, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I am the primary author of this article ( I wrote just about all of it). I have to say that it started as a stub that Wikipedia had requested to expand. It is most likely the only barangay with its own Wikipedia page. This being said, it might be more viable to expand this page into a fully include an explanation of barangays. I agree with the comment that the barangay should be considered a political unit, and I think this page has been well-researched for such a small unit. It is also part of the Tarambay Phillipines project and is sufficiently linked to other relevant pages. I understand the argument that most Barangays aren't notable, but perhaps this can be converted into an article that encompasses the whole of Barangays and uses Salangbato as an example. I definitely agree that there are quite a few uninhabited, insignificant American locations and political units that have their own articles along with very low-level football/rugby players.

More Below

  • Upon further consideration, I wonder why this is specifically being targeted for deletion. Not to boast, but it is a relatively thorough article and is further researched than many items of higher significance.
    • If you'll read the other batangay discussions, you'll learn that there is/will be a large scale of AFDs of barangay articles. --Howard the Duck 03:25, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, JERRY talk contribs 00:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep - we have articles on suburbs of cities of many english-speaking countries. To delete these suggests systemic bias. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:32, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep AlexPAdams (talk) 01:40, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Political units in all countries should have an article (i.e. not only all political units in the UK and the US). --Oldak Quill 01:42, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep as per longstanding practice with localities. That it's a governmental unit makes it even more notable. I also agree with Casliber that since we always keep articles on local government units in English-speaking countries, we should be consistent and do so here. Noroton (talk) 04:54, 11 February 2008 (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.