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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. Hey man im josh (talk) 20:12, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

El Camino, California

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El Camino, California (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)
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DePRODded because of 2 references, but one of these is just GNIS and the other a document of place name origins. All I can find is that this was once a ranch, not an "unincorporated community". Fails WP:GEOLAND and is confusing clutter because there are lots of places and roads in California named El Camino. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and California. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 18:55, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep From 1935 there is El Camino Community Church. More research is probably needed because there is also this article from 1936. Lightburst (talk) 22:18, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete the sources mentioned above are ROUTINE at best. Based on Google Maps it is a community with about 30 people within a square mile. It's not even mentioned in the list of unincorporated communities on Tehama County, California. There is nothing I can find on this tiny community. Finally El Camino, California will always route me to "El Camino Real." Conyo14 (talk) 23:31, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's definitely enough in the sources here for an article. Because you didn't read the history already cited in the article at the time of nomination, you've all missed the ranch. Uncle G (talk) 23:13, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as improved. TY Uncle G jengod (talk) 04:38, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Uncle G - I don't have time to review the newer sources, but Tehama County Place Names is a self-published work put together by two authors with no obvious expertise as historians with the help of local school-students. I don't wish to be unkind to the great kids at Red Bluff Union High School and their teach Mr. Osbourne who I'm sure did a great job at their class-project for US history, but we need better sourcing than that for an article - at the very least it needs to be published by an established publishing-house with a record of fact-checking and ideally authored by professional historians. FOARP (talk) 11:24, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have bad news for you: that's how much such history is done. Even the Wikipedia:Reliability of GNIS data/Ramsay Place-Name Card Collection is based upon master's students doing first-hand interviews and collecting anecdotes. But again, whilst you might have read the first page at least, and missed the other acknowledgements to focus excessively on one, reaching a quite distorted conclusion, again the issue is not reading the source. The reason to credit these people as reliable is that, in the entries and in a big appendix at the end, they cite their sources. There are 9 pages of source citations, and lots of little cross-references in many of the entries. Read the actual source, not going no further than the title, not solely only one of the acknowledgements on the acknowledgements page, but the actual thing. The "Finnell" entry cites the 3 sources that it is based upon, and there's not a class project nor a high school student amongst them. Uncle G (talk) 14:07, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • Why not cite the sources in the source then? Conyo14 (talk) 14:29, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        • Because they are the sources that the people who did the historical research consulted. Ironically, it's the very thing that we are not really in the business of doing, reading maps and scouring old records. That's actually the worst way to make articles about places, and why I always look for history books and toponymic research that is done and published. I consulted what they then wrote, and my source is what they published, not my own interpretations of primary source documents. They did the research with the primary sources, we make a tertiary source based off their secondary source, the histories written by the people who have done the historical research, which is the case here. Uncle G (talk) 14:42, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yeah, but if it was done by high school students as FOARP pounted out, then it's not technically reliable. Conyo14 (talk) 14:49, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
            • It wasn't done by high school students, and Osbourne isn't the author. FOARP read one part of the acknowledgements page and missed everything else, starting with (at minimum) the other acknowledgements, and including all of the referencing and sourcing that the authors gave. You really should do everyone the courtesy of fully reading the source that was in the article to start with. If anyone other than me had, we probably wouldn't be here at all. Someone would have seen the Finnell Ranch, realized that there was history here, and that it isn't obtained by either your method of looking at Google Maps or by just searching for "El Camino". Find the history books! My usual procedure is to look for an Arcadia Publishing one. Ironically, I haven't even touched one yet, because there was a source that had collected the history right there. (Once again, we had shamefully just sourced things to GNIS and left a it at yet more "unincorporated community" rubbish for 5 years.) Uncle G (talk) 15:01, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
              • @Uncle G - I did read the source. Please dial down the personal attacks.

                I note you haven't addressed the substance of the issue here: this is a self-published source by people who are not professional historians which was put together with the help of high school students. It doesn't matter that they cite sources - this book is not those sources, and without proper fact checking we cannot simply take their word for it that what is written in this book (which, again, is self published). We cannot rely on self-published local histories to sustain notability. FOARP (talk) 18:31, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

                • Nothing above says anything about you personally, but it is very clear what you did, since the acknowledgements page simply thanks people, including the "staff of the Tehama County Assessor’s Office", which doesn't make as good a way of dismissing the authorship of the article as mischaracterising it as "the great kids at Red Bluff Union High School and their teach Mr. Osbourne", does it?

                  In fact the authors were the very first thing in the citation, and if you had bothered at all to just read the author from the citation and check who Donald Lindsay Hislop was, as I did, you would have found that xe was a professional historian, with an M.A. in history who graduated from Chico State, was a historian for his whole life, and whose published historical articles go back to the 1970s. Similarly, Ben Hughes has an M.A. and is a historian. They are (or were, since Hislop died a decade ago) both associated with the Tehama County Genealogical & Historical Society, which actually publishes a currently accessible edition of this work to this day.

                  Instead you went with patronizing the schoolteacher and xyr class route.

                  Uncle G (talk) 07:49, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

                  • An MA does not make one a "profession historian", and no source credits either Hislop or Hughes as such. YourThe original citation credited the Tehama Department of Education, but they did not publish this book. Equally the local historical society did not publish this book. In both cases they merely host/hosted the book on their website - I might as well list Google as the publisher of material on Google Books.

                    Making false accusations is a form of personal attack - I never said anywhere that the book was authored by high-school students, only that they contributed to it (which is evidently true). Please dial it down. FOARP (talk) 15:02, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

                    • On the contrary, being employed as a historian all of his life apparently, indeed does make one a professional historian. And yes, the historical society is publishing that text. The other history works on its WWW site it merely sells copies of; it isn't publishing the actual works themselves. Oh, and it wasn't my citation at all; another misrepresentation. Uncle G (talk) 21:16, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                      He was a high-school teacher. That is not "being employed as a historian all of his life".
                      "yes, the historical society is publishing that text" - Not in the sense that they take responsibility for and check its content in the way a publishing house does. They are merely hosting it on their website in the same way any web-host does. We might as well credit Internet Archive as "publisher" if that is the standard being applied, as they host the version currently used in the article.
                      "it wasn't my citation at all" - Apologies, happy to correct the record on this. FOARP (talk) 15:52, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                  • You just admitted to doing WP:OR on the authors. You do realize that this is not how we verify information. Conyo14 (talk) 18:39, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                    • You are misunderstanding what original research is. If I were writing an article on Donald Lindsay Hislop, then performing primary research on the subject would be original research. But this is checking out who an author is, what xyr credentials in the field are, a necessary part of determining the reliability of a source. In this case the first one is being employed as a historian, apparently all of his life, and has a record of published works cited by other historians making clear that he is a recognized historian. And both have an advanced degree in the field. Ironically, I didn't even do original research to achieve that. I just read his obituary, which is actually a source. No obit for Ben Hughes, but there's a note about him doing historical research for xem in another author's book. Uncle G (talk) 21:16, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                      • That. Is. Original. Research. If you are searching up the credentials of a historian to justify a self-published source, that is original research. Your source (yes yours) cannot count towards GNG. Take it up with Perennial Sources if you feel that strongly. Conyo14 (talk) 21:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
                        • No, it's investigating the reliability of a source. Good grief! Read Project:Reliable sources, for pity's sake! It mentions expertise over and over. You find out who the authors are, and what their expertise in the subject is. So I went and found out who Donald Lindsay Hislop M.A. was, and whether he was just some random person or an established and recognized expert in the history of Tacoma County, which he is — was. And it didn't involve one whit of primary research. No legwork on my part required. His obituary says he was. "Don was a historian". "His education amassed to a Masters in History". Uncle G (talk) 22:09, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The history book readers will discover that we haven't even plumbed the depths of this place yet. Before it was the Finnell Ranch, it was the Rancho de Los Saucos, and there's scope for expansion on that. Putting "El Camino" into Google, Maps or otherwise, is not the way to check out this subject. Uncle G (talk) 15:17, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per this Google Earth image - a clump of at most 10-15 homes +outbuildings. No town. --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 05:07, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Uncle G, please back off FOARP. Let's just talk about the article.

      --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 21:23, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

      • As I've already pointed out, we are not only talking about the article, we are even talking about one of the sources initially cited in the article, and how its authorship is being wholly misrepresented over and over in now four AFD discussions. Let's now talk about how your evaluation of this subject is to look at Google Earth and nothing else. Is that evaluation of the sources available, their provenances and depths? At least FOARP is talking about a source, even if xe keeps misrepresenting it as a "class project" and put together by high school students. And that's not even the sole source in this article by a long chalk at this point (since we now have the SUP revised version of the Rensch history, the Smith history, and a whole bunch of other things). Uncle G (talk) 22:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        I just know what I see. Call it valid, call it invalid. Your call. I know what I see:
        • A place with nothing there based on Google Earth. Nothing. Nada. You can look for yourself.
        • Someone unfriendly to people who disagree with him.
          • I'm not going to get into all the official Wikipedia "WPs": WP:CIVIL, WP:ATTACK, WP:HARASS, etc., etc.
          • I'm just going to stick to "unfriendly". Your dealings with FOARP just make things unpleasant for everybody, whether we agree with you or not.
          • I don't understand why you feel the need to be this way. It's just a Wikipedia article.
        --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 22:40, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Maps and images are not RS for establishing notability, Nor are they valid
    for discrediting it. Works both ways. Djflem (talk) 05:28, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Satisfies GNG. Djflem (talk) 05:29, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Keep. While this is a populated place that was unincorporated and thus never got the per se notability that legal recognition would have given to it, it can still be considered notable (per WP:GEOLAND) if this passes the WP:GNG. And, upon examining the references that are currently present in the article (and also the newspaper links provided in this discussion and on the article's talk page), it looks very well like this community has been covered significantly by multiple independent reliable sources. As such, this passes the GNG, and it satisfies the notability guidelines on that basis. In addition, the article is now reasonably detailed (c.f. WP:HEY), and I think that upmerging this to some other geographical entity would not be required in light of WP:NOPAGE. For these reasons, I support keeping the page. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 03:02, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep as it satisfies the "populated, legally recognized places" criteria of WP:GEOLAND. El Camino Irrigation District currently has special district status with governing board members on the November ballot during local elections; it has had legal recognition as an irrigation district since 1921 and as a political subdivision under California law since 1926. In addition, per WP:HEY, the article has been expanded to include information about the history of the community from the early 20th century to the present day. More work could be done to upgrade sources (though I went through and tried to minimize reliance on the 2007 pamphlet) and explain some of the detail, but that can be done through the normal course of editing. Props to all who contributed to the detective work. Sure, a lot of things in California have "El Camino" in the name, but that's what disambiguation is for, and explaining the various uses is yet another way that Wikipedia can contribute to human knowledge. Cielquiparle (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Cielquiparle, irrigation districts in California cover wide areas, usually at least one county and often multiple counties -- that's typically 1000 to 5000 sq. km. They are not owned or controlled by any local towns or cities. El Camino Irrigation District is based in Gerber, California. The irrigation district and the reputed community have no connection.
    Lots of things across California are named El Camino; our El Camino disambiguation page lists 3 blue-linked ones in 3 different parts of the state. The phrase "El Camino" just means "the road" and dozens of California towns have arterial roads named "El Camino". There's also the historic El Camino Real.
    --A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 05:38, 8 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Right, if it were "just land" inside of the borders of the irrigation district, it wouldn't necessarily be a "place". On the other hand, as the article shows, it is also a populated rural community that has had an evolving identity as a place over the course of history – as Finnell/Finnell Ranch, El Camino Colony, El Camino Irrigation District, etc. – with its own grange hall, church, 4-H club, and fire station. Not to mention the fact that this particular irrigation district has historically been a lightning rod for controversy over time from a finance and governance point of view, and on its own might qualify for WP:GNG based on regional media coverage. Cielquiparle (talk) 09:46, 8 November 2023 (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.
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