Talk:Lahore Division

Deletion discussion

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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Entries by User:89.240.237.161

Do we want all these "division" entries? —CodeCat 01:35, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

• Delete all. Encyclopaedic information not for the Wiktionary. Razorflame 02:53, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
• Move to titles without "Division" for the ones that would thereafter be single words that we don't have. bd2412 T 04:03, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

This sounds more reasonable, as place names are allowed. Preferably the names should be accompanied by translations into Urdu and native languages but this could be added later. Either move per BD2412 or keep in full. My only concern is that these divisions are too small and are unlikely to be used in the media or books and are of little value as a translation target. It's far more advantageous to keep high level administrative divisions of a country, such as provinces of Pakistan, like we have Category:en:States of India or Category:en:US States. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 04:30, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

The trouble with them is that, unlike Orange County and the like, they don't actually tell us anything. I would delete them all (by all means add proper entries for the names without "Division"). SemperBlotto (talk) 07:07, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

What is the difference, in the end, between deleting these "Foo Division" titles and creating new "Foo" titles, or merely moving these "Foo Division" titles to "Foo" titles? bd2412 T 16:21, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea; if we're going to move Lahore Division to just Lahore, does it carry the same meaning even when the word 'Lahore' is removed? Is this like New York State or more like Arizona State, or what? Mglovesfun (talk) 09:35, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Lahore Division is currently defined as "One of the administrative divisions of Pakistan". At worst, we would merely need to adjust that to "The name of one of the administrative divisions of Pakistan". I am, however, certain that we should have an entry on Lahore, with an etymology and a pronunciation. bd2412 T 03:26, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

If you click on one of the Wikipedia links, you'll find that a reform in 2000 eliminated that entire tier of jurisdictions- these are all historical, rather than current entities. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:16, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Keep We have had a VOTE on keeping toponyms. It passed. I see no reason to provision for excluding administrative divisions from places far away in distance or time. End of discussion.

If we would like to reverse or qualify the vote, then we need a VOTE. We may have enough information now to actually have criteria that would allow us to rationally distinguish between toponyms we deem entry-worthy and those we don't, though I doubt it. DCDuring TALK 11:57, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Is "Lahore Division" a toponym, though, or is it a toponym with a qualifier? It seems rather similar to Washington State, which is completely SoP as even the definition itself shows. That the "state" or "division" part is used as disambiguation doesn't really matter, because "tall tree" is also distinguished from "small tree". —CodeCat 12:15, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

@Chuck Entz, the fact that it is a former division rather than a current division merely means that we would have to mark the entry "obsolete". Lahore is still a word, and can be defined here. bd2412 T 23:04, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

In this case probably "historical" rather than "obsolete". Equinox ◑ 23:11, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it's more complicated and murkier than that. According to w:Divisions of Pakistan there was a vote in 2008 to restore the divisions, but it's unclear to me how far along the restoration is.

As for why I pointed this out: of course we have historical and obsolete terms, and there's no reason to eliminate these because of that. My point was that this IP is operating from a definite POV, and we need to factor that into our decisions- albeit remaining true to CFI in the process. If we decide to keep these, we need to consider if there's anything we can do to mitigate the POV aspects. My take on this is that we have a typically-jingoistic expat living in England who's on a mission to make sure that the Pakistani version of things is represented in detail. Mostly that's not a problem in itself, but this edit shows they're quite capable of crossing the line into overt POV. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:07, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

It gets worse: some of the divisions were in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which is in the disputed territory of Kashmir, and India doesn't have divisions with those names. I've speedied those. Others were listed as being part of "East Pakistan", better known as Bangladesh. Given that East Pakistan ceased to exist decades ago, defining Dacca Division as "One of the administrative divisions of East Pakistan" is misleading. I changed "East Pakistan" to "Bangladesh". Also, all of the entries have Wikipedia templates, but several link to nonexistent Wikipedia articles.

To sum it up: this IP needs to be watched carefully, due to POV language, politically-motivated entries with no correspondence to actual reality, and sloppiness with Wikipedia links. I've gone through and cleaned up some of the POV stuff, but I'm sure there's more that I didn't spot. I'm also not sure what to do about some of the divisions in disputed territory that might or might not be part of Pakistan, depending on whom you ask. It wouldn't hurt for someone to check all my edits to their contributions, for that matter, to make sure I didn't make any mistakes- it got a bit tiring after awhile. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:10, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

• As for Bahawalpur Division, Bannu Division, Lahore Division and similar entries from Category:en:Divisions of Pakistan:
  • One thing is whether e.g. "Lahore Division" should have an entry. I think it should, and thus keep. Geographic names that contain their entity type in the name include Hudson River, Cooper Creek, Lake Ontario, Atlantic Ocean, Adriatic Sea, Chesapeake Bay, Cape Horn, Mount Everest, Longs Peak, Death Valley, Copper Canyon, Red River Gorge, Mexico City, New York City, Cape Town, New York State, Main Street, Grant Avenue, Jack Kerouac Alley, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, and Abbey Road. Some have the form "<noun-phrase-used-attributively> <entity-type>" (e.g. "Death Valley"), while some have the form "<adjective-phrase> <entity-type>" (e.g. "Atlantic Ocean").
  • Another thing is that the definitions are entirely unspecific and poor: "One of the administrative divisions of Pakistan". This is I belive that SemperBlotto means when he says that "... unlike Orange County and the like, they don't actually tell us anything". I admit that this is a fairly good reason for wanting to delete the entries.
  • As for "We have had a VOTE on keeping toponyms", a claim made above: We had a vote that resulted in this regulation: Wiktionary:CFI#Names_of_specific_entities: "... A name of a specific entity must not be included if it does not meet the attestation requirement. Among those that do meet that requirement, many should be excluded while some should be included, but there is no agreement on precise, all-encompassing rules for deciding which are which. ...". So the regulation does not tell us that we need to keep all place names. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:29, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
    • The vote eliminated the sole criterion for discriminating among proper nouns. The surrounding discussion explicitly included toponyms. By normal rules of construction, that leaves us with not basis for discrimination other than subjective whim, as was mentioned at the time. We are now in the position of exercising our discretion arbitrarily against a place that is unpopular and far away from the deciders, exactly the kind of situation that rules are intended to prevent. DCDuring TALK 13:53, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Kept; no consensus to delete. Cleaning up POV is another matter not for RfD. bd2412 T 17:08, 4 June 2014 (UTC)