Talk:Four Corners

Not a destination

I question whether this article belongs here. No way is this dinky little park a destination; not only can you not sleep there, you can't spend more than about 20 minutes there without retracing your steps. However, it's "iconic" to some small extent and maybe should be grandfathered in with an article. Opinions? -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 16:03, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Agree, I think it should just be mentioned in the "See" or "Get out" section of the relevant towns that you would access it from... definitely doesn't need an article... (WT-en) - Cacahuate 18:38, 24 February 2007 (EST)

Disagree. Small isn't a disqualification. Four Corners is still a cartographic curiosity, even if it doesn't have much to offer. I'm imagining a minuscule guide about the length of (WT-en) cacahuate's Tobacco Caye. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 22:37, 27 January 2009 (EST)

Save an Endangered Article

This article has been granted a temporary stay of execution of two weeks. If it's not in working order by February 10, 2009, someone will summarily delete this article out of existence. If you have any creative ideas on how to save the Four Corners, now is the time to contribute. Personally, living in Colorado, I'd hate to live in a three cornered state. ;) Admittedly, this article is a bit of a conundrum. There's not a hell of a lot to do here, and yet, "Four Corners" is a term used so universally within the region. If you've been to the area before, please tell me your stories/information to make this a better article. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 00:38, 28 January 2009 (EST)

Mesa Verde Tours

To meet our inclusion criteria, this company needs to have a physical office address. Otherwise I think we need to delete it. (WT-en) Texugo 01:18, 28 January 2009 (EST)

Done! (WT-en) WineCountryInn 11:35, 28 January 2009 (EST)

Stay healthy

I don't really think anyone is going to stay at this site long enough to warrant warnings about dehydration and sunburn. These warnings likely belong in the region section if anywhere. (WT-en) Texugo 00:37, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I'll pare it back to a minimal one or two lines. Thanks! (WT-en) WineCountryInn 11:13, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Actually you might want to just remove the section entirely - since this article is using the Project:Small city article template and "Stay Healthy" isn't a standard heading for that template, if there isn't much information to include it's probably better to just leave it off. In general, "Stay Healthy" is only for places with important health concerns ("Destination X has recently seen an outbreak of cholera, and the drinking water may not be safe.") or for large regions. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 11:30, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Deleted, with a few sentences in the "Understand" section, instead. Thanks for the feedback. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 12:02, 29 January 2009 (EST)

National Park or Small City Template?

As Four Corners is a Monument, shouldn't it follow a National Parks template rather than a Project:Small city article template? What do you think? (WT-en) WineCountryInn 18:28, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Why Four Corners is a Destination

Since this issue may arise again about Four Corners, since it is a limited destination where you can't sleep as per Project:What is an article? policy, here is the debate and consensus that was reached during January 2009's Project:Votes_for_deletion#Four_Corners. For posterity's sake (since at some point this text will be archived at "Votes for Deletion"), I have posted the full transcript of that discussion. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 11:55, 30 January 2009 (EST)

Four Corners

• Delete - In case you don't already know, Four Corners is a small landmark in the middle of nowhere where four states meet at the same point. While it is an attraction, it's hardly a destination worthy of it's own article and should just be mentioned as an attraction in the Get out sections of the nearby towns (which I've already taken care of). There was already some agreement towards getting rid of it (see Talk:Four Corners), but no action was taken, so I decided to go through the formal process here to get rid of this stub once and for all. (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 22:23, 27 January 2009 (EST)

• Redirect. While not article-worth the site is noteworthy, and due to its popularity I suspect that if we delete it then it will be recreated by another contributor in the future. To avoid that scenario a redirect makes sense - the most logical redirect target seems to be Navajo Nation, which contains and administers the park, although if anyone has a better target then I'd be fine with using it. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 22:31, 27 January 2009 (EST) Keep. User:(WT-en) WineCountryInn did a great job of turning this into a useful article, so there is no reason to get rid of that work. -- (WT-en) Ryan • (talk) • 13:58, 31 January 2009 (EST)

(Slaps forehead) Of course! The Navajo Nation! And here I was thinking we wouldn't be able to redirect it, but the Navajo Nation article would be perfect. Okay, I support a redirect.' (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 23:10, 27 January 2009 (EST)

Hold off on that, please! I plan at taking a whack at the article at some point. In the back of my mind, I was imagining a collaboration of the Four Corners Wikivoyage users, an effort between you, User:(WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill and me to save this stub from itself. Four Corners is still a cartographic curiosity, even if it doesn't have much to offer. I'm imagining a short, oh so short guide about the length of (WT-en) cacahuate's Tobacco Caye. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 22:34, 27 January 2009 (EST)

The problem is that I don't think there's any way you could get the Four Corners article to the length of Tobacco Caye. Virtually everything useful you could say about the Four Corners site has already been said in this article. You could add some directions and a picture, but that's about it and it still wouldn't be nearly enough. Anything useful that can be said about the site can easily be said in the Get out sections of the nearby towns. (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 23:19, 27 January 2009 (EST)

Doing some preliminary scrounging around, I have found a decent public domain photo and enough adequate information to save this turkey. I think a 700-800 word "History" section under "Understand", as well as a better write up of the other sections will grow it into a usable guide. It's actually got some interesting history behind it. Besides, the article does a woefully inadequate job about explaining how "Four Corners" describes a wider region of the Southwest. (Not analogous with Wikivoyage's regional definitions, but still widely used). (WT-en) WineCountryInn 23:36, 27 January 2009 (EST)

700-800 words?!? That alone would be about three times as long as the Wikipedia article on the monument. Four Corners might have some interesting history, but I wonder if Wikivoyage would be the right place for such detailed history (as compared to say, Wikipedia), considering that we are just a travel guide. But if you're confident that you can make something out of this article, I am willing to cancel this nomination and wait to see what you come up with, and then we can decide whether or not to keep it at a later date. Would anyone else object to this? (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 23:52, 27 January 2009 (EST)

I don't see why we shouldn't let Mr or Ms Wine take a stab on a write up, if it fails we can always put the information in a nearby town, and I've been quite impressed with his/her ability to write good guides so far. --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 23:56, 27 January 2009 (EST)

Thanks, (WT-en) Stefan (sertmann)! It'll take a little research. But give me the full two weeks and I'll try to hammer it into something interesting. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 00:08, 28 January 2009 (EST)

First Draft Finished - Please take another look at Four Corners. I have upgraded the article to usable. I nominate that this article be removed from the "Deletion" list. Your feedback is appreciated. Thanks, (WT-en) WineCountryInn 17:51, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I'm all for that. I'm almost in shock, you just did an absolutely, unbelievably, incredible job on this article! I vote to keep. (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 18:56, 29 January 2009 (EST)

• Keep. Nice. --(WT-en) Inas 21:23, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I'm going to play devil's advocate here, and point out that most of the information in the Buy, Eat and Respect sections is general information that should probably go in the Navajo Nation article or in the respective region articles instead. Despite my surprise at how much can actually be said about this attraction and (WT-en) WineCountryInn's fantastic effort in making it look spiffy, I'm still concerned that this article still violates the spirit of our policy against having articles for singular attractions. I think it would be hard to argue that this monument is anything but a very small attraction most travellers won't spend more than an hour at. The argument that "Four Corners" is used by locals to refer to the whole region around it doesn't help anything, since if this were considered a region article then it would create overlap, which violates another of our policies. I'm even a little concerned that the Navajo Nation article is already a form of overlap. (WT-en) Texugo 22:31, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Well put and point taken, but to rebut, there are plenty of national parks and monuments that are small, singular destinations and yet immensely popular due to their cultural and historical significance. ( George Washington's Birthplace National Monument in Virginia comes to mind). They aren't written up yet in Wikivoyage because no one has bothered to take the time. If Four Corners were solely a commercial tourist trap like the Big Texan in Amarillo or Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Colorado, I would tend to agree. But it is a monument, and size alone can't be a criterion for eliminating a popular park. Also, if you delete this article, it will only come back from the dead periodically because people expect there to be an article for the geographical locus of this attraction-crowded region. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 22:49, 29 January 2009 (EST)

I know that we don't debate policy here, we just follow it, but there are some places that have specific ways of getting in, and things to see, that they just don't seem to belong in the article that they are being visited from. Muir Woods is another classic example. Sure it is just a single destination, and is an attraction rather than a destination, but the redirect is just wrong. A whole article could be done on the former, and there is little to write about the latter. Perhaps this is similar situation. --(WT-en) Inas 23:30, 29 January 2009 (EST)

There also comes a time in any taxonomy where it simply breaks down because something defies categorization. Mount Rushmore is a single attraction, with no place to stay. And yet it is featured in the lead photograph on the main page of the United States article and is up for possible inclusion in a revamped Other Destinations section (See Talk:United_States_of_America#Other_destinations). A majority of people at Mount Rushmore enter the park, take a picture and leave within an hour, just like at Four Corners. Wikivoyage also has an article about Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, where you go and look at old nukes. Where do you put Four Corners since it is in four states at once, also in two separate national regions, four state sub-regions, and could be included in Blanding Utah, Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, and Cortez Colorado, as well as the "Get Out" sections of about two dozen national parks and monuments in the area? It seems tidier to keep the article, as is. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 23:42, 29 January 2009 (EST)

In general I'm leaning towards WineCountryInn's view here. Two examples of attraction articles come to mind: Pipe Spring National Monument and Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park. In both cases, questions arose about the legitimacy of the articles because they were very small and you can't sleep there. However, they were kept because you could say a lot about the destination and they were quite far from the nearest town. So there was too much material in these articles to seriously consider squeezing them into a Get Out listing. Four Corners is much the same way, except originally I thought you couldn't say much about it (which obviously has been proven wrong). (WT-en) PerryPlanet ^Talk 00:50, 30 January 2009 (EST)

Yes, it seems the Project:What is an article? policy breaks down a bit when a small attraction is located far from any named settlement. It would seem a consensus is developing to allow articles for small but well-known attractions that can't be said to be located within any other destination article. (WT-en) LtPowers 08:25, 30 January 2009 (EST)

The policy doesn't break down, it is overridden by the prime directive that the traveller comes first. If travellers go there, bugger the policy, make it an article. - (WT-en) Huttite 06:51, 31 January 2009 (EST)

If it needs to be overridden, I think my point stands that it doesn't adequately address such a situation. (WT-en) LtPowers 09:43, 31 January 2009 (EST)

• Keep. If I chimed in at the beginning, I would have voted to merge & redirect to Navajo Nation, but it works just fine as a standalone article now because of WCI's work and is anyway a special case because it breaks our geographical hierarchy. In general, though, I think sites such as this that don't merit their own article (for lack of accommodations) and are too far away from other destinations should be described in the region article that contains them under "see." If that description gets too long, create an entire subsection just for it. Only when those two options have been tried and found wanting, I think we should consider giving a "non-destination" its own article. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 00:53, 2 February 2009 (EST)

• Keep. It could be useful (WT-en) elgaard 19:11, 1 February 2009 (EST)

Removed vfd tag from Four Corners article, as this is the 14th day of review, there is a consensus to keep, and no further comments have been generated. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 11:57, 10 February 2009 (EST)

Outcome: Keep. (WT-en) WineCountryInn 16:12, 10 February 2009 (EST)