Talk:Western New York

VfD

This article was nominated for deletion on 20 July 2013 but was kept. The deletion debate is Wikivoyage:Votes_for_deletion/August_2013#Western New York. Please consider that decision before you re-nominate it.

Western New York is a part of the state of New York, but there is no consistent definition and it’s not even mentioned in the New York (state) page. I don’t think it deserves an article because it overlaps several existing subregions in New York and the current page doesn’t contain anything that couldn’t go in New York (state). I think this page should be a redirection to New York (state) with a few explanations about Western New York there. -- Fractal (talk) 02:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• As a lifelong Western New Yorker, it pains my heart to vote this way, but: delete redirect. It doesn't (and can't be made to, given the lack of a consistent definition of "Western New York") fit into the subregions scheme of New York (state). Furthermore, the article contains no useful travel information and is, in fact, nothing but a brief discussion of the competing definitions of "Western New York". Wikipedia's article on Western New York contains, among other things, the exact same information. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 03:10, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
• Speedy keep. First of all, it's a real place, so there's no policy-based reason to delete it. At worst it should be redirected, per policy (after all, we don't want people who search for it to end up at a redlink, do we?). However, this is essentially a disambiguation page. Or extra-hierarchical region, depending on how you want to look at it. The point is to get readers to the content they want; deleting it would leave them high and dry. LtPowers (talk) 13:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

It didn’t occur to me that this page could be seen as a disambiguation page, but now that you say it, it sort of make sense. If we keep it as a disambiguation page, we should at least add the tag {{disamb}} and probably remove the tag {{stub}}. Fractal (talk) 15:03, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• Speedy keep per LtPowers rationale even though Fractal and AndreCarrotflower's comments and nomination are otherwise right on the money - but only if it's made clear that it is a disambiguation page (example here - take a look at the hidden HTML comment to potential editors which is quite important) --W. Frank^e-mail_talk 13:57, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

  I had a disambig tag on it until Traveler100 changed it to outlineregion. I reverted that, then Traveler100 changed it to stub, which I left so as not to edit war. LtPowers (talk) 19:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

  For what it's worth, I don't think it's really a disambiguation page, but that's the closest analogue we have at the moment. It's really an extra-hierarchical region, like Navajo Nation, except that it's not one we actually want a full travel guide for. LtPowers (talk) 19:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

  I kind of wonder whether we need disambiguation pages for theoretical region articles, though. If we don't want an article for it, then why are we writing about it at all? --Peter ^Talk 19:58, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

  Because people are likely to search for it. LtPowers (talk) 15:47, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

  Okay, that is a persuasive argument. If we redirected Western New York, people could still search for it, but that would lead to the question of where to redirect the article. Given that it's an extrahierarchical region with undefined boundaries that can be interpreted as encompassing several of our hierarchical regions in whole or in part, we can't really redirect to the Niagara Frontier, the Finger Lakes, or the Southern Tier, and I doubt that anyone searching specifically for information on Western New York would be satisfied at being redirected to New York (state). I'm changing my vote to keep. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 16:16, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

  What about redirecting to New York (state)#Regions and moving the definition of Western New York there? Or maybe we could create a subsection "Western New York" at New York (state)#Regions Fractal (talk) 16:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

  I think the information is way too much for New York#Regions, which along with the two sections following is meant to be a pretty simple navigation tool for descending the hierarchy. I'm not sure all that explanation is really that important anywhere, actually, aside maybe from Talk:New York (state)#Regions. By the way, this discussion should be copied to that page when archiving this nomination. --Peter ^Talk 17:38, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

  For someone looking for travel information to Western New York, redirecting to New York (state) makes perfect sense, it does not seem that there is anything specific to say about Western New York that couldn’t be said in either New York (state) or in the specific subregions. For someone looking for the definition of "Western New York", well, that’s the wrong website. Fractal (talk) 18:27, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

  Here is another example: I live in the south of France, usually known as le Midi. But there is no such article or redirection on Wikivoyage, and not even on the French Wikivoyage, because it doesn’t fit the regions scheme of France. But I don’t think there should be such an article, the traveller probably doesn’t care, and if he does care he can go to Wikipedia to get the definition. Fractal (talk) 18:47, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not convinced. Sure, le Midi on one level just means "noon" in French, so people might not look for it, but what about Côte d'Azur? It redirects to French Riviera, which is the right thing to do. We should probably redirect Midi there, too.

My point of view is that any search term a traveller would reasonably look for should normally get some kind of result. Having "Western New York" go nowhere does not serve the traveller, in my opinion, and is therefore not satisfactory. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:20, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I could probably live with a simple redirect to New York (state), but I feel like having this page will help the traveler more than just dropping them at the state level without explanation. LtPowers (talk) 00:56, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Keep. It is a real place. I do not know the area, so I'm not certain if it should be a disambig page or a redirect. I would guess disambig from discussion above, but would not object if someone who knows the region wants to overrule. Deletion should not even be considered. Pashley (talk) 21:38, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

• Keep I agree with LtPowers' reasoning. Keeping the page as is as a disambig is most helpful to travelers. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:15, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Keep and reclassify. As there are a number of articles like this one I suggest a new tag of Extraregion. Traveler100 (talk) 11:00, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• If there are indeed several similar pages, I think that having an additional tag is a good idea. Western New York should not be a proper region in the sense of Wikivoyage (because of overlaps) nor a disambiguation page and it seems that people don’t want to simply redirect to New York. Fractal (talk) 11:29, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Comment - I am inclined to agree with Traveler100. There is always this discussion about starting a new class of meta-regions, which I started in 2009 and is still unresolved. Western New York was already mentioned there when the topic was revisted last year as a good candidate for a meta-region article. Texugo (talk) 11:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

  I'd forgotten about that discussion. Peter's position seems to be that either we should be able to write a full-fledged region article on a legitimate region, or we shouldn't have an article for it at all (meaning it should be redirected). So maybe the disconnect here is that when I say "we [don't] actually want a full travel guide for [it]", Peter would say "yes, we do, if it's a legitimate travel region"? The problem with that in this case, though, is that "Western New York" is not well-defined. I don't see how we could write a full travel guide for it, because there's no way to define which destinations are within it. LtPowers (talk) 19:17, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

  In this case, I would say we don't want a full travel guide for W NY, so we might as well just get rid of it. But my position has softened over time, I guess—I don't see what harm it's doing as a pseudo-disambiguation page. --Peter ^Talk 06:27, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  Well, it's not doing any harm, but I think it'd be nice to keep disambiguation pages for names that are actually ambiguous, while allowing for more detail on these sorts of pages to help readers looking for them. If we deleted/redirected it, we're doing our readers a disservice by obscuring the information they're looking for. LtPowers (talk) 13:23, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

  Except while we still don't have these new class of regions, we traditionally deploy the disamb to places that aren't. --Inas (talk) 06:45, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

  Aren't what? LtPowers (talk) 14:12, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

  Regions proper. --Inas (talk) 00:34, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

  Yes, and that's what I did here; I'm suggesting that calling them "ambiguous" isn't quite right. LtPowers (talk) 00:38, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Result: Kept. --Saqib (talk) 00:36, 3 August 2013 (UTC)