On 5/31/07, Slim Virgin slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
That's a good point, but we'd expect people to be reasonable. Defining the subject area as "canals of south-west England" is reasonable;
No you see you've just accepted Parnall's canal as notable (0.5 miles long lost in a rock slide in about 1732). Problem is that while anyone who knows their way around the canals of south-west England should know the name and description there are maybe two original sources on the thing in total (all the online refs draw from Charles Hadfield's work and even he appears to have only found 2 sources).
defining it as "canals on Smith Street, Torquay," where there is only one (in an attempt to make that canal notable to anyone knowledgeable about canals on Smith Street) would not be. Where the line needs to be drawn is impossible to say. Best to use common sense, but in the case of a dispute (is this a properly defined subject area or not), we could look to see whether reliable sources have ever written about that subject. In other words, are there books or articles about "canals in south-west England"? Probably yes. Are there books and articles on "canals on Smith Street, Torquay." Probably not.
50:50. It is not uncommon for local history people tend to write books on their local canals at least one article will tend exist on almost any given canal.
But books and articles existing doesn't work either. There is at least one book and a number of articles on the [[Chichester Canal]]. If we define that as a subject area what about "Netlam & Francis Giles" who's names apear rather prominently on the original plan for the canal that gets reproduced rather a lot.