On 5/31/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin(a)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.
--
geni