Talk:Swofford, Washington

This page has been recently proposed for deletion (24 May 2024) by James.folsom (talk · contribs).

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Removal of PROD, May 2024[edit]

Hey everyone!

Another Lewis County article to save from deletion via the necessary (and no doubt a grueling grind), GNIS cleanup task. Similar to other PROD's and AfD's in the county, the reasons behind the necessity of deleting Swofford is lack of current sourcing that can determine the validity of a community.

Agreed - sources on the page do present a lack of a present description of a Swofford community.

Disagree - that Swofford is/never was a community.

Thankfully I have some - limited local news reporting spanning from the late 1890s to present day. As one expects of a small, rural community in the United States, not much of anything beyond WA state but the refs are reliable and in combination, should determine the notability of Swofford so that the article can remain.

In the 1976 NewspaperArchive link from 1976 provided by the PROD editor,[1]), two articles on top of each other refer to the "a Central Lewis County farm community" of Swofford Valley (acknowledged by the editor) that describes the beginnings, and "citizens of Swofford" in the bottom article in a remembrance piece on a 1901 celebration. Obviously, alone, that one page of a newspaper with two articles describing the Swofford area as a community and with residents is not fully enough, but it's certainly off to a great start.

Unfortunately, we cannot assume what a post office would've been like or what it meant in Swofford when it was started, nor should we make assumptions that it was just somebody's house, too. We have to rely on the sourcing, not a 21st century definition or viewpoint. A lack of current sourcing on a page does not mean deletion should be immediate.

Unfortunately I'm running out of time so I'll amend this topic conversation next Monday with the two-dozen useful sources I've found. Until then, let's hold off on a potential AfD so no time or energy is wasted, so that editors can find sources first. As an aside, as someone who's hiked Swofford Pond and Sulpher Creek a few times, there's a community there - but yes, sourcing, sourcing, sourcing.

I'll close with this proposal - rewrite the page for now to include - Swofford, also known as Swofford Valley...

Thanks!

Shortiefourten (talk) 18:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Plenty has been written about those old post offices, and many do understand them. It's just a convenient argumentative smoke and mirrors to claim otherwise. James.folsom (talk) 22:50, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]