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*'''Oppose''' - I feel this is a needless set of instructions on top of the nice and simple GEOLAND. I would really rather not have the AfD discussions spread to include disputes over this. In effect - this serves no purpose. Editors could combine a small tributary with a bigger river if they wanted now, or it could be separate - leave it to them! [[User:Nosebagbear|Nosebagbear]] ([[User talk:Nosebagbear|talk]]) 21:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' - I feel this is a needless set of instructions on top of the nice and simple GEOLAND. I would really rather not have the AfD discussions spread to include disputes over this. In effect - this serves no purpose. Editors could combine a small tributary with a bigger river if they wanted now, or it could be separate - leave it to them! [[User:Nosebagbear|Nosebagbear]] ([[User talk:Nosebagbear|talk]]) 21:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
*'''Oppose as worded'''. While these include factors that should be considered, am not at all convinced that a 10.1 km river with no other information is any more notable than a 9.9 km one with no other information. Agree with comments above that it's reasonable to boldly merge/redirect sub-stubs with limited sourcing to listing at a more comprehensive article such as the parent river, drainage basin, a list on tributaries of the major river system, a list of rivers of the area, or similar. River articles should only be sent to AFD for deletion if there is a likelihood of error/hoaxing, or for merge/redirect if other processes fail and there's [[WP:BEFORE|no useful information]] visible. Conversely, redirects and list entries should be created in preference to sub-stubs where there appears to be limited prospect for expansion. In the case of [[List of rivers of the Bahamas]], this should be a (sourced) table that contain name, coordinates, any notes, and if possible a picture. Other such lists might include stream order, parent, etc. <span style="font-size: 80%;color:blue"><sup>~</sup>[[User:Hydronium Hydroxide|Hydronium<sup>~</sup>Hydroxide]]<sup>~[[User talk:Hydronium Hydroxide|(Talk)]]~</sup></span> 22:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
*'''Oppose as worded'''. While these include factors that should be considered, am not at all convinced that a 10.1 km river with no other information is any more notable than a 9.9 km one with no other information. Agree with comments above that it's reasonable to boldly merge/redirect sub-stubs with limited sourcing to listing at a more comprehensive article such as the parent river, drainage basin, a list on tributaries of the major river system, a list of rivers of the area, or similar. River articles should only be sent to AFD for deletion if there is a likelihood of error/hoaxing, or for merge/redirect if other processes fail and there's [[WP:BEFORE|no useful information]] visible. Conversely, redirects and list entries should be created in preference to sub-stubs where there appears to be limited prospect for expansion. In the case of [[List of rivers of the Bahamas]], this should be a (sourced) table that contain name, coordinates, any notes, and if possible a picture. Other such lists might include stream order, parent, etc. <span style="font-size: 80%;color:blue"><sup>~</sup>[[User:Hydronium Hydroxide|Hydronium<sup>~</sup>Hydroxide]]<sup>~[[User talk:Hydronium Hydroxide|(Talk)]]~</sup></span> 22:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
* '''Oppose''' per power~enwiki and others, above. No argument ash been put forward as to why the current policy is not acceptable or is not working, nor why this proposal should apparently supersede GNG. <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">[[User:Pigsonthewing|Andy Mabbett]]</span> (<span class="nickname">Pigsonthewing</span>); [[User talk:Pigsonthewing|Talk to Andy]]; [[Special:Contributions/Pigsonthewing|Andy's edits]]</span> 23:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
* '''Oppose''' per power~enwiki and others, above. No argument ash been put forward as to why the current policy is not acceptable or is not working. <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">[[User:Pigsonthewing|Andy Mabbett]]</span> (<span class="nickname">Pigsonthewing</span>); [[User talk:Pigsonthewing|Talk to Andy]]; [[Special:Contributions/Pigsonthewing|Andy's edits]]</span> 23:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)


== Discussion at Template talk:Infobox river ==
== Discussion at Template talk:Infobox river ==

Revision as of 23:14, 21 December 2018

WikiProject iconRivers Project‑class
WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Rivers, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Rivers on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.
ProjectThis page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

USGS Hydrological Unit Codes vs CEC Hydrological Levels

So I've continued filling out the missing subregions on Water Resource Region, and I've found the agency responsible for harmonizing hydrological basins between the members of NAFTA, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC has a North American Environmental Atlas with a variety of base maps, and of particular interest here is the watershed map. It comes in 4 levels, with level 1 being the largest. I'm interested in maybe creating a list of CEC North American hydrological regions, but I'm having trouble finding statistics on any of the regions, and some of the level 4 unit names (esp for Mexico). I've found two sources on the Mexican hydrological region scheme here and here, but I'm having a hard time trying to eyeball matching regions. Any thoughts are welcome. -Furicorn (talk) 23:25, 15 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think what's going on there with the Mexican regions is that Mexico updated their regions and the CEC has not yet updated theirs to match, buried in the metadata for the CEC it's sourcing Mexico to a 1993 data layer and the Mexican websites are citing 2015 data. Kmusser (talk) 20:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Kmusser: Ah, Im glad you're metadata kung-fu is stronger than mine. I was able to find the links I was looking at in part through the metadata, but I wasn't able to figure out that discrepancy. It makes a lot of sense though. -Furicorn (talk) 07:02, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RfC: New Category Tree for Bodies of Water

There is a clear consensus in support of the proposal.

Cunard (talk) 23:22, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Having setup articles for all of the Water Resource Regions, I think it makes sense to create a Category tree for North America using the USGS Hydrological_code#United_StatesHydrological Unit Codes. The USGS HUCs include small portions of Canada and Mexico, but eventually the goal would be for a category tree that fully includes Mexico and Canada using the Commission for Environmental Cooperation's (CEC) water basin boundaries that span all three countries. An example of my proposed initial structure is as follows

In theory, while the latest USGS update may have some slightly HUC mappings, I haven't been able to easily find descriptive titles or listing of HUCs for that data. Also, I wasn't planning on setting up categories below the subbasin level, both because I haven't ever found descriptive names at this level, although it is certainly possible they exist. My overall approach would be to start creating a few of the region level categories and add a couple bodies of water to each one. I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this topic. -Furicorn (talk) 22:07, 1 October 2018 (UTC) Edit: I setup the Water resource regions category so people can take a look. -Furicorn (talk) 20:03, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'd say go for it. CapitalSasha ~ talk 16:25, 7 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose (without further information) (changed to Agree after further reading/investigation) I love the idea of an online encyclopedia and people being able to type things in and find them. But more and more I, as an editor, I am stumbling across articles that are redundant but named differently and that have some unique information but not enough. This bugs me. I'm just wondering if your scheme would be more of that. Remember, we are not a listing site, having things outlined or listed in a particular order is not so important as what is typed in that little "search" box at the top of the screen. Would users be typing in these branches of your trees? Are these branches already defined in an article explaining all of them? Could you give some examples here of the way rivers are currently classified and how they relate to this structure? Could you create on your sandbox page an example of what you are proposing to do? StarHOG (Talk) 12:57, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @StarHOG: I'm not sure if you were able to follow the links I provided above, but all of the top level and almost all of the second level US hydrologic units are described here on wikipedia (see the above mentioned Water resource region and the pages linked there). More broadly, hydrologic units are all mapped out by the USGS in cooperation with US state agencies, using maps at 1:24,000 scale. Currently, rivers are not necessarily classified into very structured watersheds, for current structures, you could take a look at Category:Watersheds of the United States or maybe Category:Drainage basins of North America. However, I would argue these are a bit haphazard. Within the context of the US, these hydrological unit categorizations provide the advantage of having been developed in a structured and consistent way by highly technical third-party specialists, and since they are in the public domaain they can be externally referred to and validated by anyone (although they may have to figure out how to navigate some of the tools). I don't think categories generally make it into the search box (do they?), and I typically view them as suggestions for people who are interested in further exploration of a topic. Most, if not all, articles on streams or bodies of water in the US have their coordinates listed, so the hydrological unit code for any given stream or river (or lake or reservoir) can be traced and placed with a combination of the USGS Streamer service, the national map and GNIS searches. You can look at a specific example I setup at Category:Upper Mississippi water resource region. I hope that answers some of your questions. -Furicorn (talk) 20:03, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It does, thank you for being so specific, and no, I failed to look at the links you put above before I wrote my piece. I'll look over everything you mentioned above tomorrow and update my humble opinions. StarHOG (Talk) 20:29, 9 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have reviewed the links and your points and have changed my opposition to an agree. Once you are done, however, I do not envy you going into all those river articles and placing them in the categories :) Good luck, StarHOG (Talk) 17:52, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree This is an interesting proposal and the structure makes sense. From an implementation note: the GNIS import in WikiData could help with matching pages to categories. The entity resolution has started on Mix'n'match for GNIS streams which would facilitate tagging the articles with categories. The lake GNIS resolution is nearly complete, nearing bulk import once that is outlined. Still some ways to go on reservoirs. Hope this is useful for the categories. Wolfgang8741 (Talk)
@Wolfgang8741: That sounds very interesting, I'll want to look more closely into that. I'm also very interested in finding out if there is a way to search for all items that fall within the boundaries of an area described in GIS that's more complicated than a box. If you know anything on that topic it would also be very helpful. -Furicorn (talk) 13:37, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say go for it. One word of caution on using the USGS scheme is that the USGS HUCs don't always match actual drainage basins, sometimes they'll lump small basin together just because they're close to each other and not because they're hydrologically linked or they'll include small endorheic basins with the basin surrounding them. The differences are small and probably won't matter for categorization purposes, but if you start doing articles on them just be aware that the Osage River HUC and Osage River drainage basin might not quite match. Kmusser (talk) 13:48, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Kmusser:This is a good point, but I actually didn't imagine most categories would go beyond 4-digit HUC level. I imagine most of what you describe is more common at 6-digit HUCs and below. -Furicorn (talk) 13:29, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Recusing myself I am insufficiently familiar with the considerations involved in such a complex subject, to give a significant opinion. But in passing, one remark. The intention clearly is to apply a hierarchical structure of categories, because hierarchies are convenient, as long as they are appropriate. The catch is that the parameters that determine the hierarchy can be changed, or even just changed in the sequence they are applied (eg size within position gives a different hierarchy from position within size) so one either needs to identify a sequence and choice of parameters that the great majority of users will accept, or to consider whether to have more hierarchies than one for classifying the same population, or in extreme cases, simply to identify atomic sets of which various set intersections and unions happen to be useful to recognise. I think that the latter two options are unpopular, and they certainly are not necessary in all cases, but I leave it to you to decide whether the consideration is appropriate in this topic. JonRichfield (talk) 06:24, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Template for discusion

Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2018_October_19#Template:Infobox_river may be of interest. -- WOSlinker (talk) 23:49, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merging Geobox|river into Infobox river

We are discussing how best to merge these two templates at Template talk:Infobox river#Merger of Geobox/river into this template and there are several specific questions that I would like comments on. Any editors with experience of either of these templates are invited to participate. Many thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:56, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Articles using Geobox river- why has count declined

The Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Rivers/Archive 4#Request for comments on the Geobox/Infobox river templates Rfc listed 15,788 articles using Geobox river and 14,277 using Infobox river as of 7 November 2017. The Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2018 October 19#Template:Infobox river Tfd listed 15,559 and 14,968 respectively as of 24 October 2018. The counts are 15,585 and 14,989 respectively as of this moment. Can anyone explain why the count for Geobox River declined by more than 200 in the time between the Rfc and Tfd, about a year? I know I added articles in the period. Regards, --papageno (talk) 07:02, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:50, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Geobox nominated for deletion

It has been proposed that we delete {{Geobox}}. That may effect this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the Geobox deletion discussion. ɱ (talk) · vbm · coi) 18:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing as it was already decided that we will no longer use geobox for rivers... not sure why it would... --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 01:07, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

River Notablity

Got a question that I'm hoping this project can shed some light on... What is the story with notability for rivers? I've stumbled upon a few articles (Fărcădin River, Fărău River, Fătăceni River being the 3 most recent ones) that IMHO don't meet general notability. I don't want to spam nominate dozens of articles... But curious what other people think here? Is there a rule here? I'm sure there is a policy somewhere in the notability guidelines that explains this. Can anyone shed some light or link me to a page? To me, these fall under WP:MILL. I have nominated ONE article for deletion in hopes of getting some insight, but also want to see what others, particularly those who are involved in this project, think.

As a follow up to that can I request that some of the active participants in this project put together some notability guidelines? A while back I wrote a guideline for the Wildfire Project that can be see here. It doesn't have the force of documented policy but at least provides some guidelines. Would be great to have something similar for this project. Thanks! --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 21:14, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for opening this discussion. Size is an obvious basis for notability; and, after a career in water resources from an area of water scarcity, I would suggest consideration of what we termed beneficial uses. On a similar basis to the wildfire list, I might suggest the following: Thewellman (talk) 23:37, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • River average annual flow exceeds (criterion)
  • River drainage basin area exceeds (criterion)
  • River drainage basin population exceeds (criterion)
  • River forms one or more international boundaries
  • River used for commercial transportation
  • River provides regionally important wildlife habitat
  • River provides regionally important drinking water
  • River provides regionally important agricultural irrigation
  • River provides regionally important recreation
  • River provides regionally important hydropower
  • River provides regionally important cooling water
  • River has a notable historic flood event
I thought that as long as the river/stream has a name officially recognized by a governing body, and there are reliable sources attesting to its existence, it is "notable". Even a number of our river fAs (like Balch Creek) are tiny streams that may not be considered notable under Thewellman (talk · contribs)'s criteria above. Regarding these rivers in Romania, they appear to be direct translations from ro.wikipedia.org? I suppose whoever created those pages should be consulted for sources... Shannon [ Talk ] 06:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest Balch Creek would qualify for notability as regionally important for both recreation and wildlife habitat in the Portland area. Depending upon the criterion selected, it might also qualify on the basis of basin population in an area as densely settled as Portland. Thewellman (talk) 17:26, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't saying that Balch Creek isn't notable, I think it very much is, and it's a fantastic article. I just meant that due to these factors, it would be difficult to come up with criteria that could be fairly applied across all rivers worldwide. Shannon [ Talk ] 18:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Shannon1: you make a great point. I think this is where the WP:GNG would come in. Balch Creek definitely meets the "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". It has tons of coverage. One thing to consider is that the guideline is more of a "if it meets 1 or more of these it is DEFINITELY notable" than a "if it doesn't meet any of these it is definitely NOT notable". Going back to my example with WP:WILDFIRE-NOTE. Any fire that meets 1 of those 4 criteria is definitely notable. But lets say there is a 50 acre fire with no loss of life but it burns through Griffith Park and destroys the Griffith Park Observatory. That would definitely make the fire notable even though it doesn't meet any of the 4 criteria. So if an article doesn't meet any of the prelisted criteria, I would say it warrants a discussion, but it certainly isn't a speedy delete for not fitting some predefined template of notability. IMHO the notability guidelines are just that, a guide. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 18:42, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
See the creator (User:Afil)'s reply at WP:Articles for deletion/Fărcădin River. I suppose whatever criteria we decide on should consider that a river in a densely populated area is probably more notable that a small stream in the middle of a Siberian tundra. I really don't think all 8000+ articles about rivers in Romania are about notable rivers, nor all 90 tributaries of the Wupper. If a river meets the general notability guidelines (significant coverage in reliable sources), I guess it's notable. Note "Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention". So if the only mention is: "Rivers A, B, C, D and E are tributaries of river F", that doesn't make A-E notable. For other cases Thewellman's list of criteria above is a good start. I think 10 km2 would be a nice lower limit for basin area. Markussep Talk 13:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The "if it can be verified it exists then it is notable" as been the informal guideline over at AfD for all natural geographic features, not just rivers. I'd be ok with applying something more specific in theory, but agreeing with Shannon that coming up with something that can be applied fairly worldwide would be tricky. Part of the problem is that for much of the world even relatively major rivers don't have much in the way of data sources. Kmusser (talk) 19:49, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think we should stick to the general notability criterion. If there are no reliable sources about the river there must be no article about this river. However, sometimes sources are not esly to find - they might be offline, or online on a language which makes them difficult to be accessed, or whatever. For this case, we might have something of the sort proposed above. If a river satisfies the above criteria it is presumed notable - at least not a well-grounded AfD case has been made that the sources are not just hard to find, but they likely do not exist.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're drifting towards a consensus here. Something like this:

  • A river is notable if it meets the general notability guidelines (significant coverage in reliable sources; significant coverage is more than a trivial mention). Note from WP:GEOLAND: "Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist."
  • Since reliable sources may be difficult to find (offline and/or in a foreign language), a river is probably also notable if it meets at least one of the following notability criteria:
    • River average annual flow exceeds 1 m3/s (proposal)
    • River drainage basin area exceeds 10 km2 (proposal)
    • River drainage basin population exceeds 10,000 (proposal)
    • River forms one or more international boundaries
    • River used for commercial transportation
    • River provides regionally important wildlife habitat (may be difficult to define/verify, omit?)
    • River provides regionally important drinking water
    • River provides regionally important agricultural irrigation
    • River provides regionally important recreation
    • River provides regionally important hydropower (requires a minimum annual flow, omit?)
    • River provides regionally important cooling water (requires a minimum annual flow, omit?)
    • River has a notable historic flood event not, see WP:NGEO#No inherited notability

Markussep Talk 09:35, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts on the proposed omissions:

  • All rivers are (or were) ecosystems relatively sharply defined by terrestrial boundaries although the adjacent riparian zone (and connected lakes, wetlands, and marine estuaries) should be considered a part of that ecosystem. The importance of that ecosystem as a wildlife habitat often depends upon its distance from adjacent river ecosystems offering similar habitat. That distance often depends upon regional precipitation (greater distance in arid areas) or human modification (greater distance in areas of high population density.) Important wildlife habitat should be captured by drainage basin area criteria in arid areas, but there is an inverse probability of capture by drainage basin population or any of the other specified criteria with the exception of flow volume (and possibly boundary definition.) I suggest correlation of species distribution maps with surface drainage patterns would provide verification of wildlife habitat.
  • Hydropower potential is not entirely defined by river flow. Elevation change is equally important; and hydropower use may exceed the simple potential energy of stream flow and elevation change when water is allowed to flow from an uphill reservoir through power turbines to a downhill reservoir during periods of peak demand, and (like recharging a battery) pumped back into the uphill reservoir when power from other sources (like sun, wind, or steam) exceeds demand.
  • I'm inclined to agree with the capture of cooling water use by a flow volume criterion, and with the avoidance of inherited notability. Thewellman (talk) 18:17, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Markussep and Thewellman: What about the length of the river? Can we add a criterion for that? Because finding the average annual flow or the drainage basin area might be more difficult. Razvan Socol (talk) 05:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, good idea. 10 km seems a good lower length limit to me. Markussep Talk 09:58, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. Thewellman (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts: I'd use length rather than flow since flow data for many rivers is non-existent, agree that 10 km seems reasonable. For boundaries I'd be tempted to add rivers that are state/province/whatever the appropriate 1st order division is boundaries as well. I'd drop the wildlife habitat - all rivers are important wildlife habitat, so including it will make the criteria effectively "all rivers are notable", rendering this exericise a moot point. I'd simplify hydropower to "river used for hydropower" - I think any river with a hydropower dam on it is going to be notable, if you want a qualifyer I'd put it in energy produced (nominating at least 1 megawatt). I think you could drop the cooling water one, I have trouble imagining a river meeting that that wouldn't also meet one of the others. Kmusser (talk) 20:54, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Length vs Flow - Perhaps include both since only one is required?
Boundaries - Smaller political subdivisions may be appropriate until we reach the point of political boundaries subject to frequent change such as city boundaries where adjoining land is periodically annexed as population increases.
Wildlife habitat - We might clarify the definition of important to specify habitat for threatened species or species not otherwise found within a specified distance from that river.
Hydropower - I have no objection to River used for hydropower, although I suggest we consider historic watermills and potential future emphasis on dispersed energy production to minimize transmission losses. I have seen hydraulic rams on some very small streams. Perhaps use of a watt criterion should consider the difference between peak flow and average flow.
I agree with eliminating cooling water. Thewellman (talk) 22:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Including flow doesn't hurt anything, I just don't think there is going to be any flow data for a river whose notability is in question. Kmusser (talk) 15:58, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I like these criteria including modifications arising from the discussion. Can any of them be documented as applicable to this AFD? Thanks-- TimK MSI (talk) 14:36, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For a chance to see these guidelines in action I applied them to a stream currently at AfD and it passes the basin guideline at 13 km2. I think it would fail all the rest, except maybe the wildlife one, which would take more research. Kmusser (talk) 19:38, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It may be noted subject article presently fails to include a description of either the wildlife habitat or the drainage basin notability criteria as suggested by the proposed notability guidelines. Thewellman (talk) 20:06, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
True, but notability applies to the subject, not the article, that the article is lacking doesn't really tell us whether its subject is notable or not - and these guidelines are still pending, the current de facto guideline is that all named geographic features are notable so there really wouldn't have been a reason to include anything more in order to assert its notability. Kmusser (talk) 20:37, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As an aside, while it would meet these proposed guideline, I think that streams notability is dubious, I'm not at all sure that it would have enough sources to write a real article on it. Kmusser (talk) 20:43, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

NRIVER proposal

Add a Notability section to the project page with the following language:

The following criteria are considered for each river to meet notability guidelines, and the article should describe those criteria establishing notability. A river not meeting any of the below criteria is unlikely to be notable; although a river is considered notable if it meets the general notability guideline of significant coverage in reliable sources.

  1. River length exceeds 10 km
  2. River average annual flow exceeds 1 m3/s
  3. River drainage basin area exceeds 10 km2
  4. River drainage basin population exceeds 10,000
  5. River forms a territorial boundary separating two areas of equivalent political structure
  6. River used for commercial transportation
  7. River used for hydropower
  8. River used as habitat by threatened species or species not otherwise found within 10 km
  9. River provides regionally important drinking water
  10. River provides regionally important agricultural irrigation
  11. River provides regionally important recreation
  • Support for reasons described above. Thewellman (talk) 19:16, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • With regard to Wikipedia's gazetteer functionality, we might consider small rivers as being either tributaries to larger rivers or feeding directly into an ocean, lake, or endorheic basin. In either case, information about small rivers not meeting the proposed notability guidelines could be included in the article about that larger river, lake, etc. Many river articles already include a list of tributaries. The question is whether entries on that list are links to separate articles, or if a simple name would be sufficient. The name might be followed by geographic coordinates and/or length. The proposed guidelines emphasize description of notable features where additional information is available. A potentially difficult situation arises for oceans or very large rivers where the list might be so long as to make the receiving water article unwieldy. That may be handled by breaking out separate list articles either alphabetically, by continent or smaller geographic or political landforms, or both. Thewellman (talk) 18:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support --TimK MSI (talk) 20:01, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support and I think it would be good to include this in Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). Markussep Talk 20:06, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Any river with a verifiable name and location should be considered notable. Requiring some reference other than online maps is reasonable. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural comment this MUST be advertised as an RFC to become policy; this discussion is fine to set a guideline for the WikiProject, though. I plan to blatantly ignore this in AfD discussions as a non-binding WikiProject guideline if there is not an official RfC and will challenge any addition of this to Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features). power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:29, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, per Power~enwiki. Named streams are permanent geographical features and it's Wikipedia's function as a gazetteer to include them.– Gilliam (talk) 20:01, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • support in principle. Details may be discussed further. Minor features may just as well described in the "Tributaries" section of lager rivers and safely sit as redirects until it becomes more prominent. There were severel precedents. Exactly same situation was with Category:landforms of Antarctica, where zillions of articles were created for all named features by copyediting drafts generated by some bot from the US geo survey data, with the only content being location and who named them and how. Later they were happily merged into larger features without much fuss. Still another similar situation was with asteroids and minor planets. They were merged into several lists of these. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural comment When dust settles, this must be "unowned" from the "river cabal" semi-local consensus here and incorporated into WP:NGEO . Staszek Lem (talk) 02:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as unnecessary instruction keep with fussy criteria, WP:GEOLAND guidelines and WP:GNG is more than enough. This proposal would result in the proposed deletions of thousands of articles about small rivers, creeks and streams when the best option would be merging them into the tributaries sections of river articles and other sections of geoland articles so that there would be no overall loss of information, and then keeping the original articles as redirects. Other editors and myself would deprod any prods and oppose at AFD the deletion of natural features on the rationale that merging and then redirecting is the best option, regards Atlantic306 (talk) 16:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Atlantic306: I disagree with your statement that This proposal would result in the proposed deletions of thousands of articles about small rivers. Saying a page is not notable doesn't mean the page gets automatically deleted... It would provide a guide for what rivers are notable enough to get their own page. So if a river doesn't meet this guidelines it should be merged and redirected just like you said. This guideline would provide the rationale for doing just that. Right now, without the guideline, attempting to merge and redirect is almot immediately undone by other editors who insist that their 2 sentence article about a tiny creek is notable. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 17:49, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per power~enwiki. This runs contrary to our mission. We are also a gazetteer. Any river that has a name and can be verified should be included. This is one of the many reasons WP:N is not a policy. Geographic features will usually not meet it and shouldn’t be expected to. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per power~enwiki, and also because so many of the suggested criteria are entirely arbitrary. Why 10km and not 1,198 feet (the length of Vrelo (river))? Why a drainage basin population of 10,000 and not 2,937 (the 2010 population of Riverside, Missouri)? Why is use for transportation not considered notable unless money is exchanged? Generally speaking, named geographical features of any type are inherently notable by virtue of having been named (which is literally an act of noting them). Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:38, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would welcome discussion of bases for alternative quantitative criteria. It seems the Vrelo would be notable for recreational use and possibly flow. Is there a notable Missouri River tributary in Riverside not captured by the other specified uses? Can you suggest an aquatic transportation situation other than commercial or recreational? Thewellman (talk) 19:18, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment So, if this passes, what would we do with the articles linked in List of rivers of the Bahamas, most of which have a text consisting of "The [name of the river] is a river of the Bahamas"? They all flow into the Atlantic Ocean. - Donald Albury 19:43, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Donald Albury: those are exactly the sort of articles that spurred me starting this thread. IMHO articles like Staniard Creek are pointless and should just be deleted. IF they were part of a larger river system, I would say redirect to the parent page, but what value does Staniard Creek serve? There is no information there. --Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:23, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Who cares? It hurts nothing and might be beneficial to someone who lives in the area and wants to click the external link. The point of notability is to prevent articles that are harmful to the projects credibility from getting in. There's literally no problem at all if every name body of water on the planet had one sentence of Wikipedia so long as it had a source. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:41, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support this is a much more detailed set of notablity guidelines than is provided at WP:GEOLAND. That guideline states that Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist. This includes mountains, lakes, streams, islands, etc. The number of known sources should be considered to ensure there is enough verifiable content for an encyclopedic article. This proposal takes that and builds on it. Now it is absolutely possible for a river to be notable without meeting any of the above guidelines. The way I see this being used is If it meets these guidelines, it is notable, period. If it doesn't meet these guidelines then it is worth further discussion. Failing to meet the guidelines is not criteria for WP:CSD, but would certainly be grounds for opening a WP:AFD.
power~enwiki I agree that this needed to go to an RFC so thanks for raising that. To your point about the deletion process, I'm curious if you can address what I've said above. Assuming for the moment it IS adopted via this RFC (because I agree if the RFC doesn't result in support then it is moot), but IF the decision is to support this sort of guideline, do my comments above make sense? I think stating at an AFD that "this river doesn't meet any of the guidelines laid out for river notability" would be worthy of discussion. Not immediate deletion, but certainly discussion. Curious as to your thoughts.--Zackmann (Talk to me/What I been doing) 20:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I feel this is a needless set of instructions on top of the nice and simple GEOLAND. I would really rather not have the AfD discussions spread to include disputes over this. In effect - this serves no purpose. Editors could combine a small tributary with a bigger river if they wanted now, or it could be separate - leave it to them! Nosebagbear (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as worded. While these include factors that should be considered, am not at all convinced that a 10.1 km river with no other information is any more notable than a 9.9 km one with no other information. Agree with comments above that it's reasonable to boldly merge/redirect sub-stubs with limited sourcing to listing at a more comprehensive article such as the parent river, drainage basin, a list on tributaries of the major river system, a list of rivers of the area, or similar. River articles should only be sent to AFD for deletion if there is a likelihood of error/hoaxing, or for merge/redirect if other processes fail and there's no useful information visible. Conversely, redirects and list entries should be created in preference to sub-stubs where there appears to be limited prospect for expansion. In the case of List of rivers of the Bahamas, this should be a (sourced) table that contain name, coordinates, any notes, and if possible a picture. Other such lists might include stream order, parent, etc. ~Hydronium~Hydroxide~(Talk)~ 22:10, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per power~enwiki and others, above. No argument ash been put forward as to why the current policy is not acceptable or is not working. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:11, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox river

A discussion is underway at Template talk:Infobox river#Template-protected edit request on 12 December 2018 regarding the ability of editors to record the lengths of source/headwaters tributaries in Template:Infobox river. Thanks--TimK MSI (talk) 20:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RfC notability rivers

Should the criteria for river notability listed above (#NRIVER proposal) become part of Wikipedia policy, as part of (for instance) the Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) guideline? Markussep Talk 08:59, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please continue voting in the section #NRIVER proposal above, to avoid confusion with split discussion. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:14, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]