Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/County collecting

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Vanamonde (Talk) 12:24, 25 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

County collecting

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This article has some references, but while the topic has attracted two news articles, but WP:GNG is a problem. The term is very rare, seems to be associated with the slightly popular term, the Extra Miler Club, and the two news pieces are rather short too. GNews gives a few more hits for 'Extra Miler Club' ("Man visits every county in America, ending in Ohio", etc. [1]). I wonder if this shouldn't be rewritten into an article about the Extra Miler Club; no scholarly source seems to acknowledge "county collecting" as a hobby/activity, but while the term "county collecting" is very rare, the activities of the Extra Miler Club have attracted a few more news pieces (for example, the one I link above, about "Man visits..", does not mention the term county collecting, but it mentions the EMC). Still, what I see is limited to a few tongue-in-cheek stories, nothing scholarly. Is this really a topic for an encyclopedic article? As said, I have serious concerns that the activity of "county collecting" is not notable, but maybe something here can be rescued somehow (I'd suggest a merge and redirect to the EMC article if it existed, but it does not...). Any thoughts? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:06, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Geography and United States of America. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:06, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Roadgeek may be a legitimate merge target, as there is certainly overlap in the interests, but we'd need a reliable source that discusses that. Barring that, a mention at collecting might be appropriate, assuming we can add some sourced content about other non-tangible collections. --Kinu ^t/_c 20:56, 18 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good find, the topics do seem to be closely relatred. A merge can be considered. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:59, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, I am not necessarily advocating for a merge to either of these topics; rather, they are proposed as alternatives to deletion if needed. --Kinu ^t/_c 22:06, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This may be a niche/obscure hobby, but it has existed since the 1950s at least. Adding more sources. Also on a personal note, I'm semi-retired from wikipedia and feel strongly enough about this topic to try and salvage the article.--T1980 (talk) 11:29, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@T1980 I will be looking forward to your improvements. Do you have an opinion re merger with roadgeek? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:04, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Piotrus I don't support a merger, since despite overlap in interests, there are elements of County Collecting and road tripping which are mutually exclusive.. particularly since a number of counties are accessible only by boat or airplane, and for ones that are not, road travel is obviously more convenient from a logistical standpoint than going to each individual county by other means. I've never heard the term "roadgeek" before, even though I more than qualify for being one. If any merger is done, I would recommend the merged article title undergo a name change to something that gets the gist across more easily and foregoes the uses of slang/colloquilisms. --T1980 (talk) 13:48, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus How about listing it on a new article something along the lines of "Niche travel hobbies" ? It could include other mentions of other ones like highpointing (visiting the highest elevation in all 50 states/7 continents, etc.) traversing every highway in a particular region, visiting every national park, tri or quad-point boundaries (Four Corners USA, German/Czech/Polish border) geographic centers/extreme points etc. T1980 (talk) 14:09, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@T1980 The question is WP:GNG. Is Wikipedia the right platform to discuss all niche travel hobbies? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:50, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I first heard about county collecting in the regular press decades ago. It has been mentioned on "Jeopardy!" and on the Tonight Show. One does not have to intend to visit every county to be a county collector. Anyone who keeps track of their visited counties is a county collector. That is tens of thousands of people, at least. The mob-rule web site has over 7700 members who have enrolled and listed their visited counties. That is only a fraction of the people who keep track of their counties. The FB page for Extra Miler has almost 500 members, a much greater number than its paid membership. I will continue to work to improve the article. Bellczar (talk) 23:12, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
500 FB members does reinforce the extreme nichiness of this. I'll be looking fwd to more sources, as so far we have only a few passing newspaper mentions. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:56, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You are guilty of confirmation bias. You took note of the FB group with 500 members and ignored the web site with 7700 registered users. Bellczar (talk) 02:25, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
7.7k is still a pretty small number, IMHO. Subjective, of course, it's not like we have any reasonable metrics. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:38, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep and do not merge to the roadgeek article. They're distinct hobbies. Just to add to the additions to the article, Ken Jennings covered the phenomenon in his 2012 book Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks along with other sorts of geographic collecting. Imzadi 1979 → 23:55, 19 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Imzadi1979 Can you link to the page where he does this? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:58, 21 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Thanks to the efforts of several editors, the article now has a long list of sources and IMO easily meets WP:GNG. An article covering both the hobby and the Extra Miler Club seems sensible, though AfD isn't the place to discuss what the article should be named. And roadgeeking is a different hobby entirely - there's almost certainly some crossover, but it would be like merging the roadgeek article into railfan because they both cover ground transport hobbyists. (For full disclosure, county collecting is one of my many hobbies, as are the other two I mentioned; I'd keep an article on any topic with this level of coverage, though.) TheCatalyst31 ^{Reaction•Creation} 04:16, 24 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.