Talk:South County (Massachusetts)

What to call this?
South County's component towns don't, in my opinion, have enough potential content to make good articles, with the exception of Sturbridge. I've read about creating "rural region x" articles, but that doesn't apply here. Sturbridge is the most rural town in South County, it just also happens to have more things to list than the other towns put together (I'm not listing every chain restaurant and pizza place in the area). All but two of the hotels in the region are in Sturbridge for example. There's no other name for the area that I've ever heard aside from South County, but this definition includes Sturbridge, which needs its own article. I don't want to list all attractions for the entire region in Sturbridge since saying they're nearby is quite misleading in many cases. Is it OK to list all non-Sturbridge attractions in this article, but still list Sturbridge as in South County? If that's ok, how do you add "add listing" tabs to make adding content easier?Godsendlemiwinks (talk) 02:11, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * No, that's not a good idea. Webster, Southrbidge, Auburn, and Charlton all have a fair amount of listings in addition to Sturbridge, so I don't see a compelling reason to combine them all into one article. Powers (talk) 17:32, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess I disagree that any of them have a fair amount of listings as it is, not to mention that most of the eat and drink listings could be pruned. With the exception of one restaurant in Soutbridge, none of the listings is particularly notable.  Most are diners or pizza places.  While they aren't chains, they're basically the Massachusetts equivalent.  There are no dominos or pizza huts here, but Town X House of Pizza exists in every town.  There's usually more than one and they all serve pretty much the same thing.  I don't think we need to list them all.  So far I've only deleted listings for businesses that definitely don't exist.  I don't know why these were added, the Charlton article read like a listing for people who live in the area.  I'd support getting rid of some of the other ones, but I didn't add them so I'm reluctant to delete them unilaterally.


 * I think South County would be better served with an article like Prince Edward County. That article covers a much bigger area that also includes distinct towns. While it has a smaller population, it's definitely more of a tourist destination than South County.  I'm not sure I could make a South County article as big as Prince Edward's. Reading it makes me want to go there whereas the handful of listings in each town outline for South County make it seem like you might as well not bother.  The only difference I can see between the 2 regions is that Ontario had the good sense to consolidate a bunch of useless local governments and Massachusetts didn't.Godsendlemiwinks (talk) 22:16, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you're expecting too much from small-town articles (and assuming that the listings currently in each article are exhaustive). Compare, for instance, Childs or Saint Marys (Pennsylvania). Powers (talk) 01:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

(Un-indent)Childs at least has a somewhat complex attraction to build around, although it seems to be pushing the bounds of what should and shouldn't be an article (if it didn't have the museum, would it have an article?). None of the towns in South County have anything like that. Maybe there is someone out there who can find something to fill an article about one of these towns, but I've been to all of them multiple times (I live in this area) and I don't have much more to add. The town I live in is bigger than any of the towns in South County, but doesn't have an article. I don't intend to create one either because it doesn't really need one, even though I could make one that was much bigger than any of these towns. When this was still wikitravel, someone (or a group of people) created articles for most of the towns in Massachusetts. Most of them are still blank or nearly so. There are around 350 towns in the state, which is too many articles. Central Massachusetts is a mess, with useless region articles (that overlap with other regions) linking to mostly stub or outline towns. Because somebody created articles for them, there have to be regions or the list of cities would be ridiculous. I'd like to fix this, probably by getting rid of the regions and organizing the content as either cities or other destinations that combine several small towns, all of which could be linked from Central Massachusetts without creating overly long lists. If it turns out there is enough content to create a decent article for a place, then it can always be created later. I like using wikivoyage when I travel, and I love exploring the area close to home, but wikivoyage was borderline useless for Central Massachusetts because the content was so fragmented so I stopped using it.

As for the listings, they aren't exhaustive, there are additional pizza places and such, but this isn't supposed to be a comprehensive listing of every restaurant/hotel in town is it?. Yelp,Google, and hotels.com already exist for that. Is it really useful to create articles that are mostly restaurant listings? Charlton has 5 non-restaurant/hotel listings, one of which is partially in another town. Southbridge has three and Webster has 1.Godsendlemiwinks (talk) 02:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I hadn't come across the "can you sleep there?" rule. I get that this is by no means iron clad and obviously there are interesting places without anywhere to sleep and places with lots of hotels that are incredibly dull, but it seems generally useful.  Charlton and Oxford have nowhere to sleep. Neither does Dudley, but fortunately there isn't a Dudley article.  Webster might have one.  It has a website, but no pricing information.  It sounds like someone just rents out rooms of their house for whatever they can get.Godsendlemiwinks (talk) 02:44, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * "Can you sleep there" is for distinguishing types of destinations, not different destinations of the same type. That is, it allows us to distinguish a city park (which has no accommodations) from a national park (which does). Even if one particular national park doesn't have any accommodations, it's still a national park and thus gets its own article. It's the same with communities. One particular small village may not have any hotels, but villages in general have accommodations of some sort, so villages get articles.
 * I have no problem removing truly empty articles; I just don't think all of these are examples of truly empty articles. Charlton in particular is a perfectly decent article. Powers (talk) 21:15, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. All of those articles could use some work, but each one seems perfectly valid to me. Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:20, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

Dudley/Oxford Coverage
Dudley and Oxford are the only towns in this region that don't have articles. I think they can reasonably be covered in existing articles for Webster (Dudley) and Charlton (Oxford). Wondering if the articles should be renamed to reflect the fact that they each cover two neighboring towns? Webster is bigger than Dudley, and Dudley's downtown, to the extent that it exists, is basically just an extension of downtown Webster. Charlton and Oxford are about the same size. Oxford has more of a town center, but the most popular attraction is in Charlton. Godsendlemiwinks (talk) 01:41, 11 August 2022 (UTC)