Wikipedia:WikiProject California/GNIS cleanup task force

Per this discussion, there are many stubby Wikipedia articles on California locales that have been created sourced to a GNIS entries. GNIS has errors and may contain locales that are not notable, per WP:NGEO.

The plan for the cleanup is the following. For each county in California:

1. Create a work page as a subpage of this one, using this template
2. Fill in the work page by sorting articles by notability
3. When finished sorting, create a list article (e.g., List of unincorporated communities in Modoc County, California), with formatting described here
4. Modify the county navboxes (e.g., {{Modoc County, California}}) to refer to the new list article and remove non-notable entries.
5. PROD or merge the non-notable articles.

1. CJK09 (talk) 23:32, 17 April 2020 (UTC) - Gold Country, Sierra Nevada, Bay Area[reply]
2. TitanAndromeda 03:03, 18 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
3. — hike395 (talk) 01:24, 20 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
4. – dlthewave ☎ 03:12, 20 April 2020 (UTC) I have access to urham’s Place-Names of California’s Gold Country.[reply]
5. Reywas92^Talk 05:36, 22 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]
6. Mangoe (talk) 11:02, 22 April 2020 (UTC) I am working on the Nn Place articles first but will switch to by-county once those are done.[reply]
7. Glendoremus (talk) 03:45, 31 May 2020 (UTC) Contra Costa[reply]
8. Hog Farm _Bacon 18:57, 14 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

TODO: make county progress map

• Wikipedia:WikiProject California/GNIS cleanup task force/Template - Template for starting a county page
• USPS Report on the evolution of mail delivery: it explains what a fourth-class post office was. At the height of pre-RFD service there were 76,000 of these, and yes, often enough they were just a spot in someone's house.

• Any Arcadia Publishing book for the locality such as (to take Lake County, California as an example):
  • Lake County Historical Society (2009). Lake County, 1871–1960. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738560175.
  • Hoberg, Donna (2007). Resorts of Lake County. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 9780738547985.
• Arcadia books are not the be-all-and-end-all, but they do point the way. Arcadia (and other local history) books helped sort out Robert, California (AfD discussion) and Escalle, Larkspur, California; helped identify what Salminas Resort, California (AfD discussion) actually was; and conversely made the cases stronger against the likes of Ettawa Springs, California (AfD discussion). All of these were two-sentence GNIS-only stubs at the time of deletion nomination, all claiming "unincorporated community".