Talk:List of ghost towns in Oklahoma

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Ghost towns Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ghost towns, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Ghost towns 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.Ghost townsWikipedia:WikiProject Ghost townsTemplate:WikiProject Ghost townsGhost town
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Oklahoma Mid‑importance

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List cleanup

I noticed the list was tagged and was just in an overall pretty poor shape. I've cleaned this up significantly.

First and most importantly, I have removed every town on this list that was unsourced. This is flat out unacceptable and is pretty much non-negotiable.

Secondly, per WP:INDISCRIMINATE I've had to implement a selection criteria. To sum up what I set the bar at: 1) the town needs to be referred to as a ghost town in a reliable source and 2) the town needs have its own article or we need to be able to prove a significant notability on its own (this means more than a passing mention in a larger work covering ghost towns and we should be able to fill out most of the columns). So, at least as of now, every redlinked town as been removed, and that means towns that have merely referred to as "no longer existing" in Oklahoma Place Names or as "historic communities" in Schmidt's book do not belong here.

Reason being is that just because a "place" no longer exists, doesn't mean it was ever a town. Take the area around Deer Creek (Edmond) for example, this is a "place" but is far from a town with a school district and a few neighborhoods. Similarly, Schmidt specifically says in his book that he doesn't consider historic communities to be ghost towns, which is why they've been removed per this criteria. This doesn't mean that no historic community belongs in this list, if another author considers theirs to be, or if a secondary reliable source considers that same town to be a ghost town, then of course it can be included.

Thirdly, I've organized the sources and removed all the non-reliable and self-published sources. In the process I utilized {{sfn}} so that specific page numbers can be used per WP:V. Examples of these poor sources that previously existed are [1], [2], and [3]. I should mention that one of these accepted user generated content, which is another big no.

Lastly, I added some images, maps, a history section, and a proper lead (that could probably be expanded slightly) to provide more context rather than being a list that provides no further understanding.

I'm happy to answer any questions that anyone has about my improvements. While I am happy to help continue building this list, this selection criteria should still be enforced, and I now have this list on my watch page to do so. If the selection criteria needs to be expanded I'm open for discussion, as long as it doesn't once more turn into an indiscriminate list. This is because listing 2,000+ plus locations, many of which only have a name and no article, isn't feasible. TheDoctorWho (talk) 07:09, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]