Talk:Spinnaker Tower

Accessible stucture

What is an 'accessible structure'?

A structure that you can access perhaps. I suspect what's meant is a publicly accessible structure (as opposed to those the general public is not allowed into). --Plumbago 17:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"The tower has also been beset by health and safety issues, including large cracks beneath the observation deck and a malfunctioning external glass lift, and security concerns, with Fathers 4 Justice campaigners and base jumpers infiltrating the tower."

Just thought i would add that my father was one of the head engineers on this project, and the concerns about faulty concrete, cracks and possibility of the tower collapsing that were often portrayed in 'The News' (Portsmouth Newspaper) were largely propaganda and over exaggerated claims. As far as I am aware there are no doubts in the engineering fraternity about the strength of the design.

The tower also features innovative safety features such as a large 'bumper' type structure at the front to disperse the force of any large sea vessels that may collide with it.

Finally, one has to appreciate the extremely difficult conditions Mowlems were faced with when constructing the tower; the site area was incredibly small due to the towers tight positioning near the Gunwharf Quays shops and restaurants, the site was even overlooked by certain restaurants and night clubs on the Gunwharf complex, and on frequent visits to the site I was shown items such as shoes and hats that had fallen into the site area from nightclub goers above! (Hence the site was very difficult to secure and prevent determined activists or individuals from gaining access)

Zoo yorker 09:13, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

There are two things that could be added here. First, info on the issue of disabled access that apparently threatened to close the tower. AIUI this is because there is only one working lift and no other disabled access, breaking health and safety laws.

Also, I seem to remember reading that the tower was designed to collapse inland, in the event of a catastrophic failure. This is apparently so that ships will be safe. Mojo-chan 09:23, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Base jumping

Didn't someone base jump off the tower before it was opened?

Leo Madden Resignation

In March 2004, Portsmouth Council leader Leo Madden resigned after a highly-critical report into the council's handling of the project and failure to exploit revenue opportunities such as the Millennium and Trafalgar200.

I have removed Trafalgar200 from this sentence, as it is impossible fail to exploit revenue from an event which at the time of his resignation was a full 15 months in the future. JonEastham 21:50, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Local dissent

Any chance that this edit (by 82.18.84.212 on 16 September 2006 at 21:12) could be made any more encyclopaedic in nature? - Ballista 04:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Barry Smith

"Barry Smith, the project's legal advisor,"

would "the council's legal advisor" be a more accurate description?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/3570364.stm

(Edit conflict) Well, was he specifically the project leader, or does he have a continuing role as the council's legal advisor on such matters? On a sidenote, you've just edited the article with, ostensibly, a "one char typo edit" when, in fact, a larger number of edits were made. Some of these are questionable, such as the deletion of a reference. Care to comment? Cheers, --Plumbago 15:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

BTW, "council's then-legal advisor" sounds more appropriate given the link you provided. --Plumbago 15:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

If I made additional edits, I apologise - I thought I was adding a simple possessive apostrophe to "projects". Can someone with more experience of Wikipedia than me please reverse any damage I did? - David

No worries. Done already. I've retained the apostrophe edit you made. Apologies if I came over all gruff - I've just seen a few too many instances of dodgy summary/edit mismatch!  :-) Cheers, --Plumbago 16:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

David, it seems that you edited an older version of the page, before the references etc. were updated. This comparison (I think) shows what you were trying to do. Remember that when you are editing a page, you should edit the most recent version of the page, instead of one of the previous ones (at least in most cases). Hope this helps! — cBuckley (Talk • Contribs) 17:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

GA review

This is how the article, as of September 24, 2006, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. It is well written. In this respect:

(a) it has compelling prose, and is readily comprehensible to non-specialist readers;

It is comprehensible, but the prose is very uneven. Some fragments are very nicely written, in a style that is even almost too literary to pass as encyclopedic (I prefer colorful style, so this is not a problem for me), but others are not quite as good. For example, the introduction contains two consecutive sentences starting with "the tower", and the past participle form of "budget" (used as a verb) is, AFAIK, "budgeted" - notwithstanding that "to overbudget" would actually mean to allocate too much money, not to spend in excess of the budget provisions. I am not a native speaker, but isn't it "modelled after" rather than "modelled on"?

(b) it follows a logical structure, introducing the topic and then grouping together its coverage of related aspects; where appropriate, it contains a succinct lead section summarising the topic, and the remaining text is organised into a system of hierarchical sections (particularly for longer articles);

For such a short article, it is not that hard to come up with a logical structure, so no major failure here. I believe paragraphs should be between 4 and 6 lines, so some two- and three-liners (which consist of a single sentence) do not evoke too much enthusiasm in me :D I believe, however, that some subsections could be created under the "History" caption. See below for comments on the "trivia" section.

(c) it follows the Wikipedia Manual of Style including the list guideline:

I am not an expert on that, and there are other, more important issues here, so excuse me for not reviewing the article thoroughly for that. Still, linking to dates for no reason is not quite the best practice. Is the "crow's nest" the official name of the last terrace? If so, it should be given in appropriate form indicating that.

(d) necessary technical terms or jargon are briefly explained in the article itself, or an active link is provided.

This is a rather simple article to understand, with mostly "everyday" terms (at least to me), yet I see there are quite many wikilinks, so I think it is on the safe side with regard to that. UPDATE: Now the red Maspero link caught my attention - either do create a stub explaining what Maspero is, or simply rephrase the sentence so that it would become apparent without the need to mention the name twice). UPDATE: "Portsmouth Council leader" is not linked - it is not clear to me, not being a British citizen or being familiar with the British local authority system what kind of body the council is and what kind of leadership is meant (is that the name of a formal post?)

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable. In this respect:

(a) it provides references to any and all sources used for its material;

Discussed below.

(b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is required;

Unfortunately, quite large portions of the article remain unsourced, as there are only inline citations refering to some specific statements (that's good practice, but in that case there should be links for all sentences or paragraphs). There is even a "citation needed" template used, which should not be the case in a GA nominee. Some statements obviously needing references - "tallest accessible structure in the United Kingdom outside of London" and the following about the visibility/horizon, the ones about health & safety issues or costs.

Some of the sources are "cited" by means of embedded links. Those should be converted to normal references that conform with the adopted standard.

(c) sources should be selected in accordance with the guidelines for reliable sources;

They seem OK for me - please note that I trust the editors and have not checked whether they actually contain the information they are supposed to be sources of.

(d) it contains no elements of original research.

Until more inline citations appear in this article, almost everything that is not referenced could be original research. Especially the one on changing the shape of horizon is a classic example of OR (even if its probably true). There is no source that would ascertain that either the Spinnaker tower, or the Canadian towers and the Blackpool Tower, were "successful" at all. The choice of the Canadian and Blackpool towers seems pretty arbitrary to me, as there are quite many such towers in many places, and I don't think the 19th century Blackpool Tower or the much taller and more widely known Canadian towers mentioned are more similar to the Spinnaker Tower than other constructions of that type.

3. It is broad in its coverage. In this respect :

(a) it addresses all major aspects of the topic (this requirement is slightly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required by WP:FAC, and allows shorter articles and broad overviews of large topics to be listed);

I guess it does overall, though I believe a tad more detail would come in handy, including both the tower itself and the story of its contruction and cotnroversies. After reading the article, I have the feeling there is more to it than there is in the article at the moment. Also, perhaps readers more interested in civil engineering or architecture might want to read more on details of the design and construction (not necessary for me, but would be nice to be able to read more about those).

(b) it stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary details (no non-notable trivia).

I am concerned about the sole existence of the "trivia" section. An encyclopedic article is no place for "trivia", though the info in this section is not that trivial itself. The question to be answered is if any other "event" has ever taken place at the tower (except for the grand opening). If so, the types of events that take place, or are expected to take place, at the tower should be described, and then the unusual (?) television appearance could also be mentioned, perhaps without going into unnecessary details, which could be better dealt with in a separate article (or Annie's article).

Another thing that is perhaps a mix of OR and trivia is the mention of the tower being "is two and a half times the height of Nelson's Column". It is not obvious why it should be compared with the column at all, and I guess there are quite many structures the tower is a number of times and a half the height of.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy. In this respect:

(a) viewpoints are represented fairly and without bias;

Unfortunately, a fair amount of POV is evident. For example, the mention of the alleged "controversial" non-inclusion of the option of not building the tower in the referendum - in most such referendums I have heard of, there is no such option by default, and the author seems to simply wanted to express his dissatisfaction with the fact that the community was not consulted on whether the structure should be erected at all. Yet no controversy is actually evident from the article, as no protests against the structure are mentioned.

(b) all significant points of view are fairly presented, but not asserted, particularly where there are or have been conflicting views on the topic.

Amusingly, the article managed to present such "views" in a self-contradictory way - the editor who wrote the lead saw the number of visitors to the tower as modest, while according to another editor (or perhaps the same one, which would be even worse) a few paragraphs below, the Tower "attracted crowds well in excess of expectations". More seriously speaking, solid referencing is needed with regard to that, which would clear the controversy.

5. It is stable, i.e. it does not change significantly from day to day and is not the subject of ongoing edit wars. This does not apply to vandalism and protection or semi-protection as a result of vandalism, or proposals to split/merge the article content.

No edit conflicts evident in recent history, moderately random vandalism, though the article seems to be still in its development phase.

6. It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic. In this respect:

(a) the images are tagged and have succinct and descriptive captions;

No problem here, the article is nicely illustarted btw.

(b) a lack of images does not in itself prevent an article from achieving Good Article status.

It is hard to comment on this point anyway, but I will use the opportunity to suggest trying to remove the ugly timestampt from the photo at the bottom.

In view of all that, I have to fail the nomination. Overall, the article is clearly undeveloped, currently consisting of patches of information added by different users, failing on complying with important encyclopedic criteria and, apparently, not comprising the entirety of information that could be gathered at this level of detail. I believe it is still quite far away from the stage at which it could be considered a good GA nominee.

That said, I have the impression that there a few enthusiastic and knowledgeable editors around, and that necessary sources can be easily accessed, so I genuinely hope it won't be long until this interesting article will reach GA standards. I can't think of a really superb example to follow, but the Falkirk Wheel or Sunol Water Temple Good Articles, even with all their deficiencies, can serve as benchmarks. Bravada, talk - 18:27, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

98% satisfaction rating

Please see the PDF used as a reference here:

http://www.spinnakertower.co.uk/images/cms/press-pdf/03.%20VAQAS%20Award.pdf

The idiot who made this thing disabled copy & paste so I can't quote it directly, but if you read it you will note that the 98% satisfaction rating (penultimate paragraph, page 1) states it's source as "research among visitors". It does not say who conducted the research, or under what conditions or when. Note that VAQAS did not conduct the survey.

If this claim is to be included the original research needs to be cited, and it needs to be credible (i.e. independent of Heritage, the towers managers, using a reasonable sample size over a reasonable period of time with credible questions etc). Mojo-chan 10:50, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I'd advise against calling anyone an idiot, be they a fellow editor or, in this case, someone who may never have even used Wikipedia - take a look at WP:ATTACK. I'm not going to bother re-adding the 98%, because your remarks above are correct, to a point. You seem to be completely het-up on ensuring that this article is completely 100% verifiable, and 100% neutral. Of course, both of these are exactly what we on Wikipedia should strive to make every single article, but you appear to be taking it too far. It's blatently clear to me that your view of the Spinnaker is negative, and as such you're sailing as close to the line as possible. Please realise that it is completely possible to take out all positive parts of an article in an attempt to adhere to NPOV, but in doing so to actually give the article a negative slant. For instance, I don't see you being half as strict on any of the uncited negative claims in this article, only those that praise the tower. _TheIslander 12:07, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

My personal feelings about the tower are irrelevant. I am simply trying to stick to NPOV. As you correctly note, WP articles should be verifiable and neutral. If you feel that there are uncited negative claims in the article, please add appropriate tags. If no-one can provide references in reasonable time, I will gladly support their removal. Please note that WP is not my job, I do it as a hobby, and I cannot be expected to fully edit the article myself.

I am not trying to make a personal attack on you. Please understand that my editing "your" contributions is nothing personal. It is easy to accuse editors of bias (I could accuse you of it easily enough, see next paragraph) but it is not constructive. Only reasoned arguments are valid on WP, so please refrain from debating my motives and stick to the facts/issues at hand. Please also see WP:AGF.

Finally, as to the quote you re-added. It goes against WP guidelines. The quote adds no factual information to the article, it merely reads like marketing hype (which is part of the awards purpose). It is enough to mention that the award was given, as this indicates there was a competition which the tower won and it was subsequently endorsed by a reputable third party. That much is fact, the quote itself represents pure opinion and is not relevant in the context. Mojo-chan 10:43, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Struck by lightning?

Where in the media does it say that the Spinnaker Tower was struck by lightning? Please provide a source. Unisouth (talk) 16:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Even if there is a source, is 'tall building struck by lightning' actually encyclopaedic content? Nuttah (talk) 16:49, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Everything in this article is negative. What a beautiful tower! This article does not seem to be very well balanced and objective. Sounds like the English are out to get Spinnaker Tower.70.160.143.163 (talk) 17:57, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Spellings

As this is an article about a British structure, English-English should be employed. American editors should be sensitive to this and should not use uniquely American spellings. To this end I have changed "modeled" to "modelled" in the opening paragraph. 621PWC (talk) 23:37, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Inconsistency

"Planning began in 2002, and construction began 2001, and was completed in mid-2005" - I don't know when planning started, but I imagine it was before they started construction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.88.169.50 (talk) 20:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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“Famous people are understood to hate the Spinnaker Tower”

This is a terrible paragraph. Who’s Evie, and why is it notable? Criticism needs to be relevant and come from a notable source. Joeldelusional (talk) 19:06, 28 September 2024 (UTC)