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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Aberfan disaster/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 21:48, 15 January 2018 [1].

Aberfan disaster

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Nominator(s): SchroCat (talk) 23:01, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A warm and Happy New Year to you all. The Aberfan disaster was a truly terrible and shocking incident: a slip from the spoil tips led to an avalanche of coal slurry down onto a small Welsh village. The junior school was the first major structure to be hit. Of the 144 people who died in the disaster, 116 of them were children, mostly between the ages of 7 and 10. Five of the adults who died were teachers at the school. Even fifty one years after the event, it is still an uncomfortable subject to read and write about. This has been re-written recently and a number of images from the official report became copyright free on 1 January 2018. At the time of PR I also contacted Iain McLean, an academic who has studied the disaster and its impact (and whose work is included in the sources). He was kind enough to read through the article and give advice and pointers on some points that needed clarification, which was extremely useful. – SchroCat (talk) 23:01, 31 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Lingzhi

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  • First two paragraphs of "Legacy" section are repetitive. I've never been keen on ending a paragraph, or a section, or especially an article with a blockquote; I've seen writing textbooks etc. that disallow it. But it's common practice on Wikipedia, where, as we all know, there are no rules. Lingzhi ♦ (talk)
    • Thanks Lingzhi. I've removed/combined the paras in the Legacy section. I take your point on the ending quote, but I'm minded to leave it in for now; if others raise it as a problem over the rest of the FAC, we can always move it around. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 14:27, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • How far was the tip from the school, from the farmhouses? How fast did the mining waste travel? Did anyone hear a noise before it hit the school? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:14, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'll have to do some digging on the distances, as the main sources don't include them: I'll keep looking and sort the remaining questions shortly. Thanks for looking over this. - SchroCat (talk) 18:19, 1 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Were there laws regarding inspections? What govt agency, if any, had authority? Were there formal inspections, and what were the results? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:16, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • No laws at all (only some internal NCB guidelines). The authority was the NCB, which was a state-owned industry; as such it would have come under whatever title the Department of Industry went under, but it was an arm's length relationship. We cover the NCB angle in the Background section. The sources make no reference to inspections. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 08:26, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • "However belatedly, it was conceded by the NCB that the Aberfan disaster stemmed from their failure to initiate any policy in relation to the siting, control, inspection and management of tips"... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:49, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • I dunno how authoritative this is -- perhaps not very, as it was written by an eyewitness who was 8 at the time -- but "Aberfan" By Gaynor Madgewick has the distance from tip to village at 500 feet (or it that the vertical distance?) and the speeds at 30 to 40 mph... also destroying eighteen houses and a farm cottage. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 16:41, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Hmmm... as you say, an 8-year-old eyewitness isn't the best judge. The official report has 11-21 mph, and other reliable figures I've seen are within that bracket, so I'd rather go with that figure. In terms of the guess it could depend on where they are measured from (i.e., does the measurement start at the lowest part of the tip, the centre, or the further part that moved, and it it measured to the school or the furthest point the spoil reached (which could also be judged to be a couple of places, as spoil was constantly being washed down the hill by the rain/burst main). It could be quite a range of figures given the possibilities. - SchroCat (talk) 19:59, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Could the Mel Parry photo be used? Book above mentions... Lingzhi ♦ (talk)
  • "After the slide, the NCB stopped tipping tailings on number 7, but normal spoil continued to be deposited" An academic source (which also makes several other interesting points) states that the decision to cease depositing tailings was a direct response to the local council complaints (also mentioned in our article) ; the local council mistakenly believed that the danger from the tip came from tailings and not also from the usual waste. Is connecting those dots worth the trouble? It underscores a general lack of understanding of the problem, even though the problem had been correctly described as early as 1939 in a poorly-circulated NCB memorandum. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:42, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've seen this one before, and ignored it after I read "The London headquarters of the National Coal Board remained unaware that tips constituted a potential source of serious danger until after the Aberfan incident." As the tribunal stated the opposite, (and as the NCB admitted that it was the failure to initiate a relevant policy, rather than ignorance of the possibility), I find it hard to take the article seriously. – SchroCat (talk) 14:07, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for your reply. That article, "The organizational and interorganizational development of disasters" by Barry A. Turner, has been cited 885 times by other academic sources. 885 is very far from a puny number. It includes several observations about the causes of Aberfan... I firmly believe an article cited 885 times deserves a summary in Wikipedia... I certainly don't think we can dismiss such an article out of hand... In a few hours, I'll write a two- or three-sentence summary of those causes as described by Turner. Right now I gotta sign out for a while... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:03, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • As I've already said, I would rather not use an article that contains such a blatant and fundamental error – it is a poor piece of work that so utterly misrepresents something that is at the heart of why the disaster occurred in the first place. To say the NCB did not know of the problem is to completely invalidate what every other source has stated time and time again: the NCB were utterly culpable. If you think there are things in that article that are not in our article, then say what they are and, if they are suitable for inclusion, then alternative sources can be found, because this source is untrustworthy. - SchroCat (talk) 23:22, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • As I said, I'll write a summary. You can argue with it then. However, Wikipedia does not have the authority to dismiss oft-cited academic sources out of hand. If you can find sources that say this source sucks, then those latter sources grant you the authority to say it sucks (while citing the sources that say that)... meanwhile, just wait. The article is not quite as exculpatory as you seem to fear. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:51, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(←) OK. This needs tweaking. The first set of assertions comes from the whole damn Turner paper; since other groups are allowed to put 50-page page ranges in their Notes, I dunno if you wanna take the trouble to cite each page separately. The second set of quotes (about regulatory failure, with page numbers) are from "The origin and strange history of regulation in the UK: three case studies in search of a theory" by McClean:

Sociologist Barry A. Turner has identified approximately 36 human errors that led to the Aberfan disaster. Describing a pervasive attitude of "major institutional neglect" by the NCB, Turner cites failures such as: years of rigid and unrealistic disregard for the importance of the safety of the above-ground tips (as opposed to dangers within the mines); perfunctory decision making which ignored or minimized the likelihood and the scale of the emergent danger; dismissive attitude toward the complaints from Aberfan residents, discounting the validity of their concerns; incomplete and inadequate response to conditions which caused those complaints; and poor handling and distribution of existing information which accurately described the potential dangers. Moreover, according to Iain McClean, the general lack of existing regulations covering the safety of mine tips was a significant regulatory failure. In this respect the HM Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries "failed grievously to protect the citizens of Aberfan," (p. 18) and ".. There could be no clearer case of regulatory capture" (p. 23).

Sorry I gotta run again. I don't know what time I can lock back on. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:48, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • I remain unconvinced on this, but to bring this to a conclusion, I have added some of this information. - SchroCat (talk) 11:47, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think I see your side of this: the Turner article takes the Inquiry's assertions at face value, thus condemning the NCB at great length on many points, but going along with the key assertion that the top brass at the NCB never saw or read their own internal memos which very explicitly explained why the tips were dangerous. Turner essentially says they were arrogant fucking morons, and you say, yeah, maybe they were, but they were also fucking liars. I can see your point.... but Wikipedia can't. If you think they were arrogant fucking liars, you have to find a source (preferably a secondary source) that explicitly says they were arrogant fucking liars. Wikipedia doesn't know how to read between the lines. Moreover, you can't merely disregard a source that is right on eight counts but wrong (in your opinion, which may be correct) on one other key point... so thank you for adding that text... but the issue of whether they were "merely arrogant morons" or "dirty lying arrogant morons" needs a clear resolution with explicit sources.
      • Even the report questions the truthfulness of the NCB employees, and the NCB counsel asked that Robens's testimony was ignored, it was so full of untruths. SchroCat (talk) 21:34, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ummmm. In a carefully prepared statement, Lingzhi said: "I am not saying that they are not liars." But I don't like the way that all the "culpability" dots have not been gathered together into one section. For example, Robens' remarks about the spring is located within the "rescuing the survivors" section. Yes, that's chronologically when he made the statement, but I think there is an overriding need to organize the article logically. The info about the springs is also scattered around in different sections. The Council's 1963 complaints are not explicitly connected to the slide that was labeled a "tailings run," nor to the subsequent decision to stop dumping tailings there (which Turner labels a "decoy", since the presence of tailings was not the key factor here). And no mention of the damning 1939 internal memo (mentioned in Turner). And I recall reading of larger slides that went unreported because no mine workers were injured (?); the NCB was not required to report unless colliers were hurt and would not have been legally required to report the Aberfan tragedy... The lack of manslaughter charges is dropped into a footnote.. And so on... My copy of the Inquiry itself is non-searchable and I surely do not have time to read it, nor even to read many more sources other than the two or three I've found/read in the past two or three days, but to my mind there must be many other things that could have been gathered together and presented... I also want to see WP:RS quotes that explicitly say "Robens was a liar", rather than letting Wikipedia readers draw that conclusion for themselves... The saving grace of this article is that it is relatively short, and so it is not unbearably taxing to read it all the way through and connect the dots for one's self. But I think Wikipedia should go out of its way to organize things in a way that puts all those dots together in one place. Please do persuade me otherwise; I am quite open to listening. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:43, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • There are several ways that articles like this can be structured, and we have gone with the way it is now, which is chronological for the most part, with the aftermath thematically and chronologically done. The fact that Iain McLean, probably the person with the most knowledge of Aberfan and the outcome, considers this covers the main points in an appropriate manner for an encyclopaedia – in others words, what is a supposed to be a summary of the main points – then I think we're on the right lines with what we have. – SchroCat (talk) 22:14, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • What about the bit about regulatory failure and regulatory capture, which in turn throws some shade on HM Inspectorate of Mines and Quarries? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:43, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "public+inquiry"&ots=sv9Vq_oKJs&sig=y2JP0FPVDm96S3i0Hfbxz27XG8I&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=disaster%20%20Aberfan%20"public%20inquiry"&f=false Disaster Victim Identification: Experience and Practice says the BBC was making live broadcasts; the first disaster to be broadcast live. (p. 12) Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 13:36, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, there were live news broadcasts (with Cliff Michelmore), but I'm not sure that we need to go to that level of detail on something that is rather tangential. - SchroCat (talk) 13:44, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • On the other hand, I think it is the sort of interesting historical tidbit that readers like to know, especially if it is true that it was the first live broadcast of a major disaster. [I am not sure that assertion is correct.] I won't argue over it, but I disagree. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:03, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nolo contendere. Congratulations on your successful bid for Featured Article! Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:52, 5 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: my detailed comments are here and I have nothing further to add so far as the content is concerned. An excellent effort which, I imagine, was quite difficult to write. A sources review will follow in due course – I'm a little backed up at the moment. Brianboulton (talk) 15:30, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: As someone who's family comes from not very far away from Aberfan and who's mum was a primary school teacher, I have a particularly strong memory of this tragic waste of life, and would very much like to see this at FA status. I've had a read through and I can't think of anything obvious that I would change, as it seems all the issues were sorted out in the PR. Well done, chaps. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 15:59, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support – I'm afraid my rereading of this fine article hasn't been as complete as it usually is when I revisit for FAC an article I've previously peer reviewed. Reading it for PR made me so distressed, disgusted and angry that though I have now reread most of the article I have gone rather quickly through a couple of the sections this time round. But from my rereading, and my thorough scrutiny at PR, I am confident in supporting the promotion of this article. I echo Brian's comment above that it must have been difficult to write, and I congratulate SchroCat on undertaking it, and letting the facts speak for themselves. I am old enough to remember the Aberfan disaster, but at the time we knew nothing of the damnable cover-up and sheer lying that is here objectively set out with horrible clarity. The article meets all the FA criteria, in my judgement, and I add my support for its promotion. – Tim riley talk 16:42, 2 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support from Jim I'm old enough to remember this well, and reading this reminded me of the extent of the tragedy and the gross negligence of the NCB. I saw nothing to criticise in the writing, well done for taking this on Jimfbleak - talk to me? 08:28, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - I have been following the development of this article which has been on my watchlist for several years. I remember the disaster and the aftermath. The nominator should be applauded for bringing this important contribution to FA level.Graham Beards (talk) 12:24, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sources review

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A few very minor points:

  • Aberfan (Stanford University): suggest you extend title to "Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres – Aberfan"
  • Aberfan: The Fight for Justice (BBC) appears to be listed twice
  • Page no. for Strawbs Revival: South Wales Evening Post

Otherwise, sources are in good order and of appropriate quality and reliability. Brianboulton (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Harry

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  • (no relation to the inquiry chairman) Is this really necessary? Davies is a common name. In 1960s South Wales, I'd have thought it would be very common, so not unusual that two people involved had the same surname.
    • It was there for those who don't know about the seemingly small number of Welsh surnames, but I've removed it (on the grounds that if there was a relationship, we would have made it clear) - SchroCat (talk) 16:08, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • was taken by them, it was thought Can we try to use the active voice here?
  • When the counsel for the families, Desmond Ackner, QC, attacked Robens for making the statement, saying it was "a public scandal" What happened here? The sentence seems to terminate abruptly. A gremlin from re-drafting perhaps?
  • Nine employees of the NCB were censured Can we say a bit more about who these individuals were, since the inquiry specifically singled them out? Not necessarily their names, but their job titles and the role the inquiry felt they played could be a useful addition.
    • If we go down that route, there is quite a lot of information to include (even if we keep each of the nine very brief). There are two options here and here, which are worth looking at before deciding which way to go. Option 3 could be a table, but I'm not a fan of them in prose articles, particularly when we can work the info into paragraphs a la option 2. Thoughts? – SchroCat (talk) 16:08, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nine employees of the NCB were censured suggest swapping the order with the previous sentence so it's clear which action is being referred to (ie not the slurry washing down the streets)
  • According to McLean and Johnes, "the general commitment to public safety that the Tribunal had envisaged was not implemented" Do they specify what further provisions the government could or should have made?

I'm picking nits, really. I feel obliged to find something to criticise at FAC! This is another excellent piece of work. You have a knack for picking interesting (albeit in this case tragic and uncomfortable) bits of history. I'm not nearly old enough to remember the event itself but I watched a lot of the television coverage of it around the anniversary in 2016 so I'm very glad to see it here and getting the thorough treatment it deserves. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:25, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Closing comment: Some images have alt text, others do not. For consistency it should be one or the other but this is not an issue over which it is worth delaying promotion. Sarastro (talk) 21:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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