Wikipedia talk:Notability (fatal hull loss civil aviation accidents)

Request for comment

There is to my mind a current discontinuity between our policies and guidelines, and current consensus when trying to delete certain aircrash articles. I've written this proposal to try and progress the issue. The basic question in dispute, presented neutrally, is as the proposal page states. RfC started: 16:45, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Namely:

• Is it a violation of What Wikipedia is not (WP:NOT) for Wikipedia to consider all fatal airliner 'hull loss' crashes automatically notable, or not?

This specifically refers to:

• Airliners - aircraft from the largest jet liners to the smallest island hopping turbo-props
• Scheduled air transport - any crash involving an aircraft carrying passengers or cargo on a scheduled flight
• Hull-loss Accidents - crashes where the aircraft is written off due to the damage, or cost of repair
• Fatal - crashes that involve any amount of fatalities, even down to just one or two crew members, or just a proportion of passengers, or even bystanders

Relevant links

• WP:AFD - the instructions and procedures for deleting articles
• WP:NOT#NEWS - the basic content Policy covering articles based on news coverage
• WP:GNG - the basic content Guideline covering notability
• WP:EVENT - a situation specific content Guideline extending NOT#NEWS and GNG for articles on events
• WP:AIRCRASH - an Aviation Project Essay about aircrash notability
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/AfD record - a record of Afd discussions on Aviation subjects

Discussion

Opening statement from proposer

I ask the question because, despite the presence of detailed guidance like WP:EVENT, which goes into detail as to how to interpret WP:NOT#NEWS and the WP:GNG with respect to current events like aircrashes, it has proven absolutely impossible to get any proper discussion of these types of articles at Afd wrt policy, outside of the usual basic deletionist/inclusionist confrontation. After some recent experience through nominating some articles on recent unremarkable crashes, I think I can pretty much guarantee now that any article which is about a fatal crash of an airliner (which is a classification which goes all the way down to 10 or 15 seat planes use just for regional flights) involved in scheduled air transport (which includes cargo flights and therefore small crew manifests) cannot ever be deleted, simply because of the understandably numerous (if not necessarily in-depth or unique), and often international, news coverage they generate at the time. This seems truly amazing to me, a rather blatant and de-facto violation of NOT#NEWS, which even gets into WP:NOT#INFO territory, by seeking to turn Wikipedia into an almanac of such aircrashes. Of course many of these crashes are notable, but we cannot simply ignore EVENT just for this topic as far as I'm concerned, otherwise for these incidents, Wikipedia is just becoming a competitor to Wikinews. But this is what is happening at Afd as far as I can see.

The specific debates are to me, simply closed on nothing more nuanced than basic vote counting, where strength of argument is almost totally irrelevant, and where it seems like WP:AFD#How to discuss an AfD might as well never have been written. The Afd's are often littered with very bad arguments. Most people simply make basic arguments from assertion, arguing keep because there is 'lots of news coverage' or that it will 'likely' be important, or because of vague assertions of significance, like it was a 'big' plane which was written off, or 'lots' of people died. It turns out though that it really doesn't even have to be a big plane like a jetliner, and death tolls often don't even have to be barely larger than the average serious road crash. These kinds of Afd keep arguments are simply made and adjusted to suit the idea that they are all automatically notable, and rarely if ever are supported by anything like concrete evidence. Other people argue using total irrelevancies, like 'there will be an investigation' which means it was significant (there is always an investigation). Barely, if ever, will keep arguments get beyond basic hand waving to the GNG, even though it does not over-ride NOT, and the very real fact that EVENT was written taking into account the GNG. Often, people just make astoundingly blatant violations of WP:CRYSTAL with their votes, where they make wild predictions over the lasting notability of a crash they know barely anything about based on the available facts. I don't think any of these arguments being made at Afd, when put against the inherent consensus of EVENT etc, are remotely justifiable without the backing of a proposal like this one.

There is an essay on the subject, WP:AIRCRASH, which tries to define what is and is not likely to be a notable crash, but it is routinely ignored, and is often just totally and blatantly misrepresented. Keepers will often claim it justifies articles on 'hull losses', or any fatal crash if it is scheduled flight, or it is the most significant crash of an airline, all of which is simply flat wrong - those are all assertions that are absolutely not supported by that essay. People will often even claim that AIRCRASH is already a WP:Guideline, which is just total rubbish. Some people claim that all these articles being kept is an expression of the 'community will', as if the community weren't the people who actually wrote EVENT, which represents the true community consensus on current events, and requires good solid evidence of deficiency before it can justifiably be routinely swept aside. I find it really odd that, if this really is a justifiable expression of the community will, why nobody has ever bothered to write a Guideline that remotely comes close to documenting the general thrust of the Afd keep arguments as the current consensus on fatal airliner aircrashes. It's an even more bizarre claim when the AIRCRASH essay doesn't even support the keepers. Which is why, even though I disagree with it, I've been forced to put this proposal forward.

Actual RS proof or justification of the view that all of these crashes always instantly have lasting notability or historical significance is usually very thin on the ground, despite this being a basic demand of NOT and EVENT to elevate articles beyond being simple news stories, and this is what even AIRCRASH was also written to make clear - it's primary purpose is to detail what marks out a crash as significant, something which is likely to have lasting notability based on actual historical experience, not finger in the air prediction, despite how often it is misquoted and misrepresented. People have claimed that these Afd's can simply be judged based on experience, but I think the routine abuse of AIRCRASH makes that not very believable, and one does wonder what, if any, historical evidence is going into any of these debates, except the bad kind of Other Crap Exists - i.e., these sorts of news articles have been kept in the past, so keep them now. This is obviously a deficient approach to take to Afd, hence this proposal.

Quite a few votes in these Afds deal with this issue by effectively pretending it is a case of 'write it now, we can delete it later if it turns out to be non-notable'. Except later, other people can and will justifiably invoke WP:NTEMP. This is simply not sustainable, and it is producing a huge problem of WP:RECENTISM on the project, where every article except about the most trivial of incidents is being automatically kept. You can see that when you have a look at our coverage on aircrashes from 2008 and before, where investigations have concluded, yet many of the articles are still nothing but news reports of what happened, and nothing else. When you look at this list it becomes even more clear that Wikipedia is becoming more and more unbalanced in this topic by the month. It's pretty obvious why there is a massive disparity between the numbers of these articles created on incidents that happened in the Google News era and those that didn't, but if we can't write a decent article on an accident that did occur in the pre-internet age without relying on the contemporary news coverage, then that is a pretty good sign that it was not hugely significant or historically notable. Still, this concept is again something which is routinely ignored at Afd.

A lot of people claim these articles are valuable research material for aircrash researchers, and comment in Afd as if nothing but a separate article is ever good enough, covering these in other article sections is barely considered, even though it is recommended by AIRCRASH. I find this argument dubious, and barely supported by any proof. If I was an aircrash researcher and I saw what Wikipedia considers worthy of wasting my time as a reader on, I would simply use more credible sources, which actually have better standards than just 'omg it was in the news (for a day or two) / it was a big (sort of) plane / many (some) people died', and will take proportionate notice of such incidents in their coverage, as a tertiary resource, which is after all what Wikipedia is supposed to be. Some people bizarrely think we are here to act as competitors not only to Wikinews, but also to resources like the Aviation Safety Network, or Aviation Herald, which will cover any incident in minute detail. This is obviously not Wikipedia's mission in the slightest. Fatal aircrashes happen, it's a fact of life. Not only that, it is quite a routine aspect of life, coverage of them all is very much the domain of news sources, not encyclopaedias. Wanting an article on every single one of them is to me, taking inclusionism to a very damaging degree, turning Wikipedia into an irrelevant collection of fancruft, for want of a better term, where only some articles are truly historically notable or significant. Pretending that EVENT or even AIRCRASH allows this is a fantasy to my mind.

I've tried to address this at Afd, but I have evidently failed. It doesn't help also that one admin has chosen to close nearly all of the recent debates himself, with zero explanation of his closures, meaning that it's pretty impossible to know how these decisions were made wrt to actual policy, or if they reflect a true consensus among a number of people when using valid arguments, and when actually considering strength of argument, and not just simple vote counting, or giving equal weight between policy backed argumentation and argument through speculation/assertion. Admins don't even seem to bother distinguishing between completely invalid votes or not, which often form a large chunk of the keeps. And when challenging these closures, WP:DRV has proven itself yet again to be a totally pointless venue, where people questioning the logic of the closures are completely ignored again in the face of simple vote counting, and people just turn up to make the same arguments as in the Afd, or clsing admins buddy up and endorse each others closures. Even worse, some people at DRV seem to accept that if the weight of numbers is big enough, it doesn't even matter if the majority made poor points or not, as it seems there is no admin out there willing to over-turn their opinions using actual policy based logic. WP:CONSENSUS is pretty clear - a simple crowd-sourcing of invalid or weak opinions is not a consensus at all. In the same way that it doesn't matter how many people call for it, you will never be able to ignore BLP for certain articles, so it should not be possible to have EVENT ignored for just aircrashes. And if it should be, it should at least have the strength of an approved Guideline behind it, hence this proposal.

So, it's time to have this question discussed properly in an Rfc, outside of Afd, where I hope people have a more experienced and sensible idea of policy, and the fundamental purpose of Wikipedia. If every one of these crashes is automatically notable, which is to me the de-facto outcome of how Afd currently treats this topic, then clearly Wikipedia has a problem which needs discussion. I've presented it as a proposal rather than an Rfc on a talk page, as it is a mixture of a content and policy interpretation issue, which if settled either way, is going to need some policies to be changed/restated, so by presenting it as a proposal, it should hopefully focus people on the issue of what they are and are not making a case for, and not just end up as another wastefull talking shop people will ultimately ignore at Afd/Drv anyway. I'll ask an uninvolved admin to summarise the feedback after 30 days, and whether or not the proposal has support or not, or if there is a compromise way forward, what it is.

To advertise the proposal, I've spammed notifications to Talk:AFD, Talk:Not, Talk:EVENT, the Aviation WikiProject, and the Village Pump. MickMacNee (talk) 16:45, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Feedback

Regardless of which way this goes, there is zero need for a new guideline for it. Place whatever results in WP:NEVENT. --MASEM (t) 16:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment This goes a bit further than my own thoughts, but if agreement here will stop the constant carping about what is and what isn't a notable accident (and associated AfDs), then I'm in favour. Mjroots (talk) 17:42, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  I really don't see how it goes further. Have you ever voted delete on an aircrash Afd that would meet this proposal? MickMacNee (talk) 17:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  Yes, I have !voted "delete" in an AfD on aircraft accidents. See here and here for a start - although those accidents wouldn't come under this proposal. Mjroots (talk) 19:11, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  The keywords were, that would meet this proposal. Neither of those are remotely relevant to fatal hull-loss airliner accidents. MickMacNee (talk) 19:16, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  In which case, the answer is probably no, but you already knew that, didn't you? Mjroots (talk) 19:26, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  Of course I knew it. Which is why it is so odd to me that you pretend you consider each case on its merits when at Afd, rather than voting keep and simply explaining that this vote is based on the simple a blanket view of yours to consider every single one of these types of incidents automatically notable irrespective of the actual evidence in the article or sources, or whether this is an approach supported by policy or not, or even by AIRCRASH. MickMacNee (talk) 20:26, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment I like MJroots proposal better and would think the vast majority of scheduled airliner crashes are notable ( enough to have an article) regardless of where they happen in the world and a much smaller percentage of small private plane crashes are notable. So in general terms I prefer separating these two if we are going to have a specific guideline for aircrashes. Having said that looking at having more and more specific guidelines in the hope it will dissuade disruptive editors from unnecessarily taking articles to AfD/DRV is like hoping that more and more laws will decrease crime. we need to use existing guidelines and policies better to educate/discourage/block/ban those kind of editors who persist with the attitude that no matter how many disagree with them, their personal interpretation of the guidelines is better than everybody else . So I am not personally that hopeful that the bickering will stop even if we agree on something here.--Wikireader41 (talk) 18:34, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  There is no way anybody is going to get blocked, let alone banned, for having the temerity to disagree with your interpretations of policies and guidelines which have never ever even come close to settling this dispute, no matter how much you assert it. Anyone agreeing with you on this dispute has done so in a proveably policy violating manner infact - there is nothing but speculation, assertion, and vague waving, on your side. I've waited so long for actual evidence your views are supported to be presented, beyond dumb vote counts, I've been forced to do it for you by creating an actual proposal. Frankly, I find it unbelievable that even when I, as someone who disagrees with you completely, does something to solve the dispute in a constructive manner and in a way that could possibly make a rule I completely disagree with, you still come here and do absolutely nothing but assert your personal opinion as fact, and throw in yet more attacks at your opponents, with absolutely zero sense of irony at all. My alternative was to start with the old articles, and Afd them. There would be nothing wrong with doing that in the slightest. I would personally love to see what the arguments you could present for those having any historical notability at all, it takes five minutes to find examples that have not one shred of evidence, and are simply stale news reports. However, without being advertsied, I couldn't see those Afd's as being likely to have any more intellectual weight than the recent ones, so here we are. But if you carry on with comments like this, I really might just try and find out, and I would absolutely love to see you try and get me banned for doing so. If you really want to use existing guidelines and policies better, you could start by actually quoting specific lines from them. The best I've seen you do in an Afd is link to the ACRONYMS, or throw out pernoms left right and centre. MickMacNee (talk) 19:02, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  I doubt that this is very much going to solve anything. I think like I said that MJroots proposal is much more meritorious and worthy than yours anyway. though I am glad you did not take to 2 recent aircrash closures to DRV. looks like you may still be capable of learning. The links are here Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 New Zealand Fletcher FU24 crash and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UPS Airlines Flight 6 in case you did not realize that they were closed as "Keep" and shining examples of how well the existing guidelines work in rejecting poorly considered and framed "delete" arguments.--Wikireader41 (talk) 19:43, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  Those 2 Afds are a shining example of something all right, but it's certainly not that this is an issue which the guidelines adequately cover. They show quite well that in this specific dispute and those Afds, you couldn't manage to do anything more intellectualy proficient than to give two 'per that guy' votes, while continuing to talk shit about the motives of people who have the temerity to disagree with you. To see you yet again piggy-backing someone else's work instead of making an actual contribution of your own is really not surprising, but it still does not demonstrate you know what you are talking about in terms of actual policy knowledge or not at all. Not in the least. You might aswell be invisible as far as any cluefull discussion summarizer should be concerned. MickMacNee (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  The AfDs rightly reflect the consensus. I am intellectually proficient enough to point out that the problem is not the lack of guidelines but presence of problem editors who willfully ignore the guidelines and insist on flogging a dead horse. No way a well written guideline is going to change the character of any editor. we should all try to identify what the real problem here is rather than creating more and more guidelines and have more WP:WL going on.--Wikireader41 (talk) 21:45, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

  I cannot willfully ignore guidelines that do not exist, let alone Wikilawyer over them. You should really start reading the pages you link to, and maybe even the actual content policies that are in question here, instead of wasting time trying to pretend the issue is me with these tedious attacks. The three or four Afd's you talk about reflect nothing except a rather bizarre and most definitely very clue lacking local consensus on the issue. You should read WP:CONLIMITED for how usefull that is, or how far you will get by claiming that is definitive or final, if you want to argue here that it should over-ride our actual Guidelines, like EVENT, which are pages which actually do have strong and cluefull consensus backed support. Alternatively, you could go the route which you have so streadfastly avoided all through this dispute, and actually try and give a cogent argument as to how the proposal, if passed, would not actually be a defacto standing violation of EVENT. And while remembering WP:WL, seeing as you bring it up as if you have read it, make sure that if/when you do that, you to do it using normal speech, using arguments that reflect the "spirit or underlying principles" of the actual page. Maybe then you might just convince everyone here you are something more than a walking ACRONYM machine with no real understanding of the pages you link to, but a seemingly unending capacity to attack others who actually do. MickMacNee (talk) 23:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

And you should read WP:CCC before quoting WP:CONLIMITED. the consensus all recent AfDs on crashes has been pretty clear to everyone except you and a handful of your cronies who wilfullly refuse to learn from experience.Wikireader41 (talk) 01:34, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I need to read CCC before I can quote CONLIMITED? That makes no sense whatsoever. The only person not learning here is the one who thinks that their pointless and tedious attacks cover up the fact they clearly don't understand the pages they keep referring to. MickMacNee (talk) 03:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

At least we got you to admit that their are somethings that are beyond your comprehension. If you cant see how WP:CCC and WP:CONLIMITED relate to each other then what can I say. Too bad somebody placed them right next to each other. wonder what he was thinking.--Wikireader41 (talk) 16:39, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Are you going for the record of how many pointless posts one person can make on a page or something? 'What can you say'? Nothing of any worth it seems. Yes, I can't see it, but then again, I don't see what logic underpins most of your posts when you try, and fail, to impart any demonstration of policy knowledge or understanding at all. And freely admitting that I as usual haven't a clue what you are on about, is a million miles from admitting there is something beyond my comprehension. You won't even come close to showing that, if all you have to offer here is more of this sort of utterly lame pointlessness. MickMacNee (talk) 17:33, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment I think it better to just scrap NOT#NEWS entirely, really. It's unhelpful and doesn't reflect consensus in any meaningful way. If people keep writing and contributing to articles which violate NOT#NEWS, and we keep keeping them (for the most part) at AfD, then we've got a more fundamental disconnect than what's being discussed here. I see this disagreement as a symptom, not a root of the problem. Jclemens (talk) 19:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
  • Given how recent NEVENT was passed, NOTNEWS still has consensus. What the problem here is stems from walled gardens of certain projects or editors maintaining certain inclusion guidelines that go beyond what the rest of WP follows and are against NOTNEWS or other policy. In this case, the fact that people are struggling to define notability based on the size of the aircraft involved in air disasters boggles the mind. It needs to be strictly about the sources that will cover it. Personally, NEVENT is pretty well written to cover air disasters; those that involve large craft with high numbers of civilian deaths will gain coverage beyond the reporting of the event, thus meeting NEVENT, while those involving a 2-man biplane in the middle with no one of note aboard will not. If one is not sure which way an air disaster is going to go, hold off on creating the article, or better yet, propagate info at Wikinews which is perfectly set up for that, and if/when the disaster meets notability guidelines, bring it into WP. -- Masem 19:47, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
    • A 2 man biplane is not an airliner, and surprisingly few of the aircrash articles we have, actually involve 'high numbers' of deaths, in the grand scheme of things. The issue is actually more like 'small airliner in which around ten people died' = keep, and the fact that in that determination, EVENT is not being considered, it is being flat out ignored. MickMacNee (talk) 20:19, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
      • There are good reasons for differentiating by MTOW. It is how the industry is regulated. The comment about a 2 passenger seat biplane not being an airliner needs to be taken in context. In the 1920s, a 2 passenger biplane most certainly was an airliner. As I stated in my thoughts, nothing written there supports the creation of stub articles with just the basic facts. Perhaps I should make it clear there that I'm talking about the creation of articles that reach C class at a minimum. Mjroots (talk) 20:37, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
        • It's missing the point. I don't know if such a case exists, but say a commercial delivery full body craft, en route in delivering packages transatlantic, crashed into the ocean, the only loss of life being the pilots aboard. Just going by the MTOW requirement would qualify it (as some seem to want to argue) even though - despite the loss - it was a non-notable event.
        • What's I'm hearing is that there are people dedicatd to maintaining aircraft pages including disasters, but that are trying to use weaker standards for inclusion and ignoring what NOTNEWS, NTEMP, and NEVENT set out. It would be curious to see some of the AFDs that are being argued that should have closed delete but were kept due to these arguments. --MASEM (t) 21:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
          • Agni Air Flight 101 (Afd, Drv) is probably a classic example. Small aircraft, rather routine crash, brief burst of news, relatively small death toll, and absolutely no evidence at all in the article or the Afd that remotely suggests it will be remembered or be historically significant. But abracadabra, it's a guaranteed article, because it's a 'hull loss' of an 'airliner'. Note how the very first keep vote misquotes AIRCRASH, the second claims it's a Guideline, and the third is that it's a 'common outcome' to keep fatal air accidents (although it's not listed at WP:OUTCOMES, or documented or justified anywhere in policy or guidance, and not even AIRCRASH). And it just goes on and on like that tbh. I don't think there was a single valid argument in that Afd, not one. The only way to explain an outcome like that, is simple vote counting and large scale ignorance of things like EVENT, willfull or otherwise. MickMacNee (talk) 23:24, 12 September 2010 (UTC)
            • Wow, that is a seriously messed up AFD. It screams there is a problem with those that support AIRCRASH mechanically , and its unfortunate that I agree with why the DRV didn't overturn it - a closing admin would needs balls to step over a 17-3 !vote. There definitely needs to be a normalization of how that project works with the rest of WP (through this discussion maybe?) We need to make admins aware of this type of problem where a concerted effort (presumably not through canvasing) pushes a discussion that far again other policy. --MASEM (t) 01:26, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
              • If you want you can file another AFD and address the DRV and the previous AFD. That could lead to a delete. WhisperToMe (talk) 19:53, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
                • Given that I feel a merge is the better result here, AFD is completely wrong. --MASEM (t) 05:36, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - In terms of the general issue, it seems to me that if fatal airliner crashes are consistently felt to be "obviously notable" at AfD, policy should reflect that - it's not meant to work the other way around. [1] [2] Thparkth (talk) 12:24, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  That's a perfectly fine viewpoint, but please remember, policies and guidelines are supposed to be internally consistent. You cannot for example leave NOT#NEWs and EVENT saying that pages on events must have some demonstration of historic notability, if A.N.Other guideline allows that not to be the case. So yes, this is a fine approach, if the proposal is to modify NOT#NEWS and EVENT to reflect consensus, but it is not fine, if it just means creating a separate guideline, and leaving everything else as is. MickMacNee (talk) 15:03, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

• Based on what I'm reading, I'm going to make some suggestion.
  • In general, air incidents/accidents seem to be a subject WP covers, even if they barely pass NOTNEWS (to some). The problem is that we have a bunch of air incidents that are relatively minor compared to the events of the rest of the world that they don't receive more than coverage that occurs on the few days around the incident and then nothing more. Agni Air Flight 101 is a prime example
  • Running through the incidents listed in Template:Aviation accidents and incidents in 2010 and its ilk, it seems half or more fall into a similar patterns like the Angi flight - there's news reports of what happened, and in some cases the results of the incident variation, but nothing more. When there is , at minimum, a detailed "Reaction" section (Danube Wings Flight 8230), that's when the article seems to pass some magic threshold of being an appropriate encyclopedia article.
  • We don't seem to want to lose the less incidents
• Therefore, what I suggest is that air incidents should be arranged on per-year pages, named "2010 Aviation Accidents and Incidents" or the like. A introductory table can list the incidents, dates, and significance, and then all the articles as they now exist can be copied directly into subsections, leaving redirects behind so the terms are still searchable; for the incidents that are notable, a {{seealso}} link should be provided in its subjection.
• This gives the ability for people to still coverage air accidents in the manner they have been doing, but without tricking problems with NOTNEWS or notability of these smaller accidents. If a smaller accident later becomes notable (say, the Agni accident bankrupts the carrier for some reason), then unmerging it is trivial. --MASEM (t) 13:18, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  No objection in principle, but I can see there being problems setting the inclusion criteria (as on other such lists the inclusion criteria is often that the incident has an article) I would probably prefer that the major part be placed in the airline article's Accidents and Incidents section, and this list become nothing more than a summary index. MickMacNee (talk) 15:03, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  The only thing I think against placing the bulk of the text in the airlines article is that it is slightly POV. Noting major air accidents of an airline by listing to where other details is ok, but within the body of that airline article may seem to throw the reliability of the airline into question implicitly. Also there's probably issues with some airlines having lenghty articles already, the addition of detailed accidents straining that more. A airline-agnostic list based on date would avoid such issues. --MASEM (t) 15:17, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  Fair points. MickMacNee (talk) 15:41, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  Do you mean something like 2010 in aviation? Mjroots2 (talk) 16:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  I would not replace that list, but instead a second list to work alongside it. The timeline you have is good in that it covers both the good and the bad about what happens in avaiation that year. A list "Major aviation accidents and incidents in 2010" can work in conjunction. If you want me to make a mock version to show how I think it could look, let me know. --MASEM (t) 16:38, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  Dont think we need a list to dump accidents that are notable enough for an article, both airliners and general aviation articles already have lists. List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft is basically for airliners which have proved to be notable by having an article. List of accidents and incidents involving general aviation doesnt have such strict criteria and is already a bit of a dumping ground. The military lists just ramble on for pages and pages without any coherent control or rationale. So an accident is either notable enough for an article on its own or a mention in the airline/aircraft/airport articles do we really need another guideline for not really notable but we can put it here on this list out of the way. The airline/aircraft/airport articles have their own criteria for notability which is nothing to do with AIRCRASH and have been working fine for a few years so should be left alone. So really what is needed is to make the acronym soup that keeps getting quoted agree to what is happening in AfD which is reflective of how the community sees this accidents. I have just had a look at Agni Air Flight 101 which has been presented as a dire representation of what had passed AfD. I didnt comment at the AfD but a quick look at it shows that it is a notable accident. Why it will be said because the acronym soup says it is not. All I can say that it looks notable using experience of creating and being involved in deleting accident articles over a number of years. This is probably the same method used by other editors who cant be bothered to qoute the acronym soup. So really some of these guidelines need to reflect the real wikipedia world. MilborneOne (talk) 18:39, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

  I would dispute the idea that there are any other large projects that contribute to Afds on their specific topics areas in this sort of hunchy/vague way, with no help from guidelines at all. Maybe this is how things went down in 2005, or even 2007, but not in 2010. I am as confused as ever frankly with comments like this as to whether WP:Aviation has ever actually tried to follow it's own AIRCRASH essay, or not. But it really should not be up for debate as to whether, if they do or don't, that they do not have to still follow things like EVENT, or should not be actively making sure they are represented in its wording, because like it or not, that guideline was written and approved with wide community involvement, and with full knowledge of the long term precedents behind NOT and GNG, and it represents the real world community view as much, if not more than, anything that may or may not have been going on at Aviation Afds over the years based on simply what looks like an obviously notable article. MickMacNee (talk) 03:16, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

• I support adding the text as currently presented into WP:EVENT#Other circumstances. Given the recent AfDs this seems to be close to what the majority of the community wants. At the very least it would stop the current situation in which articles which technically fail all the guidelines are routinely kept. For the record, I think the Agni Air one meets WP:EVENT as it stands, as I said here, but it seems no-one else agrees. Alzarian16 (talk) 12:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

  Can you think of any current news story on Google News that would fail this definition of what EVENT would and would not allow? This is the problem with taking single sentences of guidelines out of context - you have to take into account that the whole thing is geared to news reporting. If it simply demanded international news reporting, it would be completely redundant. And to repeat, being mentioned in news and Aviation Herald/Flight Global is not diversity - those sort of topic specific sources covers any incident, no matter how insignificant. That's their job, but it's not Wikipedia's job, per WP:NOT. Diversity in this context would mean coverage not only in news, but things like proper reference books and proper wide circulation periodicals, like TIME or National Geographic, or even television documentaries. MickMacNee (talk) 14:45, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

  • The good news is that many of South Asia's wide circulation periodicals are in English. It seems like the Agni Air incident is getting a lot of coverage in South Asia; I found articles from Nepal and India from English-language newspapers. There may be additional coverage in Nepali, Hindi, and other South Asian languages. WhisperToMe (talk) 16:57, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• A quick search turned up Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Notability#Accidents, aka WP:AIRCRASH. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.58.197.162 (talk) 20:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)
• Not being intimately involved in aviation topics, this seems to the outsider to be policy creep, particularly due to its quite narrow scope. Aviation accidents are events, which are covered by an extant (if a bit waffling) guideline, WP:EVENT, which seems quite sufficient. Alzarian16's suggestion might be more tractable. --Cybercobra (talk) 06:39, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
• Many people with the best of intentions propose more rules at WP; however, when the rules become overwhelming, then we need a fulltime infrastructure to manage and interpret them. Please take the time to learn how the core guidelines work, especially WP:V and WP:N. If these are intelligently applied, we just don't need more. --Kevin Murray (talk) 04:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

  They are not being intelligently applied in these specific topics. The best you get at Afds of these articles is usually just a vague wave to N. This is not a mark of any intelligence, or a particularly good understanding of our rules, not by a country mile. If dumb waving is to be the standard, then it is far better that the thing being waved at is specific enough to divine the hidden meaning, rather than something like N, which has never ever been a good target to wave at. MickMacNee (talk) 00:42, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support (kinda): If WP:EVENT is necessarily somewhat generalist due to the vast variety of possible "events", and if there is a large well-defined subset of events in a specific field which share a lot of common points, then I'd be happy to see a "child" policy standard for that subset of events which sets a clearer boundary - in the same way that, for example, WP:NCYCLING is a child of WP:NSPORTS. However, I'm concerned that Mjroots' proposal is just too detailed and technical (though it sets clear boundaries, which I like). I would strongly advise something that you can summarise in a paragraph and which still has a connection to sources rather than just tech detail. For instance, "An accident is considered notable if it was covered by a reliable source, and involves a fatality, a hull loss, and airplane meeting criteria that you can describe in a short sentence like this to a layperson". I don't much mind exactly "how high the bar is set" in terms of notability - that's for the rest of the community to haggle over - but I would support such a proposed policy if the boundary was clear and simple. Bobrayner (talk) 15:31, 1 November 2010
• Oppose any notability standard that creates a presumption of notability when no sources have been identified. Such guidelines create WP:V violations that can't be resolved through deletion. Gigs (talk) 20:33, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose If British Airways Flight 38 and US Airways Flight 1549 both fail to pass due to lack of fatalities, then isn't the guideline somewhat lacking, and therefore likely to cause just as many problems as it hopes to solve? --Pontificalibus (talk) 20:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose as long as no distinction is made between passenger and cargo aircraft. Especially in the 1940's earlier, are you honestly aware of how many air cargo or air mail flights were lost and the crew killed? Let's put it this way: 1934-1935 saw 66 crashes and 12 crew deaths for just air mail. Considering the standard aircraft being used was a single-person, open-cockpit plane, that's just about 12 new articles that would get a blanket pass in this case when they could just as easily continue living where they are -- a few sentences in the Air Mail articles. (src.)

Now, if the policy read something along the lines of "any scheduled commercial passenger flight that results in fatalities resulting from the incident, hull loss, or changes to aviation procedures or policy," then that I could agree with. (The "resulting from the incident" being necessary because just because somebody dies of a heart attack or from unrelated causes doesn't make it notable.) --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 11:53, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. What makes people dying in aircraft accidents so special? We already have Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Accident article notability and WP:EVENT, and ruling that all it takes is a fatality and the aircraft being written off to justify an article is far too specific. Also, guidelines should guide, not prescribe in such specific detail like this, and they should arise from existing practice and conventions. I see no need for this at all. Fences&Windows 18:18, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
• No, just... no. WP:CREEP .What's next, specific Notability guidelines on "Lactose-Intolerant Bellhops of Lithuanian Descent"? -- RoninBK _{T C} 14:11, 17 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. While I appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into this, the presence of WP:EVENT makes this proposed guideline unnecessary. Location (talk) 06:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose CREEP, EVENT, NOTNEWs, etc etc... --Crusio (talk) 15:52, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Definitely a case of WP:CREEP and too much bureaucracy. A perfect example of where the judgment of uninvolved, reasonable, hopefully wise editors is far, far preferable to excess rule-making. Again, as others have noted, it seems like an example of why WP:NOTNEWS is a ropey policy: rather than trying to come up with a rule to decide now whether an event that happened very recently is going to remain notable, we should just let the article exist now until the notability fades and then consider deletion. Indeed, though it's not strictly against WP:CRYSTAL, AfD shouldn't be judging history before history gets a chance to. Trying to come up with an objective test for the notability of a particular transport disaster is fraught with difficulties: consider something like Harrow and Wealdstone rail crash in 1957 with 112 fatalities. Now compare that to 7 July 2005 London bombings with 52 fatalities. On pure body count, a major rail accident caused by a signalling failure is more significant than a major terrorist attack in the middle of a capital city. But notability and enduring significance is not measured like that: history is not a damn video game high scores table. Attempting to formulate these kind of rules is misguided, and can often seem to be done simply to try and prove a point. —Tom Morris (talk) 13:14, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Ongoing cases

I suppose I should start making a list of new article creations since this discussion began, to further illustrate the issue. I will be tagging them with {{notability|events}}, and place a link to this discussion, and we'll see what happens from there.

• Conviasa Flight 2350

Closing as failed

Given the significant opposition (and the fact that discussion is petering out), this proposal will not get consensus. I am going to close this as a failed proposal. UnitedStatesian (talk) 19:44, 5 March 2011 (UTC)