Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mohawk Airlines Flight 411

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 07:00, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mohawk Airlines Flight 411

This incident this article describes is not noteworthy as many plane crashes have resulted in low fatalities and not every single one can have an encyclopedia entry. – Zntrip 02:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep - Airline accidents with injuries or fatalities (as opposed to mere incidents like tire failures or engine explosions) are generally encyclopedic and can be well-sourced from verifiable official reports and period news reporting. Furthermore, your argument is entirely circular. "The incident is not noteworthy because... not every one can have an encyclopedia entry." Well, why not? FCYTravis 02:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Crash appeared accidental and no assertion of flight procedure improvements was made. --Targetter ^{(Lock On)} 02:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Plane crash caused by pilot error with few fatalities. No outstanding circumstances confer notability. —dustmite 02:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - Deaths (and a number of them in this case) makes it notable. If there were no deaths it would not be notable. Factual, verifiable, notable, keep per WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_a_paper_encyclopedia. Megapixie 03:56, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I just have one problem with the WP:NOT (a paper encyclopedia) reasoning behind most of your replies. If that's the case, why not keep every single article that appears on wikipedia? Why bother with these deletions? After all, it's just disk space... --Targetter ^{(Lock On)} 04:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
    • That's not what I said. I said that it's factual, notable and verifiable - which one of these points do you dispute ? Megapixie 05:07, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep, decent article, nominator's reasoning is flawed. Kappa 04:10, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep as per FCYTravis. --MCB 05:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment A plane crash which kills 14 people is not notible, it happens every month. If Wikipedia is just disk space we might as well write an article on every person in the world. – Zntrip 05:18, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: There is a difference between fatal crashes on air carriers (passenger and cargo), which are the subject of official investigations, reports, and in-depth news reports, and general aviation (private plane) crashes, which are not necessarily notable in the absence of other factors (famous passengers, unusual circumstances). --MCB 05:35, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment: Actually there appear to be about two crashes a month according to [1]. Given 60 years of aviation - that would add up to about 700 odd articles. A few more than the always controversal Category:Pokémon species by generation, but not by much - perhaps it would be better to lump the information together in List of fatal air accidents in 1997 style articles ? I would be happy either way - but I think fatal air accidents are generally notable. Megapixie 05:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
      • A list/table of that sort would allow comparison, which would be encyclopedic. Or put the tabular information under Mohawk Airlines. Robert A.West (Talk) 07:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Delete or Merge somehow. I think fatal air accidents are only notable to the extent of the fatalities they cause or unusual circumstances that surround their occurence. However, I agree with the list/table restructuring proposal. That would make somewhat orphaned information like this much more useful. --S0uj1r0 07:31, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I think it's bad precedence to start putting a "death threashold" for the notability of a plane crash. I would say a crash with any fatality is notable. Ideally entries are written because they will be of encyclopedic interest and value to others to read. A plane crash with fatalities (even a small number) affects alot of a people--the community where the crash took place, people actually involved in the crash as well as friends/families, anyone who is interested in the aviation crash history of a particular airline, and those people who like reading about crashes anyways. Someone was originally interested in the topic enough to write the article in the first place. I can easily see many others who will have continual interest in reading it. 205.157.110.11 09:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Comment: I don't think thresholds or precedent are the issues at stake here. Crashes are not notable just because those involved die. Wikipedia is not a memorial, and thousands more die in car crashes, affecting friends, families, and others interested. I don't see how a plane crash killing 14 is any more notable than a ten-car pile-up killing 14, but to have an article on the latter would be seen as absurd. Plane crashes happen very frequently, and more often than not, people die in them; none of this makes them notable in and of themselves. Furthermore, the "someone was interested enough to write it and others will want to read it" claim is entirely specious. Many articles are written and deleted every day for failing to meet Wikipedia standards of notability, from murders to bands. The fact that someone has interest in recording certain information doesn't in any way affirm that the information is useful to anyone else, or that it should be retained. --S0uj1r0 11:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment I don't think anyone is advocating that Wikipedia becomes a memorial here. There is no listings of who died or what not. What's being put forward is the concept that commercial airline crashes are major things-particularly those that have a fatality. Besides launching mandantory investigations, crashes with fatalities receive far more media converage and have direct impact on numerous people--even those not even involved with the crash. I think the comments that have unsettled some of us is the concept that because "only -blank amount- died" in the crash that lessens the notability of it. If you want to craft other arbitray guidelines on airline crash notability (Media coverage, procedure changes after the fact) then a Wikipedia Essay space awaits with your name on it. However, such notability essay (much less guideline) does not exist yet and the foolhardy "death threshold" is not one to currently stand in for it. 205.157.110.11 09:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep per my speedy keep guideline: scheduled flights with fatalities.--Dhartung | Talk 11:20, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep per Dhartung's speedy keep guideline. Kappa 16:11, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep-per above and 14 deaths is not considered a "low fatality". Storm05 19:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: What is or isn't considered a low fatality count is entirely POV. Compared to the number of people killed in car accidents in a given day, 14 is very low. At what point do you make the cut? 14 may be high enough, but is 7 too low? --S0uj1r0 20:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

• Keep scheduled airliner crashes with fatalities are notable -- 1 fatality is enough see Southwest Airlines Flight 1248. Carlossuarez46 21:07, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - I say again, How many people have to die, Admiral?! --AlexWCovington (talk) 01:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• sod Pokemon minor air crash due exclusively to pilot error, not newsworthy, and no consequences per S0uj1r0. Ohconfucius 01:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep For the same reasons as Airwork Flight 23. --- The Bethling^(Talk) 17:28, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
• Original decision reversed. Keep. Never saw the Pokemon test before, but that changed my mind. --Targetter ^{(Lock On)} 01:45, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep scheduled flight with fatalities. It would seem that even if there are 1000+ crashes are all of them going to be scheduled flights by coommercial carriers, as oppoed to military transport accidents or cargo aircraft? This criteria even excludes charters. I think this is a pretty strict threshold. Moheroy 12:06, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep - A scheduled flight with fatalities is significant. Brianski 22:41, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
• Keep or merge with Mohawk Airlines Flight 405 to form "Mohawk Airlines Crashes" or similar Markovich292 04:58, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.