User:Ohconfucius/Far2manymasts

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As at today, I believe there are still too many stubs in wiki about utilitarian structures such as masts, radio towers, electricity pylons, telegraph poles, phone boxes (I jest, but only just) whose importance is unclear to the vast majority. The following arguments are nothing new, as the principles can be found in wiki's policies and guidelines, specifically WP:N, WP:NOT, WP:NOT#DIR and WP:NOT#IINFO.

Just taking the List of masts article as an example, out of the thousand, there are some 848 masts under 500m in height -86% of the total. Some editors have taken the trouble to create stub articles for over 200 of them - I fail to grasp their motivation. In most cases, the info is copied from FCC registration and put into prose form. It may have been done because "it seemed like a good idea", as the information was readily available, or it may fall into the more surreal realms of "because it's there". If the latter is the case, the editor should consider another activity where there are more challenges to be had. ;-)

The vast majority of the articles in the category (and subcategories of) {{Towers}} are copy and paste of the following text:

"[Towername] Tower is a [Type of mast] mast/tower at [City, State, Country] at LONG°" N and LAT°" W. [Towername] Tower was built in [Year] and is owned by [owner]. The transmitter uses a [directional/non-directional aerial consisting of [n] meters high [free-standing/guyed] masts, which are both [insulated/not] against ground. The [XXkW] transmitter works on the [XX band] on the [XX.X] frequency. It was owned by [owner] and used from [year] until [year]. The radiation pattern of the transmitter has maxima in direction [directions] and minima toward [directions]".

More often than not, there is not even the slightest indication (to me, anyhow) in the article as to why said structure may be considered important. In a few cases, there is not even mention of structure height - note that my attempts to speedy these have been considered "vandalism". Since their creation (some over a year ago), many remain stubs. Now, as it's not the vocation of wiki to replicate all the external databases, I suggest that someone [who knows about the subject] started fleshing out the text for the ones which are genuinely notable. By that, I don't mean filling out details of technical specifications, wire gauges, tower construction materials, tower weight, unless these contribute to establishing notability. Once notability has been established, feel free to put in anything which may be of interest to researchers.

Whilst these masts/towers may be amongst the tallest structures built by humans, I do not see how many more than say 10% of this, or indeed any other category, could be considered notable. Even if they are potentially notable, wiki policies require us to write encyclopaedic articles about them. I am not an expert on this subject, so even for those in the top 10% tallest, I'd like to learn what makes them so important and worthy of kbytes of space. However, I suspect that the vast majority, if undeleted, will remain stubs forever for want of source information, but would love to be proven wrong. Objects with a particular architectural of other engineering merit will no doubt have been the subject of articles in professional journals. Articles should back up any assertions, such as "it is a local landmark", with suitable references, such as referenced entries in guide books with photographs.

Debates which have taken place on this subject in the past (April 2005), following resistance at AfD (see AfD debate), have been rather different to those today, despite the articles being the same bare stubs. The consensus has clearly changed, possibly due to the growth in the number of mushrooms (er mast articles with no real content), and of the number of articles which have remained stubs for a prolonged period. Successful batch deletions have been occuring recently, starting with University of North Carolina Tower Chapel Hill. On its back, I proposed (and succeeded at) mass deletion of in excess of 300 stubs of masts, namely KEXL FM Tower, KCHZ Tower, TBN Tower, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Radio Tower Hoyt, KLTS Tower (up to 350m); GBC LP DBA Tower, KSAX Tower (up to 400m); Wand TV Tower, Saga Communications Tower Alleman, KPLC TV Tower Fenton (up to 465m), Raycom America Tower Huntsville (up to 470m), SpectraSite Tower Holopaw (up to 500m), University of North Carolina Tower (up to 520m), Clear Channel Broadcasting Tower Rosinton (up to 540m), Pinnacle Towers Tower Mooringsport (masts up to 580m),

The oddball in this debate appears to be the summation in the discussion to delete 10 such masts batch nominated in CBS Broadcasting Westport Tower. I note that the merge vote during the debate was significant. While I am speculating that this could reflect the swing back to middle groud following the large wave of deletions, it could also perhaps be due to the sense of some editors not wanting information to get lost in the deletion process, which incidentally had been present all along.

Up until that point, the consensus and precedence of today shows there was no place in wikipedia for these, unless someone can show published articles per WP:RS why someone else other than the FCC or other govt body thinks said subjects are important by writing about them. The FCC registration may be essential to establish its existence, but not its notability. The great similarities in the stubs has lent itself extremely well to the mass deletion process that there has been very little fundamental disagreement about the content to be deleted, the only concerns being are about the process. Any greater divergence of content would have ended in several train wrecks. Today, I have started a massive initiative to "prod" a bunch of towers of all descriptions with the same endgame in mind.

Even if a structure "is visible for miles around", as most structures of a certain height are almost certain to be, it may still be non-notable. Articles with encyclopaedic text could justify their place, as will towers (but not necessarily masts) in urban downtown areas, or towers with observation posts or restaurants to which there is public access.

Finally, I am not embarked on a vendetta or crusade, but merely performing a systematic purge of useless stubs which have been created without due reference to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Whilst it is also useful to submit for deletion articles one comes across by doing specific patrols, nothing replaces a periodic and systematic cleanup. Mass deletions here is not about space. They are about creating comprehensive (but not exhaustive) yet coherent encyclopaedic content, ie with a clear view of what wiki is and is not.

Ohconfucius 14:17, 21 December 2006 (UTC) As updated, 01:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC) and as updated for the Westport Tower discussion, 05:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AfDs now running

[edit] See also

[edit] Comments

Please feel free to add your comments, remarks below. Kindly remember to sign your post with four tildes (~~~~)

As I mention on the Tyholttårnet AfD discussion page, at this point I'm in favour of retaining most of these articles because I'm not quite sure on the cut-off will actually be for notability, and therefore for retaining or deleting. If for example these towers are the tallest man-made structures in a given country, which the Tyholttårnet may very well be, that for me is an argument for notability, and retaining. Shawn in Montreal 04:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

also, there's a sarcastic "gasp" from MER-C about the fact that it has a revolving restaurant. That for me IS notable, at least somewhat, in that this is not just a mere mast, but an inhabited structure. Shawn in Montreal 04:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Please see my comments in the penultimate paragraph. I admit to having a difference of opinion with MER-C. Ohconfucius 17:58, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you have not considered how useful these articles can be as the target of links from other articles.

In Britain, railway enthusiasts have created articles for practically every railway station, and linked them from articles about particular railway lines. Now an article about a town can easily link to the station article, instead of including information about which company operates the trains and where they go. As a system of hyperlinked articles to describe the local infrastructure this works quite well.

The same applies to radio masts. In a village such as Caddington, a radio tower is a locally notable landmark, and it is certainly worth a sentence to describe its existence and use. At present I can simply link to Zouches Farm for the information, as can the writers of articles such as BBC Three Counties Radio. Hopefully the radio enthusiasts will keep the mast articles up-to-date, and so Wikipedia is more maintainable than it would be if the information was in the articles about the places where the masts are located. Admittedly, it would be possible to do the same thing if the information was transferred to [[Telecommunication towers in the UK#Zouches Farm]], but I cannot see the point in doing that. JonH 14:06, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

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