Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/July 20, 2007 Oakland Earthquake

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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 delete, with WP:NOT#NEWS being the more powerful argument than WP:N. WP:BLP cannot apply as earthquakes are not people, let alone living people. —Kurykh 01:34, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] July 20, 2007 Oakland Earthquake

July 20, 2007 Oakland Earthquake (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

This article, if kept, would potentially open the door to many insignificant articles cluttering up Wikipedia. Earthquakes of about the magnitude of the one described here are a common occurrence in the Bay Area. This is in no way notable enough to warrant keeping. ILike2BeAnonymous 00:14, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

  • strong keep4.2 earthquakes are not common at all. The occur every 5 to 10 years. This earthquake is involved in newsworthy events. Has caused thousands of dollars in damage. Causes power outages to thousands of people. Shut down the BART system. What articles "open the door to" are not relevant on AfD pages, that is irrelevant. Only notability it. If you google the word earthquake you get this event at #2. If you look at the USGS homepage its on the main page with the list of large and significant global seismic events. Of which only 4 or 5 are there. Not 50 or 20 or even 10 as would be suggest by this happening all the time. Furthermore this AfD seems to me to be in bad faith since this editor frequently has problems with me and only added it up for deletion once i mentioned it on the Richmond, California disasters' section. I have provided citations within the article and on the talk page.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 00:29, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Comment: So far as BART shutting down goes, that's standard procedure after any earthquake, and in this case they were back up running in less than an hour. +ILike2BeAnonymous 01:13, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • There are 382 articles about it on google news.here —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cholga (talk • contribs).
    • At the time of this posting that number has dropped to 11 articles (or 15 if you include the duplicates). --Mperry 01:08, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment 4.x earthquakes are indeed pretty common. Figure 6.14 here suggests a frequency on the San Andreas fault of about 40 per year at that magnitude. 69.107.78.126 01:07, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Not many caused damage. Okay so there are many, but not many in this area. This is the Hayward Fault not the San Andreas. And it has gotten worldwide attention. CNN International, Turkish newsCholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 01:30, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
    • How about moving it into the article about the Hayward Fault? Although the quake isn't important in and of itself, it does signify activity along the Hayward Fault. --Mperry 02:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • strong keep I say keep it...for now. --Komunysta 01:49, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Explain why?, that isn't a reason for keeping Jaranda wat's sup 08:45, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep A small article for a small earthquake is OK. To play devil's advocate, however, I should point out that the today's weather is also the subject of international coverage, but it isn't notable enough for a wikipedia article. - Richfife 03:29, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Although weather and climate are mentioned in every place article. Thats a bad example, weather changes constantly and isnt a major event. I think this isnt going to be talked about just today. Rememeber also wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. Information about moderate earthquakes may fade from newsites, and hosting an article on such a subject could be helpful to people looking into a regions earthquake history and damage and details that are not included in the statistics of the USGS. I would also add that, all news events only happen once. The Rose Bowl only happens once. A coup détat happens on a single day. Doesnt mean its not of importance to the public record.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 04:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete: Seriously there are thousands of those 4.0 earthquakes out there per year, wikipedia isn't the place to list all those earthquakes. Cholga, you have the wrong view for the project, an article isn't created for every news event out there. That is what wikinews was created for. Cholga also see WP:SIG, which your current sig violate. Delete is my opinion, for violating WP:N Jaranda wat's sup 08:45, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete Meh. Minor earthquake, minimal property damage, no injuries reported in the article. At this point it seems no more significant than a thunderstorm. Wikipedia is not WP:NOT#NEWS a newspaper. News media report any detectable earthquake without making a clear distinction of how much the shaking increases for every unit increase in the magnitude. I didn't see any listed at Earthquake lower than about 5.9 magnitude, more than an order of magnitude larger in movement and more than an order of magnitude less frequent.If this is part of the Hayward Fault Zone then there could be a Smerge (slight merge, a term invented by User:R. fiend), in which the article gets shortened and merged to that article. None of the earthquakes presently listed there are lower than 5.6. Edison 04:27, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
What about WP:Notability ""Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than trivial but less than exclusive."?Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 04:57, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I hear you, but in WP:NOTABILITY it also says "Wikinews, not Wikipedia, is better suited to present topics receiving a short burst of present news coverage. Thus, this guideline properly considers the long-term written coverage of persons and events7. In particular, a short burst of present news coverage about a topic does not necessarily constitute objective evidence of long-term notability." WP:NOT#NEWS says "The fact that someone or something has been in the news for a brief period of time does not automatically justify an encyclopedia article." Items in the day's news are more suited to Wikinews than Wikipedia. Edison 05:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete, looking for something more notable than the average 4.0 earthquake and not finding it. These are simply too common to be of note. There are around 12,000 4.0 earthquakes worldwide every year. They release less energy than a single tornado. --Dhartung | Talk 07:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment The Richter scale is logarithmic, and so calling this a "4.0" is a bit more inaccurate than you might think. I'm not sure any of the frequences of occurance listed above are accurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lipsticked Pig (talk • contribs) 09:55, 21 July 2007
  • Delete I live just a few miles from the epicenter and slept through the "devatation". This is much ado about nothing by local media. --Kevin Murray 17:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Today is July 22 and it still tops the list on a google search for Earthquake. The Cicago Tribune is not local Media nor is CNN. Your personal experiances or better put lack therof are irrelevant since they constitute WP:OR Original Research and emotions and lifer experiances are not policy.71.142.91.34 20:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
WP:OR applies to articles, not to deletion discussions. Avoiding personal remarks applies to all discussions, however, so try to avoid commenting on the experience of an editor, which has nothing to do with his actual points. --Dreaded Walrus t c 20:26, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
CommentBasically, you have shown that an Associated Press wire service story went out and that many news services routinely reproduced it in whole or in part, or with minor tweaks. Per WP:N, when a news source reprints a wire service report, that does not count towards "multiple" coverage. Independent coverage by different wire services, and independent reporting by California papers, does help, but if all it gets is a flurry of coverage it is still more suited to Wikinews. Edison 19:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, true, but this does not mean that we should include everything that has ever happened. Most people here who are !voting delete are not saying that it hasn't been reported, but rather that not every single earthquake that ever happens is notable. Considering how many earthquakes there are every day, even when only including 5.0+ earthquakes, if we were to have an article on all of those, this encyclopedia would be many, many times larger than it currently is. If we were to include every earthquake that ever happened that was 4.0+, as this one is, at 4.2, all our non-earthquake articles would be thoroughly dwarfed by the sheer weight of our earthquake ones. Put simply, this earthquake is not notable enough. You could also count this as me saying delete. --Dreaded Walrus t c 22:15, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
That list of links isn't very impressive because the article in nearly all of them is the same. That's because all of those papers are republishing the same Associated Press article. Besides, this has nothing to do with news coverage, which will dissipate within the next few days, and everything to do with the historical significance of the quake. This quake is non-notable because it didn't have any significant long-term impact like, for example, the Loma Prieta or Northridge quakes. Unlike the Loma Prieta quake, this quake has caused no fatalities, no casualties, no loss of homes, and only minor property damage. It's no different from the hundreds of quakes that happen around the world every day. --Mperry 02:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep this article is notableMchadsac 20:30, 22 July 2007 (UTC) — Mchadsac (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
  • Strong Delete Can't figure out if the author has never been in an earthquake, or whether he/she was in Oakland on Friday. I agree entirely with anonymous that keeping this article opens the door. This article states: "Some people said the damage it caused was worse than the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake" For the record, the 1989 quake caused six billion dollars worth of damage and killed 62 people. Mandsford 22:55, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes and that statement is sourced, for some people the damage was far worse, oaklands, Montclaire District bisinesses suffered large losses of merchandise.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 01:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Here are more sources.Boston Herald, USA Today, Pensacola, Florida, it has received widespread coverage nationally.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 01:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
    Comment The Boston Herald and USATODAY links are to the same AP story, which does not count as "multiple" coverage, per WP:N, and the Pensacola link leads to an unrelated story at this time. Edison 19:40, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • COMMENT a 4.2 earthquake is NOT a 4.0 earthquake. A 4.1 earthquake is 30 times stronger than a 4.0 and a 4.2 is 30 times stronger than that! There is not policy stating that 4.2 earthquakes are too small and not notable, and what might happen is not wikipedia policy. Even if there were 2,000 earthquakes such as this every year, they wouldnt all have an article, there isnt even an article for every language or high school all of which are automatically considered notable, this encyclopedia has over a million articles, the potential for a few thousand more a year would hardly be eclipsed by the tens or hundreds of thousands added annually on various other topicsCholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 01:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
    • Um, no. You're wrong. Each whole number is about 30 times more powerful. This is something like 4.5 times more powerful than a 4.0. Cool Hand Luke 07:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Either way my point is that a 4.2. earthquake is not a 4.0 earthquake, not even close.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 22:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
When I made my post above, I realised that 4.0 is not the same as 4.2. I used that number for the sake of using a whole number. To have a compromise, allow me to use this sentence instead: "If we were to include every earthquake that ever happened that was 4.2+, as this one is, at 4.2, all our non-earthquake articles would be thoroughly dwarfed by the sheer weight of our earthquake ones."
I changed 4.0+ to say 4.2+, and my point largely remains intact. --Dreaded Walrus t c 22:15, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - Non-notable, minor quake with no historical significance. There were no injuries and minor property damage. I live in the bay area and we have small quakes all the time. This is only receiving news coverage because it's a recent event and is just a bit stronger than most quakes in the area. I agree with other commenters that this would be better served by moving the article to Wikinews. --Mperry 02:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I think there is very much a historical significance here, people remember these things, they want to look into them too, yes in the future. The property damage was in the tens of thousands of dollars. This will stay in the news as estimates begin to be reported.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 22:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete: This quake is not notable and shouldn't be in wikipedia. But it does belongs in wikinews. Regarding the notability of a 4.2 quake, it is too small compares to some other destructive quake like a 6.9. Therefore not notable. Chris! my talk 02:13, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Who says it is too small? What WP Policy states that an earthquake must have a minimum magnitude for it to have an article? Sure it was not 6.9 but Hurricane Beta or Alpha or Delta were similarly tiny in comparison to Katrina and even tropical storms get article when they don't even cause any damage whatsoever. What does it matter what this quake wasn't shouldnt it matter what it, is?Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 22:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete. Even at 4.2+ there are thousands of such earthquakes a year. This is just a one-off news story that will never again be the subject of non-trivial coverage. If it ever is, write about it then, but we're not news. Cool Hand Luke 07:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
If there are so many thousands of them (ones just like this one) shouldnt a few more have happened allready and have ursurped this one in the news? A lot happen in very rural areas and go largely missed, no damage nor calamity.Cholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 22:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Transwiki to Wikinews. Unless there's some long-lasting significance to this earthquake, as happened in Northridge earthquake, it's more of a news story than an encyclopedia article. If there turns out to be a longer-lasting significance (like improved building codes, lots of structures needing to be rebuilt, and others), we can always move it back. --Elkman (Elkspeak) 15:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep -- The large number of reliable sources provided in July 20, 2007 Oakland Earthquake#Notes establish the notability of this event per Wikipedia's notability guideline, which states that "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." WP:NOT#NEWS, cited in support of the deletion of this article, is primarily concerned with articles which give excessive publicity to negative incidents in the lives of otherwise non-notable people. It is not an appropriate justification for deleting a well-referenced article concerning an earthquake that obviously has no WP:BLP problems. John254 00:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment against the guideline WP:N which might seem to be satisfied by a flurry of news reports on one day or a few days about a small earthquake, we must balance the policy WP:NOT#NEWS which says "News reports. Wikipedia properly considers the long-term historical notability of persons and events, keeping in mind the harm our work might cause. The fact that someone or something has been in the news for a brief period of time does not automatically justify an encyclopedia article." This flurry of news coverage just the sort of "15 minutes of fame" which distinguihes between newspapers and encyclopedias, wich look for more long term coverage of an event, or for it to have some enduring effects on society. Merchandise thrown off shelves and people being inconvenienced does not make the cut. See also the essay WP:NOTNEWS which reflects the views of some editors on the difference between events being "newsworthy" and them being "encyclopedic." Also WP:N says "Note 4: Several journals simultaneously publishing articles about an occurrence, does not always constitute multiple works, especially when the authors are relying on the same sources, and merely restating the same information. Specifically, several journals publishing the same article from a news wire service is not a multiplicity of works." Are all the quoted sources independently writing articles, or are they just reprinting news service releases? Edison 19:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
WP:NOTNEWS is completely irrelvant, it is original reasearch and it is only the opinion of an editor and those whom agree with him/her, it is not policy and cannot be conisdered in this discussion. The fact that they may have had similar sources is original reasearch and conjecture on your part. You are speculating which should be avoided. Furthermore that goes for any story, anyone who has interviewed scott peterson who writes a story would be writing the same story according to that (which i feel is flawed) logic. And the fact is they are/were not and the same goes for this caseCholga is a SUPERSTAR¡Talk2Cholga!Sexy Contribs 22:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Although several of the references in the article credit AP, which would be covered by Note-4, CNN, Tribune, and LAT did not credit AP, which indicates independent reporting, so Note-4 is moot. All of the refs are from the same day, which would raise long term significance issues. I went looking for other refs, and found this one which would raise further concern. I did find one follow-up article, but the only thing there was this: "Geologists have long said the Hayward Fault is primed for a major (magnitude 7 or higher) and that the chances of one happening within the next 30 years is high." So I have changed my vote to Merge and redirect to Hayward Fault Zone, because the event is notable in that context. This will also preserve the history in case the event does become notable later. 01:10, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Delete - a 4.2 earthquake is not uncommon, but will of course generate news coverage. Absent any significant after-effects from earthquake, this is no different than many other earhtquakles of the same magnitude thus making it a wikinews article and not a wikipedia article. -- Whpq 17:43, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Even if they happen all the time worldwide, they don't happen here in the Bay Area all the time nor this fault. The last time this area had such an earthquake was in 1987, 20 years ago![3]
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.