Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/System Accident

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 No concensus-Keep AdamBiswanger1 19:53, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] System Accident

[edit] Hi, I am the author of this article

My article, as of Thursday, October 4, 2006, includes seven external links (now nine) and five references. The summary of the ValuJet crash is rock solid, as is the summary of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

I have experience in business management. I am not an engineer. I ask you to consider how that might be advantageous. An engineer can tell you that the cause of the ValuJet crash was that the oxygen generators were poorly labeled. I can tell you how that can happen in an organization. Of course, if the engineer also has managerial experience, or is merely an astute observer, he or she could also tell you.

And most of all, I invite your help. Help make this article better. Include even more references. Specifically, I ask for someone, with technical experience in nuclear power, to help write the section on Three Mile Island.

I am aware that the writing style is different. But is different bad, or merely different? Must every sentence have three words in blue? I think not. And the irony is that many of these accidents have as a contributing cause a formalistic style of communication!

I would cite Carl Sagan as a writer who is accurate but who also allows his own voice to come through. I'm sure you can think of other writers like this. The point is not to imitate Carl Sagan, or anyone else. But try and produce as good an intellectual work as we can, that is, in Wikipedia's words, to Be Bold.

I have split the ValuJet section, into the ValuJet crash itself, and "Discussion of ValuJet." I have similarly split the section on Space Shuttle Columbia. I ask you to consider that that may be enough, and to consider that this is a work in progress. I ask for your vote to keep this article.

Thank you,

Cool Nerd

• • OK now we are getting into issues of Wikipedia:Ownership of articles. If you don't want your material to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it.Dudeman1st 08:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] comments

I cannot find any meaningful reference to this term aside from this article, I'm not really even sure what the article is supposed to be about. Finally, the article seems to constitute original research. shotwell 01:06, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep the article itself may be questionable, but the term itself is really used. Believe it or not. FrozenPurpleCube 01:15, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete (possibly even Strong delete) per nom, certainly reads like an essay, and OR. The term may indeed be in use, but there's no verification. Whether the term is used or not the article as stands has so little to commend it that it would be better to delete it and start afresh. Cain Mosni 01:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete per nom and WP:V. Sounds suspiciously like OR. —dustmite 01:44, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
• Keep Googling the term yields pages that use the phrase in the same way as the article (e.g. [1]) and the article does cite scholarly (offline) sources. It's a bit of a weird format for an article and could use some cleanup, but I think this meets WP:N and WP:V. Plus, it's interesting. --Hyperbole 05:39, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• I don't believe [2] uses the term as intended in the article. The abstract at this reference link doesn't provide enough proof of this term's usage. This abstract also uses "Soviet Accident Commission","system context", and "complex accident scenario". Do those terms warrant Wikipedia pages as well??Dudeman1st 06:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete The refs mostly never use the phrase 'system accident', and when they do it is merely an accident in a system, such as "A system accident occurs as a result of unplanned or unexpected interactions between system components."[3] There is no concrete example of this term even being a buzzword.Dudeman1st 06:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

comment OK I am convinced this term exists. BUT I don't think it merits an article. Doesn't a short defintion belong in the Wiktionary? Is this a major field of study? Is it something found in a regular Encyclopedia or textbook? Remember that not every word needs a Wikipedia article. I will vote to 'keep' a very trimmed down version with less original research and more direct prose.Dudeman1st 14:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• "Mostly never," eh? Anyway, this is either a concept this guy basically made up or a decent article on a semi-obscure topic and I can't really tell which it is from the information available, so I will vote I have no idea. If kept, it needs to go to System accident. Recury 14:10, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

• I meant to say most of the cites never used the term. I recant, after doing a more thorough search. Less than half of the cites (3 or 4) never use the term.Dudeman1st 14:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep"System accident" is a term in use for many years in scholarly publications, dating back at least to Perrow (1984). It is simply false to assert it is or or a neologism. The article is important in relation to many notable disasters, where it is simplistic to blame "operator error." A Google search shows several scholarly uses of the term in the exact sense of the article in the first page of results:"Chernobyl - System Accident or Human Error?" (1996);"Anatomy of a System accident: The Crash of Avianca Flight 052 "(1994). NASA and IEEE use the term in many publications in the sense of the article title. Edison 18:35, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment. In those articles, the term is being used in a very intuitive and trivial sense. Is there enough material specifically about system accidents to provide more than a dictionary definition of the term? shotwell 19:16, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

ComentAu contraire, the term "system accident" as defined by Perrow in the work cited is commonly used in scholarly analysis of system failures. Many of these are discussed in Perrow's book, referenced in the article.Edison 17:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Term not used in the literature with a specific meaning. The article could be kept under a different name if the name were properly sourced. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. It reads like an essay, and a totally bewildering one. --Masamage 23:53, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
• Delete. Essay - original research-ish. We already have an article ValuJet Flight 592 and on the Columbia crash. -- RHaworth 15:33, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

CommentThe article discusses accidents per Perrow's term of art "system accident" which is an accident which involves "the unanticipated interaction of multiple failures" in a complex system. There is more to the concept than is seen by looking at several accidents individually. It is a concept used in failure analysis. If this article is deleted, I will add it to my personal Deleteopedia. Maybe there could be an article on Perrow's book, or his ideas could be added to the rather sparse article on Failure analysis. Any claim of OR might not be taking into consideration the 1984 book. As for post-1984 accidents, accusations of OR could be disproved by citing verifiable publications wherein the accidents are described as "system accidents."Edison 17:31, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Keep, author has shown that the term is a discrete concept and more than just the combination of the words "system" and "accident" and that it is actually used in published works. Recury 17:54, 6 October 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.