Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1957 Sunfield tornado

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 redirect‎ to Tornado outbreak sequence of December 18–20, 1957. There's a consensus not to outright delete, but arguments for redirecting carry more P&G weight, in addition to being more numerous than the Keep ones. Owen× ☎ 20:12, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1957 Sunfield tornado[edit]

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I'm sorry, but this is getting out of hand. This article is WAY too short to be here and unless you have some way to expand it, the article should be deleted or redirected back to the main tornado outbreak article. Not every strong to violent tornado needs an individual article; please remember that. ChessEric 00:09, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Tornado outbreak sequence of December 18–20, 1957 where I think this event already has sufficient coverage. This is arguably an unnecessary fork of that article. BrigadierG (talk) 00:21, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -- This is a weird argument for keep, but my reasoning is a mix of WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and it passing WP:NEVENT. So obviously it passess NEVENT's lasting criteria with articles like this one 55 years after the tornado. But actually, the tornado is more notable than the overall outbreak and Wikipedia viewcounts tell us that. This tornado article has been viewed 4,800+ times since its creation in September 2023. The outbreak article has been viewed just over 4,000 times in the last year (April 2023 to March 2024). It is obvious people are specifically searching for this tornado over the outbreak associated with it. So in a weird way, the split article is the primary tornado from the outbreak. Article size for the tornado article is over 7,000 bytes while the 3-day tornado outbreak with 37 tornadoes is 53,000 bytes. There was a similar conversation (OTHERSTUFFEXISTS time) for the 2002 Van Wert–Roselms tornado, which was split from the 2002 Veterans Day weekend tornado outbreak. A third-party editor commented amid the content dispute (separate article or not) and determined it could be a separate article as it passed the criteria to be a stand-alone article. Now, in the last month, the tornado article was viewed nearly 400 times more than the outbreak article and also got to GA rank. Obviously, this article doesn't have GA potential due to the lack of information regarding the tornado, but nonetheless, it does pass the criteria for a stand-alone article. So I am very strongly opposed to a full deletion. My !vote should be seen as a full keep !vote unless consensus starts favoring another verdict. In the event of a consensus forming for a merge or delete, this !vote can be seen as a support for a merge (i.e. not opposed to a merge if consensus falls that direction). The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 00:22, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep: Sometimes OTHERSTUFFEXISTS arguments demonstrate a precedent rather than poorly justifying an unrelated article's retention, and Weather Event Writer seems to have it right. There is a general case for the tornado's individual notability (even decades on). Could a merge conversation conceivably take place? Sure. But this seems to be a strong enough topic to stand on its own from the broader outbreak. ~ Pbritti (talk) 00:28, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Events, Environment, and Illinois. WCQuidditch ☎ ✎ 01:55, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, The Herald (Benison) (talk) 01:54, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

redirect to entry in Tornado outbreak sequence of December 18–20, 1957. I would have said "merge" but there appear to be major factual accuracy problems: the NWS report indicates that the tornado started a ways north of the town and went away from it, not into it; also I don't know why the intersection would be called the "wye" since it is a perfectly ordinary crossroads. It could be made into a separate entry within that article (as is the case for two of the tornadoes in the outbreak) but if so, the text needs to be researched anew. Mangoe (talk) 03:20, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mangoe: I am not sure what NWS report you are referring to? The entire NOAA report for the tornado can be seen on Wikisource (Wikisource: NCDC Climatological Data National Summary for the 1957 Sunfield tornado) and it clearly states, "Occurred at junction of highways 51 and 154. Small crossroads settlement at Sunfield "Y" wiped out. Very heavy destruction in small area. Several survisors took cover in buildings. Man remaining in open killed. Tornado moved east-northeastward." Could you link what NWS report you are seeing, because there is a chance it is a media report and not the official government reports. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 03:29, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, it's that NOAA report to which I refer. If you look at the map of the path and zoom out a bit, you can see Sunfield SSE of the touchdown point. Reviewing the other sources it seems clear to me that they were referring to damage at the intersection and then further east, not in the town itself. Mangoe (talk) 03:46, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mangoe: Oh you mean the storm event database. Yeah, don't use the map. The map is not a representation of the tornado track. It just draws a straight line from the start to the end of the track. The 2013 El Reno tornado is a very good example of that straight line path drawn for those maps. NOAA produced an actual map of the tornadoes track (an image in the Wikipedia article), but if you look at the Storm Event Database report for it, it just draws the straight line. NOAA also says this just above the maps: "Note: The tornado track is approximate based on the beginning (B) and ending (E) locations. The actual tornado path may differ from a straight line."

Also just a side note, you can take a look at User:WeatherWriter/LLM Experiment 1 and User talk:WeatherWriter/LLM Experiment 1#Follow up with 32k version of GPT4, where myself and another editor actually used A.I. to basicaly fact-check and check the verifiability of the article. Both of us came to the same overall conclusion of it being verifiable and accurate based on the sources. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 03:53, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One extra note I wanted to mention, the Storm Event Database, while official as in from the government, is not the actual "official" report for the tornado. That comes from the "Climatological Data National Summary December 1957" paper released in 1958. Basically what is on Wikisource is the formally "official" report for the tornado. The other NOAA sources are official as they are from NOAA, but were made decades after the tornado in the internet era. NOAA discontinued the large paper-based official reports in November 2018 and from December 2018 to present, the Storm Event Database is the official location for tornado records. But the paper/PDF reports are official reports pre-December 2018. You can see these publications here and here. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 03:58, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is all well and good, but again, when I read all these various sources, none of them says that the tornado went though Sunfield. They all say that the tornado touched down near the intersection, obliterated everything there, and proceeded ENE. The Benton News story is particularly detailed. You are spending too much time on what is an irrelevancy; regardless of which source you prefer, none of them says what the article claims they say. Sunfield itself was not touched by the tornado. Mangoe (talk) 04:18, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Mangoe: Now that the accuracy issue is solved, would you reconsider your !vote, which was “redirect” with the sole explanation of the now fixed issue. I am not swaying, but even you have to admit it does pass WP:NEVENT and WP:LASTING, i.e. it meets all stand-alone article criteria. Plus, it gets more views than the outbreak overall does, indicating that it is potentially more notable than the outbreak. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:35, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect Back as an unnecessary split. 108.6.176.12 (talk) 20:50, 19 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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.