Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Boeing 737 rudder issues

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. Notability established. — Coffee // have a cup // beans // 03:48, 30 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Boeing 737 rudder issues[edit]

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WP:OR/WP:FORK. The article claims to be about longstanding rudder issues on Boeing 737s. However, there is only one sourced accident that was the result of a rudder malfunction. There are five others listed as "suspected", but they are either unsourced, alleged, or sourced to a different problem. There is only one incident documented that led to the issue being discovered and repaired. Therefore, there are conclusions and connection being drawn by the article, which is not in keeping with Wikipedia policy. The sourced incidents already have their own articles, which further indicates that this article is a fork to make exactly the statements this article is making. MSJapan (talk) 02:14, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 03:28, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there are 2 accidents whose final reports have attributed the cause to be due to rudder failure. I think this article needs to stay, and that it needs revisions so that it doesn't appear that this rudder issue is as inconsequential as you might think it is. I am not an aviation person, but I have researched this issue a great deal, and the rudder problem is a very complicated problem. That's one of the reasons why it took TEN YEARS for United Airlines Flight 585's accident cause to finally be attributed to the rudder controls. I will explain as best as I can:

Originally, monitoring systems in the Flight Data Recorders (FDRs, colloquially known as "the black boxes") did not include rudder controls, so even if a crash was definitely due to a rudder control issue, usually there was no way for investigators to know this after the accident, and therefore, with certainty all they could report was that they "suspect" that was the direct cause of the accident. Also, the rudders operated in such a manner that, after the accident, if they survived intact, there was no way for the investigators to tell, on inspection, that anything had malfunctioned with them. That was a huge problem, because accident investigators rely on data from the FDRs, the Voice Data Recorders (if present), and the condition of the parts of the plane after the accident. They can't tell that the rudder was malfunctioning, so again, even if the cause of the accident was definitely a rudder control, in an official report, they can only suspect it, they can't give a definitive answer without definitive evidence. It was only after the crash of USAir Flight 427 in 1994 that investigators became aware of this rudder issue, and were able to go back and reopen past investigations, such as United 585, to determine if the accidents matched USAir 427, and if so, they could say with greater certainty that the rudder was involved.

I think this article should be retained, and expanded, hopefully by someone with more industry knowledge than I have, to give this topic the in-depth explanation it deserves. There are accidents that are highly suspected of being caused by rudder control problems, but without definitive evidence, in a report, investigators can't say that. I'll give an analogy: it's like you set your lunch on the table, but go answer the door or go to the bathroom, and when you come back, it's gone. Only you and the dog are home, but he doesn't look like he's just eaten your food: he doesn't smell like your lunch, you don't see any of your food in his mouth or around his belongings, there's not one crumb left to give you any idea what happened to it. You are 100% sure the dog ate it, because it didn't just vanish into thin air. BUT, if you had to put into a legal document what happened to it, you can't say you know the dog ate it, because you have no proof of it, you have to say you just strongly suspect the dog did, because all evidence points to it. You have to stop short of blaming him outright, because you don't have the evidence that rises to the level of a definitive report. This article needs to go into that, it needs to explain in more detail why the rudder control problems were so hard to prove. And, because this *was* a huge issue in proving or disproving the cause of more than one accident, including the longest investigation in NTSB history, and was the cause of changes to avoid future accidents after hundreds of people died due to these catastrophic events, I think it's an important topic to keep, and to expand upon so that all of this is clear. Kelelain (talk) 18:58, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

STRONGLY OPPOSE for the reasons given by Kelelain above. This article needs to be improved, not deleted. This is a significant topic in the aviation industry, and it is widely accepted that these rudder issues were the cause of two fatal aviation accidents. I will make it a priority to improve it myself. Shelbystripes (talk) 20:05, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated the article, which is now more detailed, thoroughly sourced, and makes clear that this involved multiple aircraft and a significant loss of human life. Hopefully this addresses the issues that were raised in the original AfD request. Shelbystripes (talk) 21:34, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 00:55, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - the sourcing is somewhat better (some fora/selfpub needed to go per RS), but I would note the following items which have not changed: the major incidents cited and summarized in this article have their own main articles already. The content used in this article re: those incidents is almost exclusively {{WP:PRIMARY]] from the NTSB reports (to the tune of 18 references from the same report). Setting aside those summary portions as indisputable fact, all that remains is a list of "suspected incidents", and that is where the fork (and WP:OR) issue lies - a number of incidents are being tied together with some suspected incidents (which were not rudder issues), plus Silkair (which was not a rudder issue) and I don't see any source cited that draws that conclusion. Therefore, the article is still in violation of WP:OR by drawing conclusions for the reader that were not made in the sources used, and it still appears that the article is FORKED to enable those conclusions to be made. MSJapan (talk) 17:40, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

KEEP (restated from above) You appear to be unfamiliar with WikiProject Aviation articles. The final NTSB report is frequently relied on as a source for these articles, as the only reliable sources with detailed, accurate, and specific information about an aviation accident or incident in the U.S. If there are sources containing discussion or debate or which question the official report, then those sources may also be used, but those alternate sources often do not exist. Also, you keep using "FORKED" in a way that does not match its meaning at all. If you're concerned the page has too much OR or other problems, then add an appropriate template banner calling for improvement, but no valid reason for deletion has been given and deletion is an inappropriate remedy for an incomplete but useful article on a real topic that resulted in nearly 200 lives lost. Shelbystripes (talk) 00:51, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:34, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reply - First of all, you can only vote once. Second of all, when you have 1267 edits in three years, don't tell an editor with over 12,000 edits and ten years in that "it doesn't mean what you think it means." Having just seen the same situation in another article, I'm pretty sure I know what it means. Considering that the individual incidents already have articles elsewhere, this article is a content fork, period. Furthermore, the material is forked here to facilitate OR insofar as the conclusions and connections being made in the article. OR is a policy violation, period, so whether I "understand" aviation articles is irrelevant to the issue, and guess what? If I take out all the OR, we're left with three paragraphs rehashing incidents which already have more in-depth articles elsewhere, thus a content fork. The article is about rudder issues on a class of aircraft, and nowhere in the sources is it stated that these incidents were related. As a matter of fact, the article was created with no support for its claims whatsoever, and since that time, people have trying to fit data to the title instead of realizing the premise of the article is the problem. MSJapan (talk) 20:52, 25 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The AfD was relisted, and I was restating my position after the relisting and new rationale. Per WP:CLOSEAFD, an AfD is not to be resolved or closed by vote count anyway, so there is no harm in restating my position below the relist/update. Do not edit my responses. You can reply to them, but you should not be editing what I wrote. In addition, you are factually incorrect when you say that there are only "three paragraphs" left after removing OR. I would know, because I wrote much of the material on the page. The NTSB synthesized the facts from multiple aviation incidents mentioned into a single, coherent narrative; I did not. I cited to the NTSB's work doing so. Putting that aside, you should not jump immediately to assuming content on the page is also OR. As a first step, you should be marking content you suspect may be OR with a tag such as {{OR}}, {{citation needed}}, or {{dubious}} to facilitate discussions or solicit citations in support. Also, I realize now that you meant WP:CONTENTFORK (not WP:FORK, as you originally said), but I disagree with this assessment as well. If anything, if the overlap in subject matter is your concern, you should be proposing that those aviation incident articles be merged into this one. I'm not sure I'd agree with that, but it would make more sense than this. I don't care if you have over 12,000 edits, that has no bearing on the fact that this is an inappropriate deletion request. Shelbystripes (talk) 17:08, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Also, it is ridiculous to judge a 7-year-old Wikipedia page based on its content when it was originally created. Most Wikipedia pages begin as stubs. The proper debate topic is whether the page currently meets Wikipedia standards, not whether it could have been deleted 7 years ago. And even then, my response would have been the same as it is now: Can the page be improved instead of deleted? The obvious answer is yes. Shelbystripes (talk) 17:19, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I for one found this article to be very helpful for whatever that is worth. Yes all the accidents have their own pages but this page ties them all together. There was indeed a serious rudder issue that conclusively caused 2 accidents and another incident. Also the Silk Air crash was found to be a rudder issue by one investigating team so that makes 4 accidents or incidents connected to the rudder issue. Also under the suspected list 3 of the listings do not have a page of their own. I can see taking out Copa Airlines flight 201 because it was not caused by a rudder issue but other than that I think it should stay. Very helpful article.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.230.178.179 (talk • contribs)

Keep I think the article includes some valuable information, but suggest the inclusion of more references.--Jetstreamer ^Talk 18:32, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Seems to meet WP:GNG for an article and covers a notable topic. - Ahunt (talk) 16:32, 28 May 2016 (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.