Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/July 2006 Sulawesi earthquake

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 consensus. I am loathe to close this debate as-is because this debate indicates that "something" rathr than "nothing" should happen here, but there is certainly no consensus emerging from this discussion. Further consideration for a merge to an appropriate target is encouraged on the article's talk page. Shereth 20:01, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

July 2006 Sulawesi earthquake

Non notable earthquake in an area of high seismicity, all refs are dead links RapidR (talk) 00:58, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Indonesia-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 01:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete "There have been no reports of damage or injuries". That spells "non-notable" to me. What is this, a project to write an article about every tremor of 6.0 or greater? Mandsford (talk) 13:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Ron Ritzman (talk) 00:36, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Google News results for Sulawesi earthquake 6.1, July 2006:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=Sulawesi+earthquake+6.1&as_ldate=2006/07&as_hdate=2006/07&lnav=hist6

http://www.iris.edu/hq/ssn/events/view_seis/295

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aO.TMwRECU1s&refer=asia

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2006/07/23/tsunami_hit_indonesia_limps_back_to_normal/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205146,00.html — Rankiri (talk) 01:56, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keep of course there will be more earthquakes in areas of high seismicity, but that doesn't make them any the less notable. the sources given above are sufficient to keep the article. DGG (talk) 03:22, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Bear in mind that on average, 134 quakes of magnitude 6.0-6.9 occur somewhere in the world each year, most of them being insignificant. They always get news coverage one way or another, but this quake has no historical significance at all, and I think the article is just simply recentism because it occurred a few days after the July 2006 Java earthquake. Surely, if this deserves an article, then so do all the other 2,000 odd non notable M6.0+ quakes that have occurred in the past 20 years. RapidR (talk) 03:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and the article is factually correct, sufficiently sourced, concisely written and potentially scientifically useful. I thought about it myself earlier but I just don't see how deleting the article would benefit anyone. — Rankiri (talk) 04:34, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. -- TexasAndroid (talk) 04:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The only reason this seems to have attracted more attention than usual is because there had been a very deadly earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia the week before. I see from that same Google news search that there were news stories about an August 2006 Sulawesi earthquake, and a November 2006 Sulawesi earthquake, and a January 2007 Sulawesi earthquake, and a March 2007 Sulawesi earthquake, and a June 2007 Sulawesi earthquake, and a September 2007 Sulawesi earthquake, and a.... well, you get the idea. Mandsford (talk) 13:38, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Wikipedia is not a directory of every earth tremor. A mild tremor following a serious one gets a splash of coverage as newscasters try to get viewer attention by hyping a nonevent as being like the previous serious earthquake. Wikipedia is not a mirror of everything that was covered by news media. The essay Wikipedia:News articles expresses the views of a number of Wikipedians. It says "Articles about items in the news are only considered encyclopedic if they are verifiably of significant lasting and historical interest and impact." Wikinews is a more appropriate site to chronicle everything that had anynews coverage. Edison (talk) 16:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

None of the examples given on WP:NOTDIR (white pages, TV guides, etc) is even remotely comparable to this subject, and WP:NOTNEWS—at least the way I understand it—mostly refers to "two men were robbed of $50 and a cell phone" and "Madonna wears infamous bunny ears" types of events and not ones that may turn out to be scientifically useful.

As for other objectors, please recall WP:ALLORNOTHING and WP:OTHERSTUFF. Even if each and every one of those earthquakes is as well-documented as this one, 2,000 comparably sized articles would still amount to less than 5MB of actual data. If Wikipedia is running out of storage space, I volunteer to donate four of my antique floppy discs just for this purpose, but I still think that a topic that received extensive coverage in reliable secondary sources can be considered sufficiently notable to satisfy the inclusion criteria for standalone articles. — Rankiri (talk) 17:29, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notwithstanding the disturbing prospect of having 2,000 separate articles about one's favorite tremors, it would make more sense to group all of the '06 disturbances onto a page called "Earthquakes in 2006". Mandsford (talk) 20:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notwithstanding the unmerited insinuations of your last comment, the merging proposal, however sensible, lies beyond the scope of this AfD discussion and should probably be taken to the article's talk page. — Rankiri (talk) 22:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'd prefer to talk about it here. Nobody has suggested a merger, although you might want to look for somewhere to save anything you feel to be important, before the article is deleted. Most earth tremors, as with most aviation incidents, and most homicides, will be mentioned in the news soon after they happen; but most do not meet Wikipedia's requirements for notability. Mandsford (talk) 12:54, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

To make it clear, WP:News articles and WP:Recentism are only viewpoints and not official policies. And again, Wikipedia's requirements for notability clearly state that if a topic has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Nowhere on WP:N does it state that tectonic tremblings must cause a certain number of human fatalities or substantial property damage in order to be recognized as sufficiently notable. WP:DELETE lists potential merging and renaming as alternatives to deletion, no a reason for it, and I'm also not aware of any policies that impose an upper limit on the number of earthquake-related articles allowed to exist on Wikipedia. Your opinion is appreciated but I don't believe it's based on any of the official WP policies I know. — Rankiri (talk) 13:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Granted, the policy is difficult to find, but it's listed under WP:NOT#NEWS which is the "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" section of the policy "What Wikipedia is not". This part is not an essay: "News reports. Wikipedia considers the historical notability of persons and events. News coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, but not all events warrant an encyclopedia article of their own." Historical notability is a matter of opinion, left to you, me and the other participants in this discussion. I don't see anything historically notable about the July 2006 Sulawesi earthquake, regardless of how well it was covered at the time. Some minor quakes are historically significant -- and perhaps there's something about this one that sets in apart from others, such as the 1909 earthquake near Zagreb, but most are just a footnote. Mandsford (talk) 22:23, 4 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question Why is this AfD categorized under science & technology? --Cybercobra (talk) 23:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect it's because it's all based on seismological readings. Mandsford (talk) 00:20, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Earthquakes come under the category of Geophysics which is part of earth sciences, that and no other category seemed to fit. RapidR (talk) 00:50, 7 July 2009 (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.