Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2010 Austin suicide attack


 * 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. JohnCD (talk) 21:22, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

2010 Austin suicide attack
AfDs for this article: 


 * – ( View AfD View log )

As the previous dicussion notes, this does not have any lasting effects. Also, it fails WP:AIRCRASH as it is a light aircraft and nobody involved were notable. It did receive heavy news coverage, but so did the Norwegian Hercules crash (in Norway and Sweden) and Turkish army Sikorsky crash (in Turkey). This event did not cause any change in policy (which is also required per WP:AIRCRASH). Ysangkok (talk) 20:13, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Previous deletion discussion dismissed the AfD because of WP:SNOW. I don't see how WP:SNOW applies here and doesn't apply here. There ought to be a better reason. I don't see how there is "no chance at all" that we delete this minor freak accident article. --Ysangkok (talk) 20:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Notification of the existence of this discussion has been made at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft


 * Keep - I think the main thing you are missing in comparing this subject to aircraft accidents currently being considered for deletion, is that this article is not about an aircraft accident, it is about an intentional criminal act, so the guidelines at WP:AIRCRASH do not apply. Instead this should be judged against WP:GNG, which this clearly passes. - Ahunt (talk) 22:45, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep - passes WP:GNG as Ahunt points out. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:11, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment the referencing seems to be entirely news organisations with nothing more recent than a three weeks after the event. That makes its coverage transitory rather than long-lasting, and to my mind weakens the strength of it for meeting GNG. I suspect, if retained, that a thorough working over of the article is required to refine the content, and lose some concurrent reporting slag such as the pilots biography. GraemeLeggett (talk) 23:19, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The pilot's bio is essential to the article because it goes a long way to explaining his motives for flying a plane full of diesel fuel into an IRS office with the explicit intention of causing death and destruction as revenge for perceived injustices. This information goes a long way to answering the "Why did he do such a crazy thing?" question. SteveBaker (talk) 02:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * not his motivation but that he had siblings and a daughter by his first marriage. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:43, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * OK - a small amount of trimming to the bio is a reasonable part of the normal editing cycle over the life of an article - it's hardly relevant to AfD. The majority of the bio is relevant and on-topic. SteveBaker (talk) 13:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - I agree that this passes WP:GNG as an act of protest (or as suicide/terrorism if you please). It probably wouldn't be notable if it were merely a light aircraft crash - but it was much more than that.  There has been ongoing coverage of the event in the media.  Just recently, the IRS building that was almost completely destroyed was finally re-opened - and there was significant coverage of that in the Austin media reminding people of the event.  GNG requires: "Significant coverage" (check - it was in every mainstream newspaper and other media) "Reliable" (check, sources were reputable news organizations) "Sources" (check, secondary sources are provided in the articles' references) "Independent of the subject" (check, again, news items were not created by the protagonist) "Presumed" (check - we have a 'presumption' that this article is suitable for inclusion and therefore we just need a consensus, which has been established by the large number of editors working on the article and (it appears) by respondents here. SteveBaker (talk) 02:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep passes WP:N/CA, this was a crime, so criminal notability standard applies. 65.92.181.184 (talk) 03:37, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep passes GNG. -- Supernova Explosion   Talk  12:48, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete I'm the one who nominated the Turkish and Norwegian Crashes. (Oh and I've nominated around 25 air incident articles since last Christmas) The problem I have with these incidents and quite a few others is their cases of recentism. Wikipedia is becoming a great chronicler of miniscule historical significance. I love pointing out the Kathy Whitworth to Lexi Thompson comparison. Both golfers are alive, 1 has LPGA 88 wins, the other 1 win, but who has twenty times written about her than the other? You guessed right, the one with 1 win. There's paragraphs about her playing in minor league tournaments. Lists of her minor league results. Jane Blalock made 299 straight LPGA cuts. What's minor league results in comparison?


 * Air incidents that are overblown because they happened recently, include the flight attendant who quit by using an emergency exit, the LOT taildragger in Warsaw last year, The Jetblue plane that circled and circled, to name a few. They got alot of intense coverage (or broken record coverage like the LOT crash. Is 1000 media outlets showing the same clip intense or repetitive like hitting your head against the wall five times a day?) than died or close to it.


 * There are too many editors with no sense of perspective. I'd nominate alot more articles, but I know it would be a waste of time. The LOT incident had not one person support deletion other than the nominator and me. Technically I didn't vote to delete, but only commented. The writing was already on the wall the article was going to stay....William 21:19, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Comparing the LOT and JetBlue incidents to this is a case of apples and carambolas. - The Bushranger One ping only 00:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia isn't short of disk space. So long as these articles meet broad notability criteria, there is very little cost to keeping them - and they are a valuable resource to future generations.  By all means let's clean out crappy little poorly-referenced stubs of marginal notability - but this is hardly that. SteveBaker (talk) 13:49, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep - passes WP:GNG Famspear (talk) 23:24, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Texas-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Crime-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Terrorism-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 13:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep as subject easily crosses the verifiability and notability thresholds. Not an accident so the guidelines for accidents are not relevant here. That recent subjects are covered in more depth than older ones is a problem solved by improving articles on older subjects, not deleting articles on more recent ones. - Dravecky (talk) 14:27, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree entirely. The recentism "problem" comes about because there is simply less information to be had about older subjects - even if they are just as notable as modern subjects.  This restriction limits the amount that we can possibly write about old subjects - which inevitably means that there will be more (and deeper) articles about modern subjects.  Which is what causes recentism.  It's not a "bias" - it's an inevitable fact of life when reporting on topics from before the information age.  The idea that we should artificially limit what we say about terrorism events of the last 20 years in order to somehow match the depth of what we can say about terrorist incidents in the 4th century BC is ridiculous.  If we adhered to that strategy then Wikipedia would contain almost nothing but historical material from centuries ago.  Hence recentism is inevitable and (in a sense) desirable.  The bottom line is that if someone in 20 years time is studying how people of felt about taxation - then Wikipedia should be the place where they discover the lost memory that someone once tried to wipe out an office full of people by flying a plane into it.  Someone studying the effects of 9/11 can discover this as a 'copy-cat' incident.  These kinds of facts are unobtainable to future researchers if we don't write about them. SteveBaker (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Every fact is unobtainable to researchers if it's not written about. However, crashes like these happen multiple times per year all over the planet. In fact, they happened before 9/11 too, but people are much more sensitive to it now. Imagine reading a detailed article like this about a plane crash like this in the 60'es (information from that age isn't missing). It would feel overly detailed, no? That's why it might as well be a list item instead. No researcher will be starved of his information. Maybe a researcher looking for background information on some guy who had tax problems should look in the newspaper archives instead, they cover stuff like this much better than we do. No one cares about this article anymore, it was hardly changed in 2011 and 2012. Just like every other old news item, it has become old news, and people will be satisfied by a picture and a reference (a reference providing all those gossipy details about his letters and planes and bands and daughters and radio communication!) --Ysangkok (talk) 22:52, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Really now? People deliberatly crash aircraft into government offices "multiple times per year all over the planet"? Reliable sources please. As for "nobody cares", see WP:WHOCARES. - The Bushranger One ping only 15:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The WHOCARES stuff was a reply to SteveBaker's WP:CRYSTALBALL argument that people in 20 years will like it. Other crash like this same year: . Another crash we don't write about cause it's not American:  --Ysangkok (talk) 11:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Then write them. - The Bushranger One ping only 21:02, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep...User:Skashifakram —Preceding undated comment added 17:37, 19 March 2012‎.
 * It's not a poll, make an argument. --Ysangkok (talk) 11:12, 21 March 2012 (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.