Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cope Truss


 * 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 Gettysburg Battlefield. Those that opine for deletion, along with others that offer alternatives other than deletion, recommend merging of the Gettysburg examples to Gettysburg Battlefield, so I'll redirect the article, and what's worth merging can be done from the history, of course ensuring the content is attributed appropriately. (non-admin closure) Steven   Zhang  Join the DR army! 00:08, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Cope Truss

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This appears to be a WP:COATRACK increasing yet again the number of Gettysburg articles courtesy User:Target for Today. Searching in Google books for the phrase gives zero hits; regular Google search appears to hit only Wiki mirrors, but in any case books should document such a technological innovation considering that Cope built these things a century ago. All evidence suggests that these are conventional steel towers of the period. The information on the Gettysburg examples could be moved to Gettysburg Battlefield. Mangoe (talk) 19:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I looked in the article and throughout the various tower articles and can't find any evidence supporting your claim "All evidence suggests that these are conventional steel towers of the period." And the citations clearly say this design was indeed by Emmor Cope as opposed to a previous design of or before 1895.  Lake Woodhouse in Denver (talk) 19:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC)  Comment struck as sockpuppet of User:Target for Today, who is currently indefinitely blocked. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Pennsylvania-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 02:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

**Clearly this design exists, as towers using the design exist and are part of the Historic American Engineering Record. Is a dispute about a notable article's name a reason for deleting an article? Lake Woodhouse in Denver (talk) 19:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC) Comment struck as sockpuppet of User:Target for Today, who is currently indefinitely blocked. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete No reason why this can't be included on the Gettysburg Battlefield article. Wild Wolf (talk) 22:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete/Merge to Gettysburg Battlefield. Don't see why this has to be a seperate article. Mad Man American (talk) 22:46, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete/Merge to Gettysburg Battlefield. 76.7.231.130 (talk) 16:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Merge to Gettysburg Battlefield. The article fails to explain why this is significant or why it needs a seperate article. 67.239.100.244 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC).
 * Strong Keep Well documented article that needs improvements in tone. --DThomsen8 (talk) 16:49, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The towers themselves are well-documented, but there is no documentation at all towards the existence of something called a "Cope truss". Mangoe (talk) 17:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Rename and Merge with all the related Gettysburg towers (Big Round Top Observation Tower Foundation Ruin and Culp's Hill Observation Tower) per WP:SNOWFLAKE (we should document the similarities and differences among the towers). The documentation available is more than enough to prove notability for the towers - even if the name "Cope truss" itself is not used, the content is well sourced and notable and thus should be kept. (Nomination argument is that the cope truss as a technological innovation is a COATRACK, but the article actual content -the coverage of the towers construction in newspapers of the era- is not "a biased subject"). Diego (talk) 11:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * To what name do you want the Cope truss article renamed (kept)? Lake Woodhouse in Denver (talk) 19:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC)  Comment struck as sockpuppet of User:Target for Today, who is currently indefinitely blocked. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep - Topic clearly meets the notability requirements as for all the other truss articles (which are also named for the designer), and this design is historically notable (all of the remaining towers are historic distric contributing structures, and the ruins for one are likewise honored as a HDCS.) Lake Woodhouse in Denver (talk) 19:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC)  Comment struck as sockpuppet of User:Target for Today, who is currently indefinitely blocked. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * .... except that there's no such thing as a Cope truss, as far as any research into the matter shows. Mangoe (talk) 19:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I thought the article clearly states that the towers actually do exist, so why are you claiming there's "no such thing" -- do you instead mean no such name "Cope truss"? But they are indeed trusses and placing the designer's name before the word "truss" is an accurate use of an adjective and valid, right? (hopefully you're not going to dispute that).  Lake Woodhouse in Denver (talk) 19:47, 26 January 2012 (UTC)  Comment struck as sockpuppet of User:Target for Today, who is currently indefinitely blocked. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The article starts by saying that "The Cope Truss is a tall square frustum of four structural cells." This is just a claim the article author made up, as far as I can tell. There is no evidence that anyone else ever called this sort of stay-braced tower a "Cope truss"; indeed, on examination the photo in the article does not show the pattern of bracing described in the article, but instead shows a very conventional pattern of cross bracing typical of lightly-built steel and iron towers. The thousands of fire lookout towers built in the US used roughly the same construction, with varying numbers of stages and stiff rather than tensile members for the crossbraces. The history of the towers is perhaps worthy of recording, in my opinion most properly as a small subsection of the article on the battlefield as a whole; however the claim that there is some notability to the construction of the towers is not borne out by research. Mangoe (talk) 20:25, 26 January 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.