Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Cwm Twrch transmitting station


 * 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.  Sandstein  18:20, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Cwm Twrch transmitting station

 * – ( View AfD View log  •  Stats )

Fails WP:N, not notable. No reliable sources give significant, indepth attention to this transmitting station. E.g. the BBC source is a truly passing mention. No better reliable sources coubd efound through Google, Google News or Google books. Probably the same applies to many of the recent transmitting stations articles, but this AfD is just for this one. Fram (talk) 09:55, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete It is a relay station, re-transmitting programming without any locally originated programming. Without refs presented to satisfy WP:N, it should be deleted, consistent with common outcomes of AFDs in recent years. Edison (talk) 18:36, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep The proposer didn't do any research before selecting this article for a kicking. Of course it satisfies WP:N, it is a TV transmitter providing service to about 2000 homes. Three or four references are provided to back up the technical facts listed, all of them give "significant indepth attention" to it. (Ukfree, Mb21 etc). The purpose of wikipedia is to provide information on the world about us: current and historical. If you park your caravan in a remote campsite when on holiday, and wonder where to point your TV aerial for a signal, chances are you might turn to wikipedia for info. If TV relays are considered not notable, that's reduced wikipedia's usefulness in reflecting the world around us. And where do you stop? The main transmitters: Carmel for instance, are just "re-transmitting programming without any locally originated programming" (see Edison's comment above). Delete them too? No - there's no reason not to have pages on demonstrable physical real-world things like TV transmitters. Steve Hosgood (talk) 09:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Wales-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 18:54, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Television-related deletion discussions.  • Gene93k (talk) 19:00, 23 May 2012 (UTC)


 * On the contrary, the proposer did his research. At the time of the nomination, there were three references: "The TransmissionGallery" is not a reliable source, the bbceng.info site only lists it as one of 9 transmitters starting service during a certain quarter, without providing any additional info besides "West Glamorgan" (so in no way can this be described as indepth attention, this is a truly passing mention), leaving us with one source with a bit more info, purely technical though, and rather unclear on whether it would count as a reliable, independent source anyway. The source added later also isn't an independent source but a press release. All sources are indicative of how local and small-scale this transmitter is. As for the rest of your comments: please familiarize yourself with Wikipedia policies and guidelines like WP:N, WP:NOT. "It's useful" is not an argument to include or exclude info on Wikipedia, it may be useful to know the prices offered for beer by different pubs in a region, to know where to get the cheapest booze, but we don't and never will include such information. Fram (talk) 09:55, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As may have been noted, it was me who notified the article creator, per WP:AFD. Presumably this was an oversight on the nominator's behalf. To take an example from the same log, the creator of Naša TV was notified. I thought this was standard practice, especially for a recently created article. -- Trevj (talk) 10:14, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Trevj. Without your notification, I'd probably not have even noticed that this was going on. Steve Hosgood (talk) 10:59, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Adding articles to relevant WikiProjects can increase awareness of actions affecting them. I've now done so for this article, so it should be listed at WikiProject Wales/Article alerts and WikiProject Telecommunications/Article alerts within the next 24 hours. It's also helpful of Gene93k to have listed this discussion at relevant places. -- Trevj (talk) 12:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I dispute the argument that "The Transmission Gallery" is not a reliable source, it has photos of the sites that it mentions (Cwm Twrch is one of them) plus usually (but not in this case) a brief report by whoever visited and took the photos. Meanwhile, the bbceng.info report does indeed make only a one-line mention of the place, but that's all they ever do: and I only cite their report to back up my claim of when the transmitter entered service (otherwise I could just be making it up, couldn't I?). I am loosely familiar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines like WP:N and WP:NOT though I don't have enough spare time on my hands to go picking through all the fine detail. I just wrote an article with the honest assumption that its subject matter would be useful. It's about a demonstrable, physical, non-temporary object that plays a real part in the real world around us. Just by existing, it has played a minor part in the history of terrestrial TV broadcasting in the UK, in the technical policies of TV service planning and even reflects the perceived political decisions of the day (like how many homes need to be provided-for before government is prepared to build a transmitter for them). I agree that an article on where to get the best prices beer in some town is not material for wikipedia, but this is different. The price of beer changes continually, the existence of a TV transmitter and its history does not. Steve Hosgood (talk) 10:59, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:RS. "a brief report by whoever visited and took the photos" is not really the definition of a reliable source (as defined on Wikipedia), but of a decent fan site. "a demonstrable, physical, non-temporary object that plays a real part in the real world around us": we don't have (and don't want) articles on e.g. all raods in the world, even though the same applies to them as well. The rest of your argument is WP:OR but has little to do with the Wikipedia definition of notability. Fram (talk) 11:17, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * You might not like it but we already have lots of articles on roads! A488_road for instance. No - I didn't write any of them! Closer to the subject here, there is an article on the little valley of Cwm Twrch. Are we to delete stuff like that too? There won't be a lot left of wikipedia if this goes on. Steve Hosgood (talk) 11:34, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * yes; we have articles on major roads, not on minor ones. Similarly, we should have articles on major transmitting stations, not on minor ones. And no one suggests deleting the article on the valley. Fram (talk) 11:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment Similar deletion discussions have taken place in the past: AfD/Saddleworth Transmitting Station, AfD/Caradon Hill transmitting station. The latter mentions a number of such articles in the US. Notability requires verifiable evidence, so even an unsourced assertion isn't generally enough. -- Trevj (talk) 10:28, 24 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know enough about the subject, but maybe the solution is to Merge . Carmel transmitting station could be renamed Carmel UHF Transmitter Group, and then all the individual relay transmitter articles in the group could be merged into a table in the new article, giving mast height, date opened, population served, coordinates, other.  I think they all transmit the same stuff, so it is redundant to repeat this information in individual articles.  A merge preserves the title.  If a particular tower is individually noteworthy, the article can be kept. I am not volunteering to undertake the merge.  Welsh TV towers are not my thing.  Aymatth2 (talk) 19:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for a constructive suggestion, Aymatth2. I'd thought of it too, but sadly it won't (easily) work. The trouble is that during the PAL analogue TV -> DVB-T digital TV switchover some relays switched affiliation from one group to another - see Mynydd Emroch for instance. It's hard to reflect this properly when the relay just appears in a list. A similar situation had happened 40 years earlier as the 405-line -> 625-line transition was under way - see Llandrindod Wells for instance where the relay changed affiliation (slowly) from relaying two completely different 405-line parent stations to a third one (Carmel) for 625-line purposes. And then there's places like Storeton/Storeton Wales which in the digital-TV era is a relay of two different parent stations. The only easy-to-navigate structure that I've come up with yet is the one before you: a short page on each relay with templated lists at the bottom allowing you to find the various parent transmitters that were active at different points in that site's history (which is sometimes upwards of 50 years BTW). Steve Hosgood (talk) 08:59, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * weak keep based on the above rationale against merge and Harumphy's argument below. The information is there for anyone who wants to look it up, does no harm otherwise, is well sourced.  Aymatth2 (talk) 12:29, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep. The Transmission Gallery is a reliable source and many of its contributors are experienced broadcast engineers, not just "fans". The article is accurate, informative and entirely harmless. The fact that it's about a minor topic doesn't matter: no trees will die as a result of its publication. I do wish some people round here would contribute useful content of their own instead of casually butchering other editors' work in pursuit of a destructive obsession with WP rules.--Harumphy (talk) 08:01, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * A reliable source according to what? WP:RS? As for "I do wish some people round here would contribute useful content of their own instead of casually butchering other editors' work in pursuit of a destructive obsession with WP rules.", I have created more than 1,000 articles, so please don't give me the anti-deletionist crap. The rest of your arguments in no way addresses the main reason for deletion, i.e. lack of notability. No books, newspapers, ... have written about this transmission tower, which is an entrely run-of-the-mill minor one, with no discerning qualities whatsoever, and which at most could be included in a list of transmission towers per region. Fram (talk) 14:27, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * No matter how many articles you have created, an unreasonable obsession with WP rules is incredibly demoralising for other editors and drives many of them away. If this is a habit then you may have prevented more articles than you have created. What harm does this article do?Harumphy (talk) 22:44, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Look - you have to interpret wikipedia policies according to the situation. You claim to be concerned that "No books, newspapers, ... have written about this transmission tower" as if that is appropriate here. It isn't. Not a lot of books or newspapers (in this day and age) would write anything about television transmitters. So please stop pedantically insisting that the article would only be notable if they did. I doubt any books or newspapers wrote anything about Arfon TV relay, but it just so happens (at just short of 320 m high) to be the tallest man-made structure in Wales. And as I pointed out above, a list of transmission towers per region would not be as easy to interpret as crosslinked sets of individual pages are. Steve Hosgood (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete - Significant coverage in reliable sources is what is needed to establish notability. I don't see that any of the references satisfy this, nor could I find any. -- Whpq (talk) 16:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep I think this is perfectly acceptable on wikipedia and has enough content and sources to be kept. That said I'm looking for some sort of mast on google maps/earth and can find nothing like notable towers in my county like the Wenvoe and St Hilary transmitters..♦ Dr. Blofeld  17:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment - I notice that whilst some people want useful pages about real-world things deleted, it seems to be perfectly OK that Wikipedia hosts a mighty tree of articles on The Simpsons TV programme. The main page links to an episode list, which is a list of links to individual wikipedia pages on each and every one of the several hundred "Simpsons" episodes, each with a plot summary, cast list etc. Then there are 13 separate pages listing each of the Simpsons' series, each one again containing a potted plot summary and a link to the individual page per episode. Many of the characters on the Simpsons have a page of their own, and there are portals and all sorts of other stuff documenting the Simpsons. Documenting what?? The Simpsons is a cartoon series! None of the characters even exists! Yet all of this Simpsons related cruft is well-enough regarded that today, the single episode page The_Last_Temptation_of_Krust achieved Featured Article status! I find it had to believe that more than one or two individual episode pages of The Simpsons (or the individual character pages) have ever achieved the degree of "notability" being demanded of this article on the Cwm Twrch TV transmitter. Yet I would not lower myself to barge into any of The Simpsons article tree and nominate some random part of it for deletion. I say that until Wikipedia generates a policy of how deeply it is prepared to host a tree of articles on a minority US TV series, then this current attempt to vandalise documentation of the UK terrestrial TV network be abandoned under WP:SNOW Steve Hosgood (talk) 16:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Reply We do; it is the notability guidelines that also govern inclusion of articles such as television episode, as well as transmission towers. If that can be satsified for the Cwm Twrch transmitting station, then the article will be kept. -- Whpq (talk) 17:47, 28 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete. When considering our definition of notability, it's important to note the difference between true independent coverage, and routine reports/news etc about the subject. As WP:NRVE states "The evidence must show the topic has gained significant independent coverage or recognition". In this case, none of the cited refs actually show notability (as we define it) because they are all standard reports of the type that apply to all relay stations - when it was opened, its location, power, targets, when it converted to Freeview etc. No doubt the same information is available for every relay in the country and to accept such information as enough to show notability is tantamount to saying that all TV relays are inherently notable.
 * What would be needed for this to be sufficiently notable would be something that lifts it out of the ordinary - if there had been extensive press reporting on massive complaints about it being a blot on the landscape, or on it blowing down and killing someone, or if it had been used as a test case for TV reception in Wales, etc. etc. But there's nothing. It's just one of hundreds(?) maybe ten thousand or so non-notable TV relay stations in the UK. As the article creator said "where do you stop?" - yes, if we allow this, we have to allow articles on every TV relay station in the world, and Wikipedia is not a list of everything that exists. —S MALL  JIM   17:38, 30 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Speedy Delete Basically everything that Smalljim said. There are thousands of relays, and most are pretty insignificant and cover a tiny population. Better would be to have a list of relays on the Carmel page, along with the frequencies, power, height and specifying the location/NGRs. That's all that's necessary. Or even including the 11 December 1989 start date (which is of interest). However the fact it is quite a recent relay (over 7 years after S4C started), and a relay of a relay, that shows how minor a relay it is. Are we to also have an article about every cellular radio tower too? Rapido (talk) 09:58, 31 May 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.