Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Height 611 UFO incident (2nd nomination)


 * 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 delete. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 00:25, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Height 611 UFO incident
AfDs for this article:


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Only sources in the article are the same ones that were there 8 years ago. One is a Discovery, Inc. 1996 TV show and the other is a self-published book. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 12:59, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Russia-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 13:08, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 13:08, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Paranormal-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 13:08, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Aviation-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 13:10, 21 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete per WP:EXTRAORDINARY. The claims of a glowing object depositing metal of supposedly mysterious origin are limited to decidedly WP:SENSATIONAL stories in the Russian press and WP:FRINGE writings by a UFOlogist. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:42, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete - Sourcing looks v. weak. NickCT (talk) 13:58, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete The sourcing dug up in the first round still doesn't look sufficient: Some of it's not RS, and the rest just isn't enough. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  14:08, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. Here's an excerpt from ISBN 5-17-041429-3, containing an account of events without needless sensationalism. If you dig around for more Russian sources, they are there to be found. The event is no Roswell incident, but has plenty of coverage and is thus notable on just those grounds alone. This doesn't mean the UFO claims should be taken at face value, of course.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2021 ; 14:43 (UTC)
 * ISBN 5-17-041429-3 directs to this book (the one with the dramatic flying saucer illustration on the cover), entitled "Secrets of UFOs and Aliens" by the author Михаил Борисович Герштейн (Gershtein Mikhail Borisovich), which does not appear to be "an account of events without needless sensationalism", but rather a sensational book by a Russian ufologist. "Litmir.me" appears to be a website that provides an online library of some sort that is simply hosting pages from the book. It's not a WP:FRIND source. I’ll not bludgeon the discussion further, however I urge reviewers to make use of Google translate to evaluate additional Russian sources presented. - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:05, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I cannot judge the book as a whole as I have not read it in its entirety (unlike you, I can't read that fast). However, in the section that pertains to the incident (which I did read) I see nothing "sensationalist". It combines the accounts of people who saw the events, lists the findings, and draws no conclusions of the "UFOs must be real" variety (which would be a red flag for me personally). As for the Litmir link, I provided it merely for ease of review. The actual source will be the book itself, not the website. The author is a ufologist, yes, but that does not automatically invalidate every single thing he has to say. I also do not suggest using this book as the only source, but it can and should be a good starting point for further sourcing.
 * If that book is too much for you, there is plenty of neutral, objective press coverage that can be found (but of course there's plenty of sensationalist fluff to weed out too). This article, fairly recently published on Takiye Dela, is just one example. Whatever your views are on the incident itself (and as someone who lived there when the incident took place, I think it's a bunch of BS), there's no denying it is notable, of only in a way conspiracy theories and hoaxes can be notable.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2021 ; 15:57 (UTC)
 * If the author is taking the claims of UFOlogists seriously (which seems likely, as the author is a UFOlogist), then the author is necessarily an unreliable source, unless and until such time as their beliefs about aliens visiting us are proven accurate. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  16:23, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Evaluating those claims is his job, is it not? One can bill oneself a "ufologist", yet still be capable of considering the claims on their merits (one would hope someone is doing that?). Anyway, like I said, the text I linked to merely lists the facts and presents possible explanations by others (including government officials and researchers). The actual conclusions are left to readers, which is, really, the best one can do in such a situation. The subject matter itself naturally means the sources will be of a... certain variety (many of the sources used in the Roswell incident article, for example, could be dismissed on exactly the same grounds). What would be your ideal source, one that you'd see and can tell right there, "that's it; it works"? I could be wrong, but I feel much of the rationale for deletion here is that the subject matter is one that naturally arouses suspicion, its notability is mainly outside of the Anglosphere, and the sources are mainly in Russian (with so many of them being pure junk). None of that can be helped, but it doesn't make the topic any less worthy of inclusion. An incident that people are returning to over and over, which has not been conclusively confirmed or debunked, is absolutely a part of "all human knowledge", if not one that's vital. We should cover it the best we can.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2021 ; 16:45 (UTC)


 * Delete - No good sources for anything worthwhile. The book by a Russian UFOlogist suggested above does not change that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:05, 21 July 2021 (UTC)
 * ...and may I know your opinion on the other source? Trying to figure out here what kind of sources people are looking for. It's a bit hard to satisfy sourcing expectations without knowing what they are.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 21, 2021 ; 17:20 (UTC)
 * The necessary information is covered at Reliable sources and Verifiability. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Huliva 03:55, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I guess that by "the other source", you mean the "Takiye Dela" thing. I have no idea what it says and what its reliability is. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:01, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete, for two reasons. One, it's supposedly a famous Russian case, yet no stand-alone article on the Russian-language Wikipedia (see why below). Two: See the quotes below.

Dvuzhilni received a report from the IZMIRAN Institute of Earth magnetism, ionosphere and radiowaves propagation (the Leningrad branch). ... They conducted analyses of lead balls from Height 611. The conclusions arrived to by scientists were as follows: the balls were made on Earth, but the lead was not from Dalnegorsk deposit, but from the Kholodnensky deposit, in the North Baikal region. Source: Visota 611: zagadki ostayuts, article by A. Lyakhov, published by Sostialisticheskaya industriya, issue dated July 9, 1989; Inopanetyane dobivayut nash svinets, article by N. Ostrovskaya, published in Komsomolskaya Pravda, issue dated June 9, 2003.

Dvuzhilni was certain that the alien probe that crashed on Height 611 was capable of using metals from Earth deposits for its repair needs.

Source: NLO pod mikroskopom, published in Priroda i Chelovek magazine, issue 12, 1989.

Source of quoted material immediately below from Russian Wikipedia here (translated; a subsection of the Russian article "Unidentified flying object").

There is still no consensus among scientists about the origin of the object. However, most experts believe that all debris is of terrestrial origin, and there is no reliable evidence of extraterrestrial technology or materials [57].

The most popular hypothesis is that the object was an automatic drifting balloon (ADA). Since the 1940s, such balloons were launched by the United States for espionage purposes and could rise to an altitude of 30 kilometers, which made them inaccessible to Soviet fighters for a long time. [...]

A study was published in the American magazine Sky & Telescope, which claimed that the object in Dalnegorsk was the wreckage of a secret American military spy satellite [58].

Continuing, I came into this with an open mind, but if the Ru Wiki doesn't feel it deserves a stand-alone article, then neither should we.  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 11:38, 22 July 2021 (UTC)
 * For anyone interested, the on-location 7-min Nov 6, 1994 segment (IMDb) on Sightings was recently uploaded to YouTube by a UFO group here as part of a longer compilation of Russian cases shown on the series. It's the first clip on the video. As expected, no skeptical explanations offered except for a policeman witness who described it as a traveling "fire balloon" in quick voiceover translation, which means he could have said "balloon on fire."  5Q5 &#124;&#9993; 10:48, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment I changed the formatting of your comment because we suspect that it is screwing with 's DeletionSortingCleaner task. See User talk:AnomieBOT/Archive 12 for more details. –LaundryPizza03 ( d  c̄ ) 02:43, 25 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment This discussion was erroneously moved to archives on the delsort pages. This has been undone. –LaundryPizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d c̄ ) 12:43, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment erroneously archived this AfD on the delsort pages shortly after it was listed. I just reverted this a second time. –<b style="color:#77b">Laundry</b><b style="color:#fb0">Pizza</b><b style="color:#b00">03</b> ( d  c̄ ) 17:49, 24 July 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> 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.