Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of famous failures in science and engineering


 * 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 of the debate was delete. Of the 7 keep votes (discounting duplicate votes), one was "it's edited a lot", two were "but this article was kept", three were "it's interesting", and one was "it's been around for over a year". The (12) editors arguing 'delete' made arguments related to its inherent POV, citing WP:NPOV, a lack of sources (WP:RS), and the subjectiveness of the subject and its title. I judge the arguments for deletion to outweight those to keep. Proto /// type  15:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

List of famous failures in science and engineering
Crufty, unsourced list with the nebulous criteria of "famous" and "failure". Famous is a vague criteria - many of the examples in this list are not famous. Boeing 7J7? Unnamed VSTOL aircraft? Summerland? Failure, actually, is the more problematic criteria. Is the M-16 a failure because it was initially deployed wrong (though it is now a resounding success). Is ALGOL a failure because it declined in popularity? In many cases this has turned into a condemnation of unsuccesful technologies. The criteria is subjective and ultimately ,unencyclopedic. I have also separately nominated Articles for deletion/List of famous successes in science and engineering Mmx1 22:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Failure to conform to NPOV is usually remedied by editing, Mmx has shown serious judgement failure in the past. He has appointed himself final arbiter of truth on the F-14, see talk on F-14 even though he refuses to recognize any citations contrary to his POV up to Janes Defence, and a VP of Grumman. He has simply followed a link at the bottom of the F-111 page, from the F-14 page, and is simply another example of removing material from the WP without justification. This page is obviously well trafficed and edited, and of use to many people. WP states that deletion of information which does not improve WP is vandalims. In my opinion, this is exactly what Mmx1 is attempting to do. Please do not support this behavior.--matador300 14:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as nom. --Mmx1 00:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete as per WP:NPOV, the title in itself is NPOV since how do you decide what is famous and what is a failure. Yonatanh 22:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete inherently POV (same applies for List of famous successes in science and engineering which can probably be discussed with this one. SM247 My Talk  23:07, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Requires cleanup/sources. "Fame" and "failure" are not necessarily POV. Madonna is famous. That's not my POV, it's a fact. The maiden voyage of the Titanic was a failure. Again, not POV, but indisputable fact. Nom is "cruft"-cruft - i.e., crufty use of any word derived from cruft in support of article deletion. List of disasters was voted keep. I don't see a big distinction from a list of failures. Individual failures in the list need review for notability - the article's editors should be encouraged to remove non-notable entries. dryguy 00:18, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * CommentDisaster has a tighter definition in terms of loss of human life (apparently the list defn is broader). And as the link indicates...it's getting very vague. Every airline crash is apparently considered a "disaster". I would call that list a "disaster." What constitutes a "failure". Is wikipedia a "failure"? Can I list individual wiki pages I consider bad on the list of technological failures? If you can offer a definition we can live with, great. Since I doubt you can, I voted delete.
 * Comment See the Wiktionary entry for failure, definition 1. No need to redefine a word that is already perfectly well defined. If you want a real challenge, try getting a consensus on the definition of notability. :) Entries that are non-notable should be removed from the article, but the article itself should stay, since it does contain many notable entries. dryguy 01:09, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Sure, the word has a definition. But it's a pretty shitty inclusion/exclusion criteria. My question is, can you define inclusion/exclusion criteria that would not make this unmanageably large and still be reasonably straightforward to apply? --Mmx1 04:04, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Why not use the definition of Failure right here in Wikipedia? Particularly the section Failure? It seems to me to highlight the inherent problem with this article. --DaveG12345 13:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom, inherent NPOV failure. Reader should be able to read articles and decide for themselves whether they are failures. Per nom, the problem is the failure criteria used - inherently problematic, so cleanup will solve nothing. --DaveG12345 01:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Dryguy, the maiden voyage of the Titanic was a failure, but calling it an "engineering failure" IS POV, because you can just as easily blame human error for the accident. Which is why this article should be deleted. BoojiBoy 01:19, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment I didn't realize Titanic was on the list. I only meant that to illustrate that failure is not neccesarily POV. Wether it belongs on this particular list is another issue. It doesn't affect the validty of entries that are truly about science or engineering failures. (Titanic probably qualifies, since one of the problems was failure of the designers to include enough lifeboats - that was a tragic and notable failure of engineering, but I digress). dryguy 02:01, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete per the comments I made on Articles for deletion/List of famous successes in science and engineering. --Coredesat talk 03:57, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete - potentially infinite list :-) &mdash;Hanuman Das 05:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. As soon as I saw the shuttle entry I had to wonder about the definition of "failure." Rob Banzai 15:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Weak keep (cleanup) - while I voted delete for List of famous successes in science and engineering, I will give weak support for keeping this article. It's not essential to Wikipedia, and may have some problems POV-wise, but it's always interesting to find out about the scientific or engineering projects that generally weren't so successful (it's not so interesting reading about successes, as most people, for obvious reasons, know about them anyway). Given a cleanup, this article will be much more worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. Andrew (My talk &middot; World Cup) 21:07, 30 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Strong Keep Are you guys nuts? This is one of the best pages on the WP. POV is not judged by the article, only that a large number of people have judged a project or product to be a failure. Many entries show failures that were ultimately judged to be successful. PlEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ don't kill it.--matador300 10:30, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Duplicate bolding struck out. --Sam Blanning(talk) 17:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment See my numerous comments regarding your opinions at Articles for deletion/List of famous successes in science and engineering, they apply equally here. SM247 My Talk  11:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Ditto. I was interested to read in this list about (e.g.) cold fusion that, "after much hype, claims of success proved false". Simply a glib POV pronouncement. Success/failure (see my above comments) are too vague to provide a workable article topic. There are several commercial failure lists in WP, since commercial failures can be verified. Several prototypes are listed here as failures. Prototypes are a normal step in a design process, they are not "failures" if they do not reach production stage. V/STOL a failure? Seriously? The list - literally - goes on. This is just POV original research, with inclusion ungrounded in WP policies relating to verifiability and reliable sources. The criteria are so broad that anything can be crowbarred into the category, so cleanup will not help. --DaveG12345 13:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Isn't it WP policy that deletion of information without improving WP is vandalism? Mmx1 has shown bad faith in revert many edits on the F-14 page without justification, even with cited. He has refused to accept any citation up to the VP of Grumman nd Janes Defence. Deleting tnis page removes significant information not contained in other articles, and removing this on the basis that declaring something a failure would logically also neccesitate the removal of all the flop pages, computers, movies, education, and the like. Stop this madness now. It just ticks me off how many wiki people simply run around kicking down other peoples sandcastle. --matador300 14:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Duplicate bolding struck out. --Sam Blanning(talk) 17:05, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. I believe it's an interesting page, and I really don't see the POV problem.  Cleanup might be appropriate, but the concept is fine.  The page is not judging things to be a failure, but is rather noting things that are considered to have been failures. TomTheHand 14:17, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment- Argh! It appears that User:Wiarthurhu has created a new page called List of famous science and engineering projects considered to be failures, copied and pasted the content of List of famous failures in science and engineering over to that location (minus the AFD notice, of course), and redirected the original page to point at the new one. TomTheHand 16:33, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment My issue is with the content, not the title. A change of title will not save this article from deletion for POV/NOR failure IMO. Please assume my comments apply to the new page(s). I would guess all other comments above should be considered the same way. The removal of AfD notice and this monkeying around seems to show a general contempt for the AfD process. --DaveG12345 16:42, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete overbroad and unsourced. Also see my comments at Articles for deletion/List of famous successes in science and engineering.  Eluchil404 21:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete, these lists fail badly without well defined criteria (is something really a failure if it sells poorly but advances the art? Or if early problems are fixed? And so on and so on....) --iMeowbot~Meow 23:01, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Please don't delete this until we have an opportunity to add citations to all articles. Adding need cits is far less drastic than killing this wonderful article. I have added 4 cits so far, of course Mmx1, who is the mastermind of this bit of malicious vandalism does not accept Aviation Week or Janes Defence Weekly as sources. --matador300 00:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep Users who go through this page are more inclined to destroy this page than the editors who have kept it going. It's a damn shame it's do darned easy to sink an article in this manner, I just hope Mmx succeeds in delete all these lists and makes even more people angry at his antics. He's just a sore loser that I've finally presented enough evidence that's he's relented in his duel to death to keep "F-14 was designed to be a dogfighter" out of the WP. --matador300 00:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: One vote per customer, please. --iMeowbot~Meow 00:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment for whomever gets to clean up after this AfD: The "renaming" mentioned above that happened since this AfD started was a copy-paste move, so all the significant history is still under the original name. Sigh. --iMeowbot~Meow 01:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep: In my (admittedly brief) time with Wikipedia I have become progressively more frustrated with the phenomenon of premature and/or frivolous AfDs. Apart from the time and effort they consume, and the lack of respect that they show towards the originating editors, where is the virtue of strangling articles at birth? The nominated article violates no policy and addresses a subject of legitimate interest, on which many books and articles, both popular and specialist, have been published. John Moore 309 12:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * commentThere are ways to write such a list properly such as Films considered the worst ever by basing it on sources. This list is based on the personal opinions of editors, primarly one and the info contained within is inappropriate Original Research and is unsalvageable. --Mmx1 15:18, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * comment It should be noted this is evidence that this request for deletion is merely the extension of the edit war from the F-14 / F-111 page. I am the editor in question, I am responsible only for the SST and F-111 sections, both are easily verifiable as having been identifed or called failures. All of these mentions are based on verifiable sources, and I have already revised many of them to include sources of the mention of people who thought they were failures. It is a WP principle that no article of value which can be revised should be deleted. It should also be noted that Mmx1 has shown very poor judgement in retaining his POV that the F-14 was never designed to be an air superiority fighter, I have presented many sources, up to and including the VP and F-14 test pilot of Grumman and Janes Defence, and since he has no acceptable citations, he is free to revert any edit, since all edits are therefore unveriable except by him. It would be tragic if these articles were deleted merely as a tactic by an editor who is not qualified to revert or delete any material from the WP without detracting from its value. And Mmx1, go deface and destroy somebody else's pages. The majority of this article was created by hundreds of other editors who may see their work vanish without a trace because you believe the F-14 wasn't a dogfighter. --matador300 15:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep NPOV issues are solved via dispute resolution, not afd's. Notability issues and such did not hinder List of Christians in entertainment and media. What is a christian? What is Media? They worked it out, do the same here. --Striver 20:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete inherently POV - what's "famous" and what's a "failure"? And the way scientific development works, todays failure could be tomorrows success. All of the information can be included in the items article. Rgds, - Trident13 14:12, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment The current disclaimer in the article stating "Inclusion in this article can not be used as an objective judgment of whether a project was or was not actually a failure by any particular criterion" pretty much sums up the case for deletion. An admission of the intrinsic unencyclopedic POV nature of the list. I personally don't think this list can ignore WP policy simply by stating "this list ignores WP policy". --DaveG12345 14:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep Whether a project failed or not is or can be objectively determined and is thus not POV. What makes it famous is its size or importance, which can be POV, but not any more so than any other article on WP. This is a  very useful article which has been here for well over a year, and has been nominated AFD as a result of a content dispute.  This is no reason for an article of long standing to be deleted.  --Blainster 15:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Well, take that Mmx1. Let that be a lesson to you tha AFD is not simply another tool to revert an editor you do not agree with. It's simply mind boggling that Mmx1 believes that if I had a hand in the F-111, and SST, and and had citations for both, that would be grounds for throwing out the entire page and work of hundreds of other editors that built it. He would simply toss this article and its newly created opposite twin to the delete happy wiki-wolves. If Wikipedia had ebay feedback, you'd have so many negatives your nose would be bleeding by now. WP will create policies to protect against editors like you, and there will be justice in the end. Jesus is watching you. --matador300 17:25, 5 July 2006 (UTC).
 * Comment I hope I am not speaking only for myself when I say, I could not care less about Wiarthurhu/matador300's dispute with the nominator of this AfD, and certainly do not see any reason for that editor to bring this issue up three times in this discussion, when there are clearly problems with the article that are not being addressed, and when on-topic comments made here have basically been ignored. I object to the user Wiarthurhu posting on Blainster's discussion page that "The wiki-thugs are all voting to delete the page", then using that editor's vote to yet again waffle on about the nominator. I would prefer comments to be restricted to the issue of this article's obvious deficiencies. I have seen absolutely nothing of any substance that can save this fatally flawed piece of POV-riddled original research from deletion. I woulda thought user Wiarthurhu/matador300 would at least have made some vague effort to address the concerns voiced here. The silence is deafening. Have the balls to call us "wiki-thugs" to our faces at the very least, but please don't cower beneath the skirts of buddies to prop up this POV/NOR nightmare. Thanks. --DaveG12345 18:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment Please review WP:OWN and the disclaimer below the edit box: If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it. This is an encyclopedia, not a blog, and while you're free to muse on your private webspace whatever you'd like, there are guidelines and principles that wiki tries to uphold.
 * Please also note that Wiarthurhu/matador300 has been vote-spamming on contributors to the page in question, including User:Blainster             --Mmx1 20:46, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The record will show that this editor was a contributor to the Famous Failures article long before either of the two disputants showed up there. I am not a supporter or ally of either of them.  Their argument should not be used as an excuse to solve their problem by deletion. WP:AFD states that NPOV is often used [as a reason for deletion], but often such articles can be salvaged, so this is not a very strong reason for deletion. The reason "unencyclopedic" is not an argument at all but just another way of saying "should be deleted".--Blainster 21:24, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The wiki quote refers to content that is NPOV - in the manner that biased content can be edited to be NPOV. But the very criteria and premise for this article is POV. --Mmx1 21:42, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete. Entirely subjective. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 03:13, 6 July 2006 (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.