Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ryan Tower


 * 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 Camp Fortune. Daniel (talk) 01:39, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Ryan Tower

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Article deproded. The article does not meet WP:GNG or WP:NBUILD, it does not have WP:SIGCOV from WP:IS WP:RS The article makes no claim for general notability WP:GNG or historic, social, economic, or architectural importance WP:NBUILD. The first source in the article does not mention the tower, the second source is a short community interest piece, not SIGCOV. WP:BEFORE revealed directory style listings and government documents, nothing that meets SIGCOV.  // Timothy ::  talk  21:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Architecture-related deletion discussions.   // Timothy ::  talk  21:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Quebec-related deletion discussions.   // Timothy ::  talk  21:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Radio-related deletion discussions.  CAPTAIN RAJU (T) 21:33, 10 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Keep Its described as historic and seems to have been a reasonably substantial landmark for fifty years. The worst case would be merger into Camp Fortune and so deletion is not appropriate per WP:ATD. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:01, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Reply Simply saying something is historic in an article title does not make it historic and one short article in local news does not demonstrate notability.  // Timothy ::  talk  02:55, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Especially when the historic claim is being made by the tower's owner! Mangoe (talk) 03:47, 18 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete and/or redirect to Camp Fortune (though I don't feel particularly strongly that a redirect would be required, I have no objection if other people do.) A transmission tower has to do a lot more than just exist to warrant a Wikipedia article: there are thousands verging on millions of such things in the world and they can't all be notable on WP:MILL grounds, so we have to be able to source some historical, political or social context for why anybody should care about it. That means we need a lot more than just one news article about its dismantling, produced by a media outlet that used to transmit from it and thus isn't completely independent of it — and the fact that it's described as "historic" in the headline, further, isn't a magic bullet either, because the article actually documents nothing particularly or enduringly or encyclopedically historic about it beyond the fact that it existed. It takes a lot more than just one news article from a directly affiliated source to make a broadcast transmission tower permanently notable. Bearcat (talk) 17:58, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep. important historical structure.  . Keep per WP:BEFORE--I doubt anyone has done a reasonable full source of the broadcasting or engineering literature where one would expect it to be discussed.  DGG ( talk ) 05:09, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * We don't keep articles just because somebody guesses that sources might exist that nobody has actually found — we assess notability on the basis of the sources that people show, not sources whose theoretical possibility of maybe existing people merely speculate about. Bearcat (talk) 23:22, 15 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment: The Keep voters state sources must exist, but they provide no sources. Clear case of WP:MUSTBESOURCES. There is no guideline that states broadcast masts must be presumed notable. No one has provided anything that shows this meets NBUILD for historic importance. WP:BEFORE shows nothing that meets SIGCOV addressing the subject directly and indepth.  // Timothy :: t | c | a  05:49, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The onus is on the nominator to make a convincing case for deletion. I have already produced a detailed source.  I just took another look and found some coverage from the 1970s: Ryan Tower positions going....  That's from the prime era of the tower when it was constructed and when TV was the dominant medium.  But that was before the Internet and so naturally it's not so easy to find such sources online now.  As the topic is not controversial and its general nature was fairly obvious, there's no harm keeping a stub about it, pending discovery of more details.  Per our policy WP:NOTPAPER, "there is no practical limit to the number of topics Wikipedia can cover and, per our policy WP:IMPERFECT, "Even poor articles, if they can be improved, are welcome."  I have demonstrated that improvement is possible and so our policy WP:ATD applies, "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page." See also WP:NOTCLEANUP. Andrew🐉(talk) 00:28, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * The notability bar for something like this is not "a handful of local sourcing can be found to verify that it existed", it is "sources can be found to demonstrate that it is much, much more enduringly special than the other eleventy squillion purely run of the mill examples of its class of thing that also existed". But neither of the two sources you've shown say anything about it that would clear the actual bar. As I said above, there are literally millions of transmitter towers in the world, varying only in their geographic location and the call signs of the particular radio and television stations that happen to be shooting off of them — so the notability bar is not "can we verify that it existed", it's "can we verify that it was somehow much more special or unique than most other transmission towers?" Bearcat (talk) 13:06, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Towers of this height are not so common and, by their nature, they are prominent landmarks. This tower was one of the tallest structures in Canada.  It was similar in height to other towers for which we have stubby articles such as the WOR TV Tower.  When sources continue to be discovered, deletion is unnecessary and unreasonable. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I lived in Ottawa for six years, and have actually literally been in Ryan Tower's transmitter service room personally because I worked for a radio station at the time. So trust me when I say this, because I have personal knowledge: it really, really wasn't ever prominently visible enough on the Ottawa skyline to serve as much of a landmark. You'd literally have to go deeply out of your way (or work in broadcasting) to even know where it was at all. And anyway, even just throwing the word "landmark" still isn't an instant notability freebie, given the way people just freely attach that label to almost every single thing that stands out in any way from its surroundings. Bearcat (talk) 14:10, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Redirect to Camp Fortune - The sourcing on this tower is really not sufficient to demonstrate notability. The two local news pieces presented in this AFD are really the bulk of what's available, and the second one is barely about the tower itself, but about the broadcasters hoping to use it and the politics of the time regarding communication in Canada. As redirects are cheap, and the tower is already mentioned in the target article, redirecting to Camp Fortune should suffice for now.  As the history would be preserved in that case, that should also satisfy the argument above that the stub shouldn't be deleted because sources might be found in the future.  Rorshacma (talk) 22:55, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Camp Fortune: Per reasons above. Since it's briefly described in the target article, part of the article can be merged there as additional info if ever. ASTIG😎  (ICE T • ICE CUBE) 16:00, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Vaticidalprophet (talk) 01:35, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Camp Fortune. The tower itself is no more notable than other similar towers. Oaktree b (talk) 01:57, 18 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment The tower is mentioned in at least one book and one journal, per a Google Books search: Leading Ladies Canada, 1977 and Canadian Electronics Engineering, Volume 13, 1969. But from the snippets it doesn't look like SIGCOV. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dan scott (talk • contribs) 15:16, 19 January 2021 (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.