Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks (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 keep. There are no policy violations and the consensus seems to be to keep the article in some form. There is no consensus for deletion. Significant editing has occurred since this AfD was listed and the nomination does not reflect the current state of the article. JodyByak, yak, yak 18:32, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks
AfDs for this article: 
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I am renominating this page for deletion. This article is mostly full of junk, and contains lists of names for no apparent reason. It also includes "close calls" of celebrities which don't seem at all significant. Also contains junk from 2001 that has never been and probably cannot be updated because it was never significant in the first place. It has had a cleanup tag on it for almost a year and a wikify tag for almost five months, as well as a long-standing update tag. I think this article should be deleted; if there is any material here worth keeping that ISN'T already in the main attack article (I don't see any), that could be kept, but overall, I think this article is junk and just full of non-notable material. The last AFD ended with a majority saying it should be moved to a different wiki or deleted. Titanium Dragon 23:37, 30 July 2007 (UTC) [Page formatting corrected by &#9679;DanMS • Talk 00:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC) and by Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 00:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)]
 * Weak delete, seems like this list could have its potential only if severely rewritten. Kind of on the fence regarding its encyclopedic merit. WP:NOT seems to be a bit of a concern here, but that also seems like it could be fixed. Ten Pound Hammer  • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps•Review?) 00:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per the "not a memorial" criterion. We've canned numerous "Survivor/Victim Of..." articles in the past if I recall, and there's no reason to keep this one, regardless of how it is written or could be re-written. The subject matter itself just simply isn't up to par. Tarc 00:40, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete. Too many unsourced items, and to be honest there were about 5 billion survivors of the 9/11 attacks -- the criteria is simply too broad to make a useful list. Anyone who missed their flights that day or got stuck in traffic or got off the subway 5 minutes before the first plane hit ... they could all lobby to be included here. I don't normally vote against articles that have survived AFD before (especially more than once) but I'm making an exception here. A more specific article, say on firefighters who fought the WTC fires and survived the collapse, and the makings of such are here, would be more viable. 68.146.47.196 01:00, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep Needs a cleanup alright, but this article has plenty of valid content. Furthermore, I believe that this subject justifies an article of its own. Trim, don't delete.-- Hús  ö  nd  01:32, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep this is not a list. I don't know why people think it is. It's an article about the groups of people who survived. survivors. It contains one short embedded list. It's also not full of individual trivia--it contains one or two items that should be removed. It doesnt try to talk about everyone in the city--it talks about those in the buildings at the time. The point of AfD is to improve articles if possible--deletion is a last resort for those that cannot be improved. This one can--its close to good enough already. I think the campaign against lists has grown to include all articles that sound as if they might possibly be a list. Even by the nom, "full of junk" is a reason to remove the junk, contains lists is a reason to --at the very most--remove them. This is not a memorial--read Not#Memorial. All it needs is editing; I started doing that. DGG (talk) 01:52, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Thing is, deletion is also for articles which aren't notable, which is why I think this article should go. Surviving 9/11 is not notable; being killed in a terrorist attack or surviving one does not make you notable, and putting a pile of them together does not make it notable either. I think a lot of it is just junk - for instance, the celebrities who had supposedly close calls. The people who DID survive long drops already appear in the appropriate articles, and the rest just aren't worth noting - they were pulling people out of the rubble, but who those people were and how they survived is not, in general, particularly notable and where it is, it is already in the main article. Most of what is not in the main article which is in this article is just junk that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. 9/11 was significant, but living through it or dying in it doesn't make you notable, nor should Wikipedia contain every minor news report. Titanium Dragon 00:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. Although it has a few names, I think that's acceptable -- obviously we're not doing memorials to living people, and it's notable for someone to survive an unprecedented engineering disaster, the collapse of a skyscraper. There is also some notability in those who were in the towers or surrounding buildings and escaped before the collapses. USAToday and the NYT, at least, both did extensive investigative reports examining in detail why some groups of people survived while others did not. There are issues of encyclopedic merit here that could be covered better, such as the issue of the PA announcements telling people in the second tower to stay at their desks, and how survivors generally ignored those announcements, or the people who found (or failed to find) the one open stairway. All of this has implications for disaster management and has in cases figured into the redrawing of building codes or emergency plans for future man-made or natural incidents. This article has frayed ends almost as if parts haven't been updated since 2001, but those can be fixed. --Dhartung | Talk 02:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep as per DGG and Dhartung. Some events, like 12/7/1941, 11/22/1963 and 9/11 tend to fall in the category of "hands off".  What we forget is that although thousands died on 9/11, thousands more survived, for the reasons described above-- sound engineering, heroism, risk taking, etc..  I imagine that 9/11 will become a Wikiproject of its own as we work on identifying, say, the persons who were working at Cantor Fitzgerald, or at the Risk Waters Conference when Tower 1 was hit.  If there are similar articles, merge them.  I think many would take issue with the use of the word "junk" in giving reasons for deletion.  Sad to say, people are continuing to die every day as a result of 9/11.  Mandsford 02:17, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Bah. Pearl Harbor (which didn't even START World War II, something a lot of Americans don't understand, and most Americans couldn't tell you what day it occurred in, and I'd wager not even the year), something I don't even recognize the date of (was that the day JFK was shot?), and 9/11/2001 are NOT inviolable. They were significant events, but holding them up as holy is short sighted and silly (and Americentric - the day Germany attacked Belguim was a FAR more significant date than Pearl Harbor, and numerous days in history were massively more important than the day JFK died). Surviving terrorist attacks or significant events does NOT make you notable, and Wikipedia is supposed to contain notable information. Who cares if someone was still in intensive care in 2001? It is irrelevant. Likewise the supposedly close calls and various groups of people pulled out of the rubble. Those which were significant, the people who fell a long distance and the last person pulled from the rubble, are already elsewhere on Wikipedia in the main 9/11 articles. If an article isn't adding anything valuable and is mostly full of junk, it should be removed and any useful info which DOES belong in the main articles which isn't there (none, as far as I can tell) should be merged into the relevant articles. Titanium Dragon 00:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete I think this article can be summed up better and placed within another article. And being a survivor of 9/11 does not really make you notable. It would be to hard to verify this information, as anyone who was in NYC at the time can claim they survived it. On a side note, and I know this is not a criteria for deletion, but this article seems ripe for the picking of vandalism by people adding their names and fake stories. Gorkymalorki 03:21, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
 * KeepThis page is perfectly valid. It details groups of people and how they survive. Alyeska 16:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. Wikipedia is not a memorial, granted, but this particular group of people are highly notable and have been reported on many times by the media.  Never forget means just that.  Burntsauce 17:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a memorial means exactly that as well. This is not something that belongs on Wikipedia and it contains no useful information not present elsewhere. Titanium Dragon 00:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep per Burntsauce, Húsönd, DGG, Dhartung, and Mandsford. This is neither a list nor curft.  Very little trivia needs to be cut out.  Update it, clean up the language.  This is an important topic, folks. Bearian 19:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep but recognize that not all disasters are created equal, so I would feel quite differently about Survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings which presumably includes all students and faculty there or Survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear accident which could include most Europeans alive at the time, etc. Carlossuarez46 21:50, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * This could include everyone who was in the building, COULD have been in the building, was considering flying out that day, ect. Really, this article doesn't contain much valuable information (celebrities having supposedly close calls is not notable, for instance). Moreover, surviving an attack does not make you notable according to WP:Bio, and adding together a group of non-notable people does NOT make them any more notable! Titanium Dragon 00:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Redirect to September 11, 2001 attacks, subject not encyclopedic. None of the three sourced pieces of trivia is worth merging. -- Jeandré, 2007-08-03t10:54z
 * In general redirection to a sub-heading is, IMO, a very bad idea.
 * This kind of redirection only works so long as no one removes the sub-heading, or changes how it is spelled.
 * Every article has a button on it named "what links here". The ordinary world wide web lacks this feature.  Links on the ordinary world wide web are unidirectional.  There is no stisfactory way to determine what other www pages link to a particular page.  On the wikipedia we know what articles link to the page we are looking for.  It is a very strong advantage the wikipedia has over www.  When we make a major change to an article, we can look at the list of articles that link here.
 * When we delete an article we can see which articles link to it, and will be left with a red-link. But the wikipedia has no mechanism that would allow an editor to know that they were going to royally fuck stuff up merely by changing one of an article's sub-headings.  To my way of thinking any subheading that is interesting enough that someone considered the kind of link suggested has just had a very strong argument advanced that it should be broken out into its own article.  Mind you, in this particular case, we already have an article about the survivors.
 * Unfortunately, the powerful bidrectional nature of wikilinks is frequently overlooked.
 * There are a relatively large number of wikipedians who regard themselves as "mergists", who like to merge smaller articles into larger, omnibus articles, even when those smaller articles can stand on their own. My concern is that this "urge to merge" squanders much of the advantages the wikipedia's powerful bidirectional linking gives the wikipedia over the ordinary www.
 * Nominator keeps talking about the desirability to stuff all the details into "main articles". Nominator is fully entitled to his or her own view as to the wikipedia's future direction.  I wish they would stop acting as if their personal interpretation was the only obvious choice.
 * Cheers! Geo Swan 17:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I can't make up my mind whether we should keep this article or not, but how wide should this article's sweep go? I went to the article expecting to read about Seth MacFarlane, who famously missed American Airlines Flight 11, or Julie Stoffer who also was scheduled to be on one of the doomed flights out of Boston but did not fly. How will we ever get a handle on which notable people intended to be on the airplanes but weren't? Is someone prepared to research notable incidents of otherwise non-notable people who missed the planes? Those people are Survivors of the September 11, 2001 attacks as well. This seems like the kind of article WP should have, but compiling and sourcing the info will be tough. Vadder 14:28, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. It needs cleanup badly, but is definitely a notable subject.  Neranei  T / C  04:24, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Geo Swan 17:08, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The nominator, User:Titanium Dragon has both nominated this article for deletion --and made a huge and poorly explained excision. This is a phenomenon I have seen before, nominators, who, after they have nominated an article for deletion, then made significant edits to that article.  When challenged, on what they heck they thought they were doing, they claimed those edits were good-faith efforts to improve the article.  It is an argument that strains my ability to assume good faith.  Only nominate an articles for deletion when you think it is truly hopeless!  If you think it can be improved, then try to improve it, or let someone else try to improve it.  Don't nominate it for deletion.  Your subsequent edits to the article will give the strong appearance of bad faith  attempts to sabotage the article, making it appear weaker than it was when first nomiated for afd.
 * Nominator has decided to make several batches of afd of articles about survivors that he or she regards as NN, including Articles for deletion/Brian Clark and Articles for deletion/Stanley Praimnath
 * Huge and poorly explained? Other than me having an entire section on here explaining why I excised all the junk that is, quite simply put, irrelevant? I simply don't see a burn victim still being hospitalized in 2001 as being notable. Someone else removed all the celebrity close calls. I also removed a bunch of junk about survival by company, stuff which, in my eyes, is simply not important. A lot of this stuff simply is not important. And yes, I did nominate a bunch of non-notable survivors for AFDs, because they aren't notable. When I find swaths of junk, I'm more than happy to nominate it for deletion if necessary, and in my eyes, this is non-notable.
 * Your attack on my good faith is, frankly, unwarranted. I made note of what I thought, and you did not even bother to comment on it, so I did it. And now you're accusing me of bad faith? Please. I -did- improve the article by cleaning it up (something no one bothered to do) and updating it (removing irrelevant junk from 2001 which were artifacts of recentism). I think what I did was condense all the useful information into a single paragraph, and excised all the unencylopedic stuff that wasn't worth noting. I think my edit made the article stronger, not weaker, but I think it goes to show how little there is in the article that was really worth having around in the first place.
 * Frankly, I think you're missing what notability entails and what deserves and does not deserve its own article. I think that this should not be its own article because what there needs to be about this is already in the main article. Titanium Dragon 22:48, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I had a longer reply to the various points here almost written, but I seem ot have closed that window when I answered the phone. I'll briefly address the good faith question.
 * I wrote that you strain my ability to assume good faith. After long consideration of your comments in these three afd fora I have come to the conclusion that you are sincere, and that you are simply unaware of how first nominating an article for deletion, and then gutting it gives the appearance of bad faith.  Of course sincerity is an over-rated virtue.  If you thought the article could be improved you never should have nominated it for deletion.  If you have changed your mind, and you think the article can be redeemed, then why haven't you withdrawn your nomination?  Is this really that difficult for you to understand?  Geo Swan 15:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep -- before I forget, for the various reasons I have offered above. Cheers  Geo Swan 15:04, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

All the notable information in the article
Going through the article:
 * Number of people - in main article
 * Survivors by company - non-notable
 * Survivors at/above impact zone - in main article
 * Survivors in elevators - I don't think this is notable
 * People pulled from the debris - that people were pulled from the debris is notable, but who they were was not (20 people, but they don't need to be named/profiled, though it may be appropriate to say how many firemen were as a big deal was made of it). When the last person was pulled from the debris is also probably notable.
 * Injured - number notable, who was and where they were was not.

All of this could be summarized as

According to the 9/11 Comission, between 16,400 and 18,800 civilians were in the World Trade Center complex at the time of the attacks. Only 14 people escaped from the impact zone of the South Tower after it was hit, and only four people from floors above it. They escaped via Stairwell A, the only stairwell which had been left intact after impact. No one was able to escape from above the impact zone in the North Tower after it was hit, as all stairwells and elevator shafts on those floors were destroyed. After the collapse of the towers, only 20 survivors were pulled out of the debris, including 15 rescue workers. The last survivor was pulled from the rubble 27 hours after the collapse of the towers. 6,291 people were reported to have been treated in area hospitals for injuries related to the 9/11 attacks in New York City.

This is easily inserted into the main article, but all of this information is already there. Titanium Dragon 00:43, 2 August 2007 (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.