Talk:2021 Hualien train derailment

Image

The Chinese version (if the translation is right) seems to claim File:TRA TEMU1000 Taroko Express (TEMU1013-1014).jpg is the specific train involved. Could any train experts confirm? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 07:57, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Can't make out the number in this video, but there is no Hello Kitty livery. gobonobo ^{+ c} 08:15, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

That Hello Kitty livery probably is just a temporary picture put on the coaches's outer body. Now or soon after that, they removed it to look back to normal train again. Chongkian (talk) 08:35, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

It is the same train set (1013+1014). However the train is in its original livery when the accident occurred WhalesharksKerman (talk) 07:53, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Foreign language references

Referencing in the article is very good. However, all foreign language references need the |trans-title= and |language= parameters please. Mjroots (talk) 08:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Investigation?

Are the TTSB investigating? Mjroots (talk) 10:31, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

According to this article, President Tsai Ing-wen ordered an investigation (see https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56612248). It would seem that the TTSB would be the entity to investigate this derailment. 23:42, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes. WhalesharksKerman (talk) 06:59, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Trainset involved

Article states 1013 and 1014 involved. There's a good image of 1014 available to use (shown). Mjroots (talk) 11:05, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

That's in addition to the one I pointed out above. Either look fine. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 12:33, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

i added this picture to the Taroko Express page, since i wasn't sure if the livery was appropriate for this article, and i figured that people interested in more about the actual train involved would likely end up visiting that page anyway. also, the other page referenced the livery in the text without providing an illustration, so i thought the photo was appropriate. thanks, Mjroots! dying (talk) 03:55, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

The train involved in the accident (TEMU 1013+1014) was the “Hello Kitty” train, but the livery is no longer applied in the train. The train was in its original livery when the accident occurred.

By the way, someone took a video of the train passing through a station before the accident occurred. WhalesharksKerman (talk) 07:52, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Template

Could we have one of those templates that's also featured in the Japanese and Chinese version? Looks something like this:

	第408次太魯閣列車 ← 樹林 臺東 →
Car No.	1	2	3		4	5	6	7	8
TRA No.	TED1013 (Tc)	TEM1025 (M1)	TEP1013 (T)		TEM1026 (M2)	TEM1028 (M1)	TEP1014 (T)	TEM1027 (M2)	TED1014 (Tc)
Occupants	36	52	48		52	52	48	52	36
Location	Outside tunnel			Daqingshui Tunnel
Status	Derailed					Derailed、major deformation from collision

--Dora the Axe-plorer (talk) 13:02, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and that should clear up the confusion about the carriage arrangements WhalesharksKerman (talk) 07:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Tunnel official name

What is the official name of the tunnel (in which the derailment occurred) in English? Some I saw Qingshui Tunnel, another I saw is Daqingshui Tunnel. If you see from this news link: https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-56613249, you can see from the photo, the writing above the tunnel entrance is written 清水隧道 (English: Qingshui Tunnel) instead of 大清水隧道 (Daqingshui Tunnel). Chongkian (talk) 13:43, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Official English name for the cliff near the tunnel (清水斷崖) is Qingshui Cliff, from Wikipedia and also from the Taiwan Tourism Bureau

Judging from that, the English name for the tunnel is Qingshui Tunnel WhalesharksKerman (talk) 06:27, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Car numbers

The article references car numbers, but it is not easily understandable from the article how the cars are numbered. It looks like car number 8 was at the front of the train, and car number 1 is at the end of the train, but clarifying this would improve the article. RecycledPixels (talk) 19:04, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

This is done, thanks to whoever took care of it. RecycledPixels (talk) 23:51, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Dying did it. TheKuygerian 14:27, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

thanks for the acknowledgement. i'm glad my contribution helped. i can't take all the credit, though, as TheKuygerian was the one who actually started the process. dying (talk) 23:27, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I updated the note about the carriage numbers in the article, hope that helps.

The carriage numbers are arranged with No.1 towards Taipei/Shulin and No.8 towards Hualien/Taitung WhalesharksKerman (talk) 06:54, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Article name

@Dora the Axe-plorer, Robertsky, Edo-biscuit, and Ythlev: This article was created on 2 April under the title 2021 Hualien train derailment, which makes that the default title for this article if there is a dispute over naming. The name is clearly controversial, as it has been moved back to its original title several times after bold moves. Therefore anyone wishing to move to Hualien train derailment, or any other title, needs to start an entry at WP:RM rather than continually moving it again. Note that although the year identifier may be considered superfluous, we nonetheless frequently do include years for clarity. See for example 2018 Yilan train derailment, 2016 Munich knife attack etc. for similar cases.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:01, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Amakuru, noted on the above. However, I would still support a move without the year on basis of that there is no need to disambiguate. A move discussion (below) has been opened about this by another editor. – robertsky (talk) 16:00, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 8 April 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move. While the year is not necessary for disambiguation, opposers of the move say it limits recognizability. There may be consensus for moving to 2021 Taiwan derailment or similar. (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 20:29, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

---

2021 Hualien train derailment → Hualien train derailment – it only happened once, so no need for year to disambiguate、Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(events)#Road_and_rail. --寒吉 (talk) 14:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nom. – robertsky (talk) 15:58, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support. --Dick Bos (talk) 19:57, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CONSISTENCY, with similar article 2018 Yilan train derailment. Also, given that many readers won't know immediately what Hualien is, having the year included is very useful for helping them to WP:RECOGNIZE what this article is about. We frequently do just that, even in other cases where it is not strictly necessary, for example 2016 Munich knife attack.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:31, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Category:Railway accidents by century: 782 railway accident articles, 182 articles added year, only 23% (If it's not wrong.). If this article can't move back to Hualien train derailment, why another 600 articles' title don't add year, 77% is really high. --寒吉 (talk) 06:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

  Amakuru, having the year not included does not lead readers to think the that the article is about a train derailment, which is the primary subject here. Having the year does not mean that readers will immediately know what or where Hualien is anyway. Conversely, having the year might end up misleading readers to think that the Hualien had more than one train derailment event prior to this event. – robertsky (talk) 07:25, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support --Dora the Axe-plorer (talk) 00:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose: The year is also mentioned in the Chinese Wikipedia page of the same accident WhalesharksKerman (talk) 06:19, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Not an appropriate reason. Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(events) is policy under Wikipedia:Naming conventions in English Wikipedia, then Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(events) is essay in Chinese Wikipedia. Different language Wikipedias have different policies and guidelines. --寒吉 (talk) 06:42, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

    No, NCEVENTS is not a policy it's a guideline. The policy regarding titles is at WP:AT, and that recommends five criteria under which we might decide the title. Now one of those criteria is WP:CONCISE, which the proposed name change meets. But there are also two others, WP:CONSISTENCY and WP:RECOGNIZE, which I've cited above as a reason not to move this page. So yes, there are policy arguments either way, but readers will be served better by keeping the year in place. This will apply particularly for someone looking for the accident five years from now, allowing them to quickly see that this is the one that happened this year. Incidentally, I would not be opposed to a move to 2021 Taiwan train derailment, as English-language news sources are generally calling it a variant of that, rather than the province name: [1][2][3]  — Amakuru (talk) 08:47, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. We're really inconsistent about this. See for example 1990 Back Bay, Massachusetts train collision, which I created. There are no other such accidents. The name is descriptive. That said, WP:NOYEAR suggests that the date should be in the article title unless the article is recognizable without it, and leaves it up to local discussion. I think the central point is that "2021", in this case, shouldn't be understood as disambiguation. Mackensen (talk) 11:13, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support BonsMans1 (talk) 14:54, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support At the most basic level, "2021" and "Hualien" are both disambiguators for "derailment". In this case, only "Hualien" sufficiently indicates which derailment we're talking about since there's not another derailment in the county. That being said, I'd also support "2021 Taiwan derailment" should we be able to establish that English-language sources refer to the incident as such. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 01:51, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
• oppose for now: i agree that "2021" is not necessary for disambiguation purposes. however, i do not believe that is the reason why it is there. wp:ncevents states that "[s]ome articles do not need a year for disambiguation when, in historic perspective, the event is easily described without it" [emphasis and link removed], and i do not believe we currently have the historic perspective to determine if this event is easily described without the year. note that 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami is given as an example where "the year is a useful identifier" but is not necessary to disambiguate, even though it is still in the news today, over a decade later.

also, whenever i see a year in the title of a substantial article on an incident, i do not automatically question if a similar incident has happened on a different year. however, whenever i see a substantial article on an incident without a year in its title, i often wonder why i had not heard about the incident before. i don't know if this experience is shared by other users, though.

on the subject of disambiguation, however, i would support dropping "train" from the title if desired, as it is not necessary for disambiguation and is not a very useful identifier. also, both Amakuru's suggestion of 2021 Taiwan train derailment and Ganbaruby's suggestion of 2021 Taiwan derailment are agreeable, assuming the names follow the practice of english-language sources. dying (talk) 03:54, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Details from the “black box” of the train?

TTSB had revealed more details of the crash, including details of the train driver’s attempt to slow down the train. Should that be added? WhalesharksKerman (talk) 07:07, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

discrepancy

the chart appears to list six injured foreigners, while the latest report from the tra appears to only list four injured foreigners, including two japanese and one australian. i don't know enough about the language used in the report to be able to confidently conclude where the fourth injured passenger listed in the report is from, but if the passenger currently listed in the chart as from "Mainland China" is the same as the passenger currently listed as from "Macau, China", that would resolve one discrepancy between the chart and the report.

by the way, is there a reason why a table is currently used to convey this information rather than the prose that was there before? the situation had previously been summarized by one sentence because there were only a few foreigners involved, and that seemed easier to parse and took up less space than the full table currently does. also, i think it is easier to provide proper citations for one sentence, whereas i am not sure if we really should be stating in the table, for example, how many taiwanese are believed to have been injured, since the value may be a product of wp:or rather than an explicitly reported number.

i can understand the use of a table when there are many nationalities involved, as seen in Turkish Airlines Flight 981, since expressing the same data in prose would likely result in a sentence largely consisting of a long list of countries, whereas a table would be easier to parse. however, i'm not sure if the same applies here. dying (talk) 15:13, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

@Dying: I'd also prefer one sentence on the basis that the table creates a large white space to its right. I also agree that the prose version is short enough to not be confusing. If we can present the same information in a more compact manner, we should do so. I'll check Chinese language sources later if I have time. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (Say hi!) 01:38, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

detail regarding victims from the u.s.

the two victims from the u.s. were apparently both teachers that were teaching in taiwan on fulbright scholarships. is this a detail that merits inclusion in the article? dying (talk) 04:05, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Dying, usually no, unless the victims had some notability in their own right. – robertsky (talk) 04:07, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

oh, apologies, i didn't mean to suggest explicitly identifying the victims, but merely stating that they were teaching in taiwan on fulbright scholarships, or something to that effect. for example, currently, the article states that one victim is a "6-year-old kindergarten girl", and one victim has also been identified as a teacher, though i am not sure if the latter is referring to one of the two fulbright scholars. dying (talk) 04:19, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

i just remembered that the teacher mentioned in the article was listed as injured, so it would not have referred to either of the two from the u.s. dying (talk) 04:30, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Dying, well, i guess we will have to see if the sources connects these two americans to the the students/class. the students are mentioned probably because they make up of a majority of those who have dead. – robertsky (talk) 04:43, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

out of 49 dead, 4 were students. out of over 200 injured, about 31 were students. i am not familiar with the age demographics of taiwan, but the distribution does not seem far off from what i would expect the average distribution of students in taiwan to be. dying (talk) 05:13, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Dying, apologies. i read wrongly. injuries was what i meant. Anyway, the section needs some c/e, and probably some content transfer from the chinese article. – robertsky (talk) 07:28, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

admittedly, i'm not sure your reasoning applies even in the case of injuries, since out of over 200 injured, about 31 were students. there may be a reason why they were mentioned that i am currently unaware of, but i do not believe it is because most of the injured were students, because most of the injured were not students.

i understand that the casualties section needs some copyediting; this is the reason why i started the talk page section above. i would appreciate your input there too if you have any additional insight to contribute. your user page tells me that your chinese skills are better than mine, since you are using a zh-x userbox, where x is greater than 0. if you have the time to help resolve that discrepancy by reviewing chinese-language sources, that would be great.

i'm not sure if transferring content from zh wikipedia to the casualties section here is a good idea, since there seems to be many differing opinions of what is considered appropriate content for the casualties sections here; this is the reason why i started this talk page section. zh wikipedia identifies the star track athlete by name and age, whereas her name was removed from here not long after it was added. in addition, zh wikipedia has the same discrepancy issue that i highlighted in the talk page section above.

in any case, to repeat the original question, is the fact that these two teachers were teaching in taiwan on fulbright scholarships something that merits inclusion in the article?

i am currently assuming that there would be no serious objection with mentioning that they are teachers, since the injured teacher has previously been mentioned with no issue. i believe the more pertinent point is whether there are any issues with mentioning that they are fulbright scholars. according to its wikipedia article, the fulbright scholarship appears to be highly prestigious. also, i believe the victims' being fulbright scholars is pertinent to this article, as it helps explain why they were in taiwan in the first place. dying (talk) 16:38, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

The Fulbright Scholarship is considered prestigious and I believe that this detail merits mention in the article as dying has previously indicated. The inclusion of this information does not detract from the article and only adds to the impact of the tragedy. Jurisdicta (talk) 21:12, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Parents of American killed in Hualien train crash to sue TRA for 'gross negligence _TheKuygerian^contribs
_userpage 00:18, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The picture

This photo shows the construction site that caused the derailment。--葉又嘉 (talk) 03:40, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@葉又嘉: It doesn't; it shows two signs obstructing the construction site. The text on the signs are not legible in thumbnail size, and even if they were, text in images should be written in the body, and besides, this is the English Wikipedia, and the signs cannot be understood by most readers here. The image is a net negative since it conveys no additional information and should be removed. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (talk) 07:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

This image doesn't provide a good overview of the construction site and the two signs have no additional value here. I have removed it. --PhiH (talk) 14:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)