Wikipedia talk:Notability (weather)

What exactly is this passage trying to say?

"A tornado outbreaks in the United States, can be notable for an article if the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) issues a moderate or high-risk level. If the Storm Prediction Center does not issue a moderate or high-risk level, the outbreak should not have an article, but be merged into Tornadoes of (Year) article."

Am I misunderstanding something? Shouldn't notability be based off impact? Or is this for before the outbreak? Sorry, just trying to understand this. Skarmory (talk • contribs) 03:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Answered on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Weather. Elijahandskip (talk) 19:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposed Wikipedia Policy, Guideline, or Process Discussion

The following discussion 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.

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The Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather works with weather events and articles, and the WikiProject has different guidelines to follow from the basic notability of events guidelines. Over a week ago, a member of the AfC WikiProject asked if a guideline essay for weather events could be created since they are different. The WP Weather community has put together this essay which details the notability of weather events. The discussion is now whether this essay should become an official WP:Notability guideline or remain an essay.

Discussion

• Support since the guidelines for weather events are different than events, I believe this should become official notability guidelines. Elijahandskip (talk) 19:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Some of the wording, in particular "Wildfires outside the United States are almost always considered notable", is just wacky. A little one-acre brushfire near my backyard is non-notable (as it should be) because I happen to live in the US, but if the same thing happened a couple hundred miles south in Ensenada Mexico it would suddenly become notable? No. I don't think this is adequately well-thought-out and mature enough to be institutionalized as a guideline. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:00, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Just thinking out loud here. You commented about a backyard brushfire. Would that brushfire make national news? Probably not. Also just pointing out, that a lot of wildfires in the US are not notable and are grouped together in a list article. Some damage less than 100 acres even, but they are still listed in that list style article. You point is still valid, no doubt, but the exact counterpoint you made I believe is not completely valid. Elijahandskip (talk) 20:18, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

There is nothing in the part I quoted about making national news. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Faulty RFC With the only two choices being "Yes" or "never for eternity" this RFC is missing the most likely finding which "not now". Also offering only the extreme finding of "for life" as an alternative would tend to falsely inflate the "yes, now" "votes". A defective RFC could never result in creating and additional SNG. If you remove the "for life" it won't have the problem. North8000 (talk) 20:08, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@North8000: the "for life" has been removed. Elijahandskip (talk) 20:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Cool! North8000 (talk) 20:17, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I believe that this RFC is premature as the essay needs a lot more work, in order to establish what weather events are notable enough for their own article. For example: Droughts are supposedly only notable if they are multi-nation or state, regardless of if an island nation requires international assistance to cope with the drought.Jason Rees (talk) 20:33, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Almost all the advice here is of the form "X can be notable if Y", which is such a weak statement as to be of basically no actionable value in a deletion discussion. Colin M (talk) 20:43, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Most of that is because numbers can't determine weather event notability. A tornado that does not kill or injure anyone might be notable for a split article while one that kills over a dozen is not. That is the difficulty with notability of weather events and why it is different than the notability for events. Elijahandskip (talk) 20:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't doubt that that's true. But why does it even need to be said as part of a guideline? e.g. there's a reason WP:NFILM doesn't say stuff like "A film can be notable if it includes notable actors", "A film can be notable if it has earned more than a million dollars at the box office", "A film can be notable if it was released on a Wednesday". These are all true, but they don't help determine whether any given individual subject is notable or not. Colin M (talk) 21:26, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

All I am saying is weather is different than previous guidelines. The "X can be notable if Y" form is how weather notability is determined and has been by WP Weather for a while. (Also 2018 Port Orchard tornado was a tornado that killed 0 people and injured 0 people, but is considered rare, hence its inclusion.) The essay needs work and help from WP Weather members, but unfortunatly, the "X can be notable if Y" form will stay for weather and won't be changed since that is just how it is. Elijahandskip (talk) 21:36, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Support, but not immediately. I was summoned by bot. Such guideline seems needed, but the essay is very recent. So, it should get more mature, so that we are sure the inclusion criteria represent the view of the community. My understanding is that the burden of the proof for admissibility is on the side of those who propose an article. In this topic, there is an argument that we need additional criteria for inclusion beyond the standard ones. Inclusion criteria are of the form "X can be included if Y". If none of these criteria is met, the article is not admissible. The more the criteria are precise, the more they will be helpful for inclusion—remember the burden of the proof is on the inclusion side. Some of the criteria seemed vague to me and vague criteria can be worst than nothing. Also, what are the reliable journals, media, etc. in this topic? Shouldn't that be covered given that, ultimately, in Wikipedia, every thing, including notability, should be based on reliable sources? Dominic Mayers (talk) 21:16, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. As I've said elsewhere, "SNGs are only useful when they either modify the requirements of the GNG (e.g. WP:NPROF, WP:NCORP) or when they give specific, easy-to-apply criteria that assist non-experts in understanding what topics are notable (e.g. WP:NSPORT, WP:NASTRO, WP:NMUSIC)." This proposal does neither: it simply gives some vague criteria that may correlate with notability, in the style of WP:OUTCOMES. While such criteria may be helpful, making them an SNG only encourages editors to cite vague criteria rather than concrete sourcing. We already have WP:NEVENT, which explains very thoughtfully what sort of coverage is sufficient or insufficient for events, including weather-related ones. More generally, I don't understand why there's been such a push recently to create SNGs for every topic under the sun. Unless there's a very good reason to alter the status quo (and such a reason hasn't been provided here), departing from the well-thought-out notability guidelines that we've used for many years is not a good idea. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:47, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose – Some of these "guidelines" are not even accurate with what we do now (especially tornadoes). I don't feel like the content of this page should have any kind of official status and it will likely not influence many (or most) editors when it comes to determining notablity. United States Man (talk) 00:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@United States Man: Just pointing out that I did message you on your talk page about this essay and asked if you could help improve it. Please feel free to fix that section as to how "we" (Assuming you mean WP Weather) do it. Elijahandskip (talk) 01:23, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• I don't see why we need it, when the current notability guidelines work fine. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 01:02, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Notability as a rule for admissibility as is the case for reliable sources should be dependent upon the project (which regroups many articles under a topic). It's always a good think that a community under a project determines specific rules of admissibility for the project. As you know, admissibility is not a part of the five pillars of Wikipedia: every version of Wikipedia (English, French, etc.) must respect essentially the same pillars, but there is a complete freedom for the rules of admissibility and it makes sense. Dominic Mayers (talk) 01:16, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Withdrawn RfC after reading the comments above, it is clear that the essay has potential to become an official guideline in the future, but it is not ready to be a guideline. Elijahandskip (talk) 01:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose instruction creep. Noah^Talk 14:49, 21 December 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.

Some suggestions for notability of tornadoes

I have finally had my wits about me enough to look over the guidelines for notability of tornadoes and outbreaks, and I have some issues. My first impression is that they are a bit vague and that, perhaps, some some general benchmarks be set. For example, a set of guidelines can be found here. I'm not saying that these, specifically, should be the guidelines, but perhaps we should have something along those lines.

Second, neither the old guidelines, nor the current essay offer any criteria for when an individual tornado should be split from an outbreak article. That seems to be something we should have. For instance the 2013 Moore tornado was notable enough for an article, while the 2016 Pensacola tornado clearly was not and got merged. Then we have cases like the 2013 Hattiesburg, Mississippi tornado where the one tornado is notable and the rest of the outbreak is of secondary importance.

Third, I am still opposed to creating drafts for outbreaks that have not happened yet since it creates issues with WP:CRYSTAL and WP:TOOSOON. In any case, there is little that can be added to a draft until the event actually happens, so it's kind of pointless in my opinion. I might ask at the help desk or somewhere like that for input to see what non-weather editors think.

Fourth, the notability criteria, as they stand, seem to be based largely on SPC convective outlooks. While I wouldn't dismiss them, I don't think outlooks should carry that much weight. Notability is established based on what happens, not what is predicted to happen. For instance the Tornado outbreak of May 15–17, 2013 produced a destructive EF4 tornado even though only a slight-risk outlook (albeit equivalent to ENH today) was issued ([1]).

@United States Man, ChessEric, Elijahandskip, and KN2731: thoughts? TornadoLGS (talk) 19:08, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

In regards to your fourth point, we absolutely should not be creating articles based on outlooks and before an event has started. United States Man (talk) 19:51, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

To your first point: I believe that these guidelines need to be updated. I don't know if it has, but I've asked for it to be numerous times. To your second point: I actually have a problem with the second part of your statement because while one tornado was notable, it came from an outbreak and should be labeled as such. In the case of the 2013 Hattiesburg, Mississippi tornado, that EF4 tornado came from a cell that produced a number of other tornadoes, including an EF2 tornado. I have expanded several pages to include the other tornadoes for this exact reason. We shouldn't leave out the other tornadoes just because we don't deem them as notable as other ones because that's misleading in my opinion (people may think that was the only tornado that touched down). To your third point: I totally agree with you. I get tired of seeing people jump the gun with this. At least wait for the outbreak to start before making an article. Its annoying. To your fourth point: I'm with you on this because outbreaks like this can clearly be listed in the section for the outbreak and does not have to be described in a whole article. Hope this clarifies some things. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 20:18, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

@ChessEric: I might not have said the second point that well. What it's mainly about is the question: When should an individual tornado get its own article, and not just a section on the outbreak page?

I picked Hattiesburg since its something of an odd case: it is, in part, an outbreak article but it's titled as a tornado article. TornadoLGS (talk) 20:30, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I think that should be expanded to include the whole outbreak (like add the table from that day), but that's just my opinion. I just don't like the notion of making an article for one tornado on an outbreak day. ChessEric (talk · contribs) 21:17, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not entirely opposed to Hattiesburg being an outbreak article. I'm more concerned with establishing a guideline for when there should be an article for an individual tornado in addition to an outbreak article (e.g. Moore 2013, Joplin). For instance, I'm iffy on 2015 Rochelle–Fairdale, Illinois tornado and even tentatively floated the idea of merging it with the outbreak article. TornadoLGS (talk) 23:05, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I am opposed to removing the articles for Hattiesburg and Rochelle. Usually I would support merging tornadoes, but these were significant enough to have stand-alone articles. The rest of the tornadoes during the Hattiesburg day were not significant, so a section is fine. United States Man (talk) 02:21, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not saying merge the articles (that would make the section on the main page WAY too long), but I'm also saying that a tornado article should include all the tornadoes from that day, not just one. I don't see why other tornadoes have to be significant enough to be mentioned when every other outbreak article I've seen includes all tornadoes. The Tornado outbreak of February 7, 2017 is one example. The initial article only included the EF3 tornado that hit New Orleans, but the outbreak had 14 more tornadoes, including another EF3 tornado AND a deadly EF1 tornado. Despite this, these tornadoes were listed only in a short blurb at the bottom of the page that no one would pay attention to. THAT'S why I'm saying that the tornado articles should include all tornadoes in the outbreak, not just the one we remember the most, because it doesn't make sense to me to just focus on one tornado from an outbreak. One example of this is the Tornado outbreak of March 3, 2019, where one tornado (the EF4 Beauregard–Smiths Station, Alabama/Talbotton, Georgia) was the most memorable tornado, but we included all the other tornadoes in the article. Another example is the Tornado outbreak of October 20–22, 2019, where the tornado that struck Dallas was the one we remember the most. That may just be my opinion, but I think that it should be consider.ChessEric (talk · contribs) 16:42, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure I entirely agree with you there. In the case of the Hattiesburg and Rochelle tornadoes, the notability of the outbreak depends almost entirely on one tornado. For instance, if it were not for the Hattiesburg tornado, the outbreak that produced it would barely warrant a section at Tornadoes of 2013. On that note, there is a merge proposal on the Rochelle tornado that my interest the two of you, @ChessEric and United States Man:. TornadoLGS (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2022 (UTC)