Talk:Flixborough disaster

Initial comments

we need to redo this. i need to add a link to Flixborough the town. what we need is a disambig page called flixborough, except if you search for 'flixborough' it brings you here.

how do we do this? how do we stop 'flixborough' coming here? I don't know Lincolnshire Poacher

I had previously fixed this -- see my note below -- there is now a separate page for Flixborough the village. --mervyn 16:25, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I have now fixed this and set up Flixborough as a stub. Since Flixborough village is the only Flixborough, it doesnt need to be a disambig page, but those wikilinks which lead to Flixborough when they really mean to link to Flixborough disaster should be disambiguated. Forgot to mention that in order to edit a redirect you click where it says Redirected from ... and that opens up the redirect code for editing. --mervyn 10:25, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Bizarre Coincidences

Edited this section to reflect the speculative nature of the claim. It's an interesting yarn but lacks even a source citation. Any actual corroborating "evidence"? --Oscar Bravo 14:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we can safely remove unsourced vague claims like this!

==Bizarre coincidences==

Lesley Brennan, who lived in the Grimsby area, claimed that at around 12 noon that same day, some five hours before the detonation took place, she was watching her TV when the word NEWSFLASH filled the screen and she learnt about the actual disaster before it had taken place. She told friends at lunch time of the incident/premonition, then later in the day saw the news reports on the television, mistakenly believing it had still taken place around lunchtime.

Have done so --mervyn 08:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I do actually recall this story appearing on that wonderful source of knowledge 'The Mysterious World of Arthur C Clarke' in the early 1980's. I remember it because the lady comes from my part of the world (actually she lived in Cleethorpes). However i don't think such stories actually belong in this article and may be worthy of inclusion in articles like 'Preminition/Pre-cognition' so long as sources could be referenced. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.10.243.254 (talk) 21:15, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Flixborough villageres relocation?

I was just looking at the article for Bonby (I lived there for a few years back in the early 80s) - the article is woefully inadequate, and was thinking of adding to it. Anyway - at the time I lived there, there were some 'modern' blocks of flats in the village that I seem to recall were described as having been built to house villagers from Flixborough who had to relocate following the disaster, presumably due to damage to their homes. Is this true, or simply either apocryphal or my poor memory? Thanks. Carre 20:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Location

should it not be said that it was in Lincolnshire rater than north Lincolnshire, as it was at the time, or even Humberside, if that was in existence in '78? just a suggestion :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Abc26324 (talk • contribs) 19:41, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I assume you mean 1974, in which case it would be Humberside which came into existence on 1 April 1974. Keith D (talk) 17:58, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

As above, the area was then Humberside but the fledgling Humberside Fire Service was still not fully operational and the emergency call-centre that initially controlled the response was in Louth, Lincolnshire and under the remit of Lincolnshire Fire Brigade. Control was subsequently re-routed to Scunthorpe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.29.64.26 (talk) 22:32, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I see that somebody recorded my buttock injury, and had it removed straight away. It was a tragic event, and indeed I lost a school-friend, but it is a pity that editors have no sense of humour.Roxy the dog (talk) 23:12, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Animals.

"It killed 28 people and seriously injured 36. No animals were hurt." This was the second + third paragraph the story, seems to be some kind of joke. Deleting the animal reference. Chardansearavitriol (talk) 09:41, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Article on Preventing Catastrophic Failure

The author of the short article cited below (available through Academic Search Elite) is an experienced consulting engineer. He criticizes the idea to use flexible piping on centrifugal pumps, even if only temporarily. To support his claim he draws on the Flixborough explosion, which he believes could have been prevented using rigid piping. In fact, he believes that for any case in which process plants handle dangerous materials, extra care should be taken to recognize potential problems and prevent them.

Bloch, H. P. (2008). Remembering Flixboro: part 1. Hydrocarbon Processing, 87(10), 9.

Socrates90 (talk) 21:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

"before you start installing that lump of bypass pipe....

....hadn't you better check the other reactor vessels for cracks?"

good question, not mentioned in this article, in the accounts of the report after the explosion, or in the set-up.

question is raised in charles perrow's book "normal accidents", which was published shortly after his consultancy work on the three mile island nuclear accident, & which examines systems & accident scenarios from a mixed technological & sociological perspective.

duncanrmi (talk) 14:23, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Why do you say that? As mentioned in the inquiry report, and in the WP article "The major problem was thought to be getting reactor 5 moved out of the way. Only the plant engineer was concerned about restarting before the reason for the failure was understood, and the other reactors inspected." In other words, the question was asked but the plant engineer was out-ranked and over-ruled by others. (Some might think this evidence against the 'Flixborough was caused by chemical engineers not understanding the mechanical engineering issues' analysis and for the less-comforting 'Flixborough was caused by managers not understanding safety' view. I couldn't possibly comment.) Rjccumbria (talk) 19:56, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

this article needs more references

There are several paragraphs in the article that do not have any citations at all. Specifically, in the following sections:

• Overview
• Reactor 5 leaks and is bypassed
• Lessons to be learned
• General observation
• Terms of Reference and personnel
• Ensuring safety of 'major hazard' installations

—howcheng {chat} 07:30, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

But there are plenty of citations in this article. For example, the overview section has about 5 citations already. --Pakaraki (talk) 18:53, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

It's not about counting references. There are large areas of text that don't have references. In Overview for example, most of the second paragraph and the entire fourth paragraph. —howcheng {chat} 20:44, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, large chunks of the article are taken from the Inquiry Report's timeline of events, or the ACMH's first report on the way forward on hazardous installations. I'm not sure where the added value lies in adding a generic reference to the relevant report at the end of every paragraph so derived. I do note, however, that the article section on the ACMH as it now stands has the interesting problem that it contains multiple spurious references to the Inquiry report. I suspect that at one stage there were two master references to the reports, and the subsequent text (where it wanted to be more specific about where in the reference a particular point could be found) did not repeat the reference and append the para number, it simply indicated the para in the ACMH report last referenced. Unfortunately those more specific pseudo-references seem to have been tidied up by treating them in the same way as references to specific paragraphs in the Inquiry Report; in fact by treating them as references to specific paragraphs in the Inquiry Report. Rjccumbria (talk) 22:54, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Here's where I'm coming from: I'm deciding on which articles to put into WP:Selected anniversaries for the Main Page. If I include this article and there are paragraphs without citations like this, someone else is going to come by and tag the article as missing citations and then we end up removing it. However, I can understand if you don't give a rat's patootie about the Main Page. No problem. Think of it this way then: without citations to specific locations in the source(s), it becomes easier for someone to insert subtle vandalism into the article. I as a reader, when I see something that doesn't seem right, am unable to easily find where it is in the source to verify the statement. It's been a while since I wrote a good article but I do recall that one of the criteria is that at minimum each paragraph should have a citation (this may not be true anymore, I don't know). So simply by adding the citations that will make the text more verifiable, which in turn improves the article quality. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 00:14, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

No problem with you going ahead and doing that, if you think that's the best use of your Wiki-time. Rightly or wrongly, I consider that what WP needs is more articles that are 'fit for purpose', and it is that criterion I would judge an article on; and I would be guided in my actions by my judgement. To date the only 'subtle vandalism' I can spot in this article is the wrecking of references in the ACMH section by sombody who thought that style was more important than sense. 'Where you are coming from' appears to be of less interest than where you appear to be going to: predicting (on behalf of an unspecified 'we') deletion of the article because it does not meet the criteria for GA; I am not sure why you describe that as 'subtle vandalism'; it looks like a fairly unsubtle threat.Rjccumbria (talk) 17:46, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

You misunderstood: I was talking about including this article on the Main Page via Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/June 1 and then it getting removed from there by editors who think the article is substandard, not the actual deletion of the article. I'm not trying to be hostile or threatening at all here. Please interpret my edits on this talk page in the spirit that they are intended—as constructive criticism. And I think it's great that you as someone who is familiar with the topic and its sources are actively watching this article, but what happens when one day, you are no longer able/willing to do so? Adding individual citations to statements that make factual claims will it easier for future editors/readers to verify its contents. —howcheng {chat} 18:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I think that this article has plenty of citations already. This article is fortunate to have the report of the Court of Inquiry, which makes a particularly comprehensive and authoritative reference. And there are a further 28 references cited. There is no doubt where the reader should go for further information, and adding more citations to the same references doesn't add value. However, it would be helpful if you can provide a citation for your claim that Wikipedia policy requires a citation for every paragraph.--Pakaraki (talk) 19:35, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

If you really want to talk policy, then let me refer you to WP:V: The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. Let's look at one of the statements from the Overview section that would benefit from a citation: "the blast was heard over thirty miles away in Grimsby and Hull." So you say I can go to the report from the Court of Inquiry to verify this. But where exactly do I look? That report is 108 pages long! And if it's not in there, am I supposed to systematically go through each the 28 additional references to find this claim? Presumably, editors who wrote this article got this fact from one of these sources, so that citation should have been there from the very beginning. I hope that makes sense. —howcheng {chat} 18:18, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds fair enough (that the editor adding the material should be able to justify it), but it doesn't mean that every little factoid must have its own separate citation. On the same basis, if it is your claim that this is Wikipedia policy, then the burden is on you to demonstrate this. --Pakaraki (talk) 19:24, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

I just did. Wikipedia:Verfiability. Attribute all quotations and any material whose verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. —howcheng {chat} 22:49, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Pakaraki, Howcheng is correct. There's not much stopping this article appearing on OTD, and with a little bit of polishing it could probably make a GA. So, add the refs in and the tag can go. Mjroots (talk) 19:09, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

As Rjccumbria points out, there is no problem with you going ahead and adding more citations to those refs if you wish. --Pakaraki (talk) 18:32, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Not entirely sure I want to get dragged back into this, but I cannot say I am entirely happy with being preached at/over:

• Firstly if people talk of having an article flagged up and then 'we' having to delete it, the correct/polite form of words if deletion of the article was not being contemplated is not 'you misunderstood'; it is 'I am sorry my last post caused some confusion' or words to that effect.
• Secondly, there are two separate issues here: 'compliance' with what is recommended as best practice and 'functional adequacy' of the article and in my time on this planet I have seen too many attempts and justifying some compliance purge by spurious claims on functional matters to look kindly on arguments which do not separate the two strands. ('You can't have a kettle in your office because I say so' is one thing; 'You can't have a kettle in your office because if everybody did, and they all switched them on simultaneously it would burn out the substation' is quite another.)
• On the compliance side, doubtless all that is said is true, but it rather ignores the question of priorities: is there not more fundamental guidance that Wikipedia should attempt to cover with reasonable accuracy as much encyclopaedic content as possible ? (I won't start up a second front on 'why aim to have a GA/grammar school in every town, rather that better articles/schools in general?', but be aware I think it a good question.)
• On the functional side of things, the claim seems to be that adding fact-by-fact referencing to specific paras of (eg) the Inquiry Report will make it easier for future editors/readers to check the article's accuracy once it is no longer watched by anybody interested in the article subject. The problem I have with that is that I have extensive experience of the production of documentation in a process which included the checking of all facts/references by checkers with no interest in the document. Mechanical ref-checking was labour-intensive and unpopular (with the checkers; what the checkees thought of it is immaterial): we had trouble retaining the people doing it (OK, perhaps the pay wasn't brilliant) and I would be mightily surprised if Wikipedia was able to field enough volunteers for mechanical fact-checking to be relied upon. Furthermore (because the issue was often not simply the presence of the words/numbers in the source but whether the use made of them was consistent with how they were used in the source) it was not a patch - when it came to detecting unsupported claims - to a more general read-through by somebody who understood the subject under discussion. When there is no longer anybody taking the interest in the subject active on WP, therefore, I would expect the article to degrade, regardless of the amount of referencing that has been stuck on it. 18:08, 9 June 2017 (UTC)Rjccumbria (talk)

I'm a big fan of citing every point on science articles where, say, if it's a page on some chemical compound, there might be 5 different syntheses listed. One has a citation. Two of the other four look extremely questionable. In that case either organic synthesis (especially), tetrahedron letters, or preparative inorganic chemistry will probably have all the relevant synths. The last one, brauer, is fairly ancient but inorganic chemistry has evolved more in terms of characterization of compounds, metallurgy, and specialized ceramics than it has in terms of synths. Many compounds were made to see if they could be made then avoided like crazy because they were so toxic. Anyway the point is that with organic chem doing the synth search is extremely quick, with inorganic you'll most likely either find it in Brauer or similar or it's not valid. Additionally once that stuff gets cites put on it, especially if they're journal cites, it becomes really difficult for somebody's incoherent attempt at inserting more info where it isn't applicable or reordering things to move the cite to the wrong place and not be spotted.

I view something like this where there's a ton of detail about the events as very hard to cite because of the PDF format of the primary source it references... but in the case of this article, also because of how the references to the Flixborough report in particular are set up and how it mixes with the other refs. We have one set of refs numbered 1...x, one set of refs referring to a mixture of paragraphs, figures, and appendices in the flixborough report that just link into a ref table filled with plaintext numbers, with those refs showing as a...x. Finally there's the extensive notes section, which are cross-reference as A...x in the main body. Some of the notes have further references in them. With superscripted fonts it's not immediately apparent for certain letters whether it's going to point to a note or a plaintext report page number.

IMO this article would be a perfect candidate for conversion of all those efn templates with arbitrarily formatted page / appendix links and the barelink to the PDF file on archive.org to a proper reference to "some fact about it" which is just a link to the PDF, then use the r template to actually provide a PDF link each time with the syntax so the PDF opens directly to that page (which means copy pasting the URL a lot but there doesn't seem to be a way to automate it) so I can say things like, "Witnesses reported finding a lone bumberchute over 5 miles from the site, as stated in the document.", which sticks the quote backing up my statement in the tooltip, and "Anybody down for a wicked nandos?"

Normally I wouldn't suggest this method of doing things but this being a terribly OCR'd PDF, it can't be searched cleanly and there's no index page / outline to jump around with which means browser navigation is broken as well. You could also keep it as its own section the way it is but link the efn footnotes to the pages instead, which is less direct but avoids those obnoxious PDF icons next to everything which I've already decided I don't like, but I'm also aware of why wikipedia slaps icons on them; PDF hasn't historically been an ultra-secure format and still isn't (I think Adobe reader updates roughly 72 times a week if you have their version which supports the full featureset installed), PDF files seem bigger than web pages even though they're usually much smaller thanks to the enormous javascript bloat plaguing the internet, and depending on your setup they may launch an external viewer which is especially distracting on mobile. Anyway I think the same formatting should work using something like "A quote from the document backing up this quote" Normally going back and forward within a PDF works, but not if you have to type in the page number yourself since they don't consider that to be following a link and it doesn't go in the PDF history. I don't make the rules. The nice thing about that is that you can avoid cluttering up the inline text with page numbers that have no meaning there, and combine the page number link with a piece of footnote text if there's associated text and it'll all pop up in the preview mouseover box. If you just want the page number(s) in the same style list as now you can ditch the q= text. The R template has quite a few uses.

I generally don't read them either. I just end up editing grammar where it's bad enough that I have to read it twice to understand it, try to spot bad actors posting their company ads or personal research papers as valid references and nuke them, fix cites to have proper DOI if I wanted to read them and am forced to use google, and sometimes spot a page with such an annoying ref style like the old harvard Author / Year parenthetical with no hyperlinks that I'll redo everything. Because I don't care about wikipedia drama or whether or not somebody with too much investment kills my edits I never watch any pages and generally might only return to the pages I edited if I happen to want refs as a starting point for something else. I'm only writing that last bit because I'll never see any response here, I'm just making a suggestion of something that potentially violates style or something else but I think in the less cluttery second form (keep as notes but link to the source with specified pages and URLs) it would make it more likely for people to sort through the document and add page sources.

I do also agree with you that more refs won't help. I've found pages where roughly half the refs either didn't support any of the nearby text or didn't even support anything on the page and were completely unrelated and it had been like that for a decade. Often these were just shortish pages on a common lab reagent. Existence of cites is often taken as full evidence of accuracy. Even without access, often abstracts make it clear that their topic is unrelated entirely. Bad grammar makes parts nearly unreadable in many cases, but that's endemic here these days and I've yet to find anything as bad as some of our local news headlines. --A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 14:42, 9 October 2024 (UTC)