Talk:List of rail accidents/Criteria for inclusion

message: I agree we need to agree a criteria for inclusion. My suggestions are:
Part A:
#If the accident is caused by suicide, vandalism or trespass, or factors completely unrelated to rail operations, then it should NOT be included unless it receives significant coverage in non-specialist national (national list only) or international media. i.e Queen of the Sea train disaster does belong on this list.
#If the only fatalities/serious injuries are people falling off/out of trains not involved in a collision/derailment/etc then it should NOT be included.
#If the accident is caused by terrorism, then it should NOT be included unless it has significant long term effects on railway operations other than security. 
Part B:
*If any two of the following are true then it should be included on a national list (e.g. List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom):
#At least one person (passenger or crew) on the train is killed, or five people receive serious injuries
#A train hits a road vehicle carrying 6 or more people, excluding people carries and similar vehicles classed as cars. 
#The accident causes significant infrastructure damage. Significant means it takes at least 24 hours to repair.
#Modification to all rolling stock of the same/very similar (e.g. British Rail Class 220/221/222) type is required as a result
#Three or more separate trains are involved
#The accident leads to a closure of a significant portion of the system, including parts not direct affected, lasting at least three days. (e.g. Chancery Lane derailment)
#A statutory body (e.g. Rail Accident Investigation Branch, Rail Safety and Standards Board) produces a report into the accident. This does not include reports by police or Health and Safety Executive or similar bodies.
#There is a Wikipedia article specifically about the accident (i.e. independent of an article about the system or location). If the article is deleted, then it does not qualify under this criteria.
#The accident receives significant coverage in non-specialist regional or national media.
#The accident receives extensive coverage in national specialist media.
#The accident is otherwise historically significant, e.g. it is the first.
Part C:
*If any of the following are true then it should be included on this, international list. and the relevant national list.
#At least ten people on the train (passengers or crew) are killed (50% if there are less than 10 on board), or twenty people receive serious injuries (75% if there are less than 20 on board).
#A train hits a road vehicle carrying 10 or more people, at least 5 of whom are killed or the total death toll in the accident is at least 10.
#Modification to a significant proportion of a system's rolling stock, not just of the type involved.
#The accident leads to significant changes to the system's infrastructure (e.g. such as Selby rail crash)
#A national private or public inquiry is held into the accident
#The accident receives significant coverage in international non-specialist media
#The accident receives extensive coverage in the national non-specialist media of a medium-large country.
#*For television and radio, the coverage must last more than two days.
#*For printed media, the coverage must feature in at least three editions of daily media, and/or at least two editions of media published less frequently.
#The accident is otherwise internationally historically notable (e.g. first ever train accident on a continent, led to international safety regulation changes, first ever accident on that type of system (e.g. funicular, maglev)) AND qualifies for an entry on the relevant national list.
The "national" lists can be for single countries (e.g. UK, USA) or groups of countries/regions where we have fewer accidents (e.g. eastern Europe). To fully cover the terrorist incidents, perhaps we should create a List of terrorist incidents on rail transport, added as a prominent see also. Thryduulf 00:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The suggestions sound reasonable. However, these should be implemented along with a separate list for terrorist incidents on railways and if possible, be managed by same wikiproject(s). --Gurubrahma 10:03, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Thryduulf's initial suggestions

message: If an accident appears in more than one file, then the List of rail accidents entry should be make as short as possible, preferably one or at most two lines.  The other files may be organised by country (List of Russian rail accidents), by type of accident such as Head-on collision or Signal Passed At Danger or a individual accident file such as Quintinshill or Qalyoub.  The different files should be cross linked so that users can jump from one level or stream to another easily, this being something that Wiki does very well.
Some accident types that are yet to be done might include List of rail drawbridge accidents, List of rail derailment accidents.
A complete of existing files for rail accident types needs to be compiled.
Tabletop 06:39, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple files 

message: The List of rail accidents is big enough to split into pre and post 2000 parts.
Tabletop 06:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split List of rail accidents into 1951-200 and 2000 - present 

message: I agree 100% that the criteria for List of rail accidents need discussion.  This list has been extremely unwieldy for several months and the important accidents are completely buried by the trivial.
My feeling is that the main list should be as concise as possible and concentrate on historically important accidents, with users being pointed towards other sub-lists for general run-of-the-mill accidents.  Obviously, this is very difficult to achieve.  Principles need to be stated in the heading (to avoid well-meaning people adding unimportant accidents to the overall list) and could include:
- Most accidents should only be in national lists or other grouped list (e.g. Europe) unless of major international significance. Jackyd101's suggested set of lists above seems sensible.
- Entries in the overall list could be brief summary descriptions only (1 line including; date, country, location, basic type, number killed) with a link to a slightly fuller description in the national list.
- Sadly, death toll must be a major criterion for inclusion.  A country's worst accident, and any death toll over 50, should be automatic qualification.
- I broadly agree with the type of criteria given by Thryduulf but feel it needs to be much tighter, for example, 2 days national media publicity is not sufficient for international inclusion.
- Key examples of particular types of accident, especially the first historically, or those which caused major operating changes, should be included.  In the UK this could include accidents such as Mr Huskisson, Hixon and Hatfield despite relatively low death tolls.
- It might be necessary to bar additions to the overall list unless agreed by editors to be new accidents of truly major significance (e.g. I would include the German maglev accident). Personally I would like to see this list contain maybe 100-200 accidents in total.  As an example, the UK accidents I think should definitely 100% be included in the international list because of historical significance are Mr Huskisson, Sonning, Tay bridge, Armagh, Quintinshill, Harrow, Lewisham, Hixon, Clapham Junction, Ladbroke Grove.
- The other possibility would be to have a comprehensive overall list and flag up a separate list of "major historical significance".  I still think the former would be far too large though.
- I disagree with splitting the main list by year. The current 1950 start date is arbitrary.  The development of railway safety and practice would be best shown by a complete overall list starting at the dawn of railways. The national lists are much better for not being split by date.
- Use of sublists is very effective, e.g. UK accidents are split both by historical date and death toll (although maintaining the 2 separate lists is hard work!).  The idea of lists based on type or cause of accident (e.g. head-on collision) is good.  Ideally there would be a way for an accident to be indexed with criteria which would automaticaly generate the sub-lists (like a database) - is this possible, or a pipe dream?  I apologise that I have not got further on fleshing out the Classification of railway accidents article due to pressure of other work. 
- Finally, there may be a place for a list of "curiosities" such as the trains which fell into the street at Paris Montparnasse and Washington Union (the latter being temporarily buried for a presidential visit!)
Hyperman 42 23:54, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Key criteria 

message: I didn't read through all this stuff here, but I went through Thryduulf's initial suggestions, and I have some remarks on them.
Part A:
What is the difference between suicide/vandalism and terrorism? Doesn't the last one include one of the former things? I would call it "manipulations from outside the rail system" or "sabotage+suicide" or sth. like that.
Part B:
5. Three or more trains... --- Why 3 trains??? Why not just two? I think whenever two trains are involved in a crash this results in a heavy incident... I would prefer sth. like "at least one passenger train carrying passengers"
8. I would left out this point. Because there should be a WP article on a RR accident only _if_ the accident is important enough to be noted at least on the respective national list. So we would have a circular reasoning if we did include this point.
Part C:
1. 50% if there are less than 10 on board --- I would change the latter number to 20, because otherwise incidents with a train with let's say 12 people on board would need 10 killed people to be included, which is far more than 50%.
And I would fully agree to the other points of Thryduulf's proposal. 
I don't guess that you should split the list too much. When I'm searching for RR accidents that have happened in 1874 or so, I don't want to check out 10 or 20 lists. I would prefer having only one larger (international) list and the respective national lists. No split into "type of accident"-lists. (OK, anyway I think the en.wp has the problem of too much splitting and way too few really contentful articles, but that's another story.)
Saludos, --Thogo (Talk) 09:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  My 2 cents 

message: * Part A: I completely agree. No comments on that part.
* Part B sub 5: Three trains involved? Wow, that's one hell of an accident :-/ I would rather say: two trains destroyed in such a way, they will never see active service again.
* Part C: strange way of selecting casualties. Why at least 10 killed? I think it is better to select on how the accident disrupted the infrastructure. For instance, last week two accidents happened in The Netherlands, the one that disrupted the circulation most (took two days to repair), did not cause any casualties. The other one did injure some people, but was repaired after 24 hours, though local media talked about it for two days. Very hard to distinguish these criteria (and there are so many of them).
I think it is better to emphasize on the impact of the accident to the infrastructure, rather than on death tolls. But that's my € 0.02 / $ 0.026 / £ 0.013
The rest of the qualifiers: fine with me!
Cheers, Brinkie 13:11, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response to Thryduulf's suggestions 

message: I had some further thoughts...  A list of really "notable" or "historic" disasters probably needs at least some explanation of why they are significant, rather than just a 1 line summary as I originally suggested.  So as an experiment I've pulled together a list of major disasters (over 100 killed) plus historically significant accidents ("first of a kind" or major changes in safety resulting) to give an attempt at a historic perspective.  This list is at List of rail accidents of major historic significance.  I have not yet linked it in to anything else in case it's decided not to be appropriate.  Even with these narrow criteria, there are about 80 accidents included!
Because of this I really feel strongly that:
- Any overall international list should be summary only (1 line per entry) and the heading should explicitly refer and link to the other key lists and the "Rail Accidents" category.  We need an easily navigable structure for visitors.
- Sorry, a tighter criterion than "disruption to infrastructure" is needed; dozens or hundreds such accidents occur per country per year.  If someone wants the time and effort to include it in a sublist at national level, well and good.  But I really don't like having to plough through lots of minor accidents to find the key ones which have influenced railway safety most, and it will be very confusing to non-rail experts looking for vital information.
Look forward to further comments and discussion. Hyperman 42 00:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Key criteria - revisited 

message: Write-ups of accidents should refer to similar and not so similar accidents so that users can navigate between them.    See Glenbrook train disaster     Tabletop (talk) 11:21, 17 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similar accidents 

message: Would this accident qualify for the list? -- Captndelta (talk) 23:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Byron Rail disaster 

message: I just want to say that I don't think any place names should be linked.  Nobody is going to be looking at the list and think, "Germany, what's that?" and click on the link.  In accordance with Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context, I think the only links should be to articles on each incident. — Reinyday, 19:30, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  places 

message: I'm joining this discussion at what looks like a late stage, having started at List of rail accidents in the United Kingdom.
In the UK at least, any injury, fatality, loss of property or near miss on the railway SYSTEM is reported and investigated.  Presumably you would not want to list all of the cases in the RAIB database, but it's worth thinking about the criteria along those lines.  I already notice several significant fatal accidents in there that don't appear in the WP list.
In my view, the majority of the commentators in this dicussion are obsessed with things with wheels making big crashing noises, but that's not a good indication of what's significant in terms of public safety, which to my mind is the real issue.
So, why exclude terrorism?  Terrorists are part of the environment, and it is a concern of the railway system if they are able to get in and do damage?
Why exclude freight?  The incident could reveal something about the infrastructure or systems that are shared with passengars?
Why link it to mass media exposure?  There are some serious things, like level crossings, that are a background cause of that are under-reported.
Matt Whyndham (talk) 11:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criteria, e.g. from a national regulatory perspective