Talk:System accident

message: The Lessons of Valujet 592, The Atlantic, William Langewiesche, March 1998.  Second paragraph in section 'A "Normal Accident,"' which is about two-thirds of the way into the article. 
"  .  .  .  Charles Perrow's thinking is more difficult for pilots like me to accept. Perrow came unintentionally to his theory about normal accidents after studying the failings of large organizations. His point is not that some technologies are riskier than others, which is obvious, but that the control and operation of some of the riskiest technologies require organizations so complex that serious failures are virtually guaranteed to occur [Emphasis added]. Those failures will occasionally combine in unforeseeable ways,  .  .  .  "
::This might respond to some of the criticism and improve our article.  Saying the complexity itself might be better than "unanticipated interaction of multiple failures." Cool Nerd (talk) 17:42, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Langewiesche talking about complexity itself as the major contributing factor. 

message: Once an enterprise passes a certain point in size, with many employees, specialization, backup systems, double-checking, detailed manuals, and formal communication, employees can all too easily recourse to protocol, habit, and "being right."  Rather like attempting to watch a complicated movie in a language one is unfamiliar with, the narrative thread of what is going on can be lost.  And other phenomena such as groupthink can be occurring at the same time, for real world accidents almost always have multiple causes.  In particular, it is a mark of a dysfunctional organization to simply blame the last person who touched something.
::This is not a bad summary of both Perrow and Langewiesche.  For example,
The Lessons of Valujet 592, The Atlantic, William Langewiesche, March 1998, second to last paragraph:
" . . an entire pretend reality that includes unworkable chains of command, unlearnable training programs, . . "
::But a little repetitive, and I think we may have added some stuff on our own. Cool Nerd (talk) 20:20, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to go ahead and re-add it.  It's just too good to leave it here languishing. Cool Nerd (talk) 15:14, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  demoting longish paragraph from lead 

message: Can we please make a distinction between "Notes" and "References"?  
I think it's not good to put  together with the titles of books and articles that might be cited multiple times, e.g., 
* 
* 
in perhaps different combinations or with different page numbers.  
Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:Citing sources, and related style guides like Template:Reflist seem not to currently have a consistent standard on this, but I don't think it's wise to mix end notes with "references" or "general references" in the same section.  I think they should be in separate sections like ==References== and ==Notes==</ref>
I prefer the latter -- the way this article was structured before your recent edit with separate <nowiki>==References== and <nowiki>==Notes==</ref> sections.  One reason is that this structure seems more consistent with the style of Real-World Economics Review, a journal two which I submitted "Wikiversity:Do copyrights and paywalls on academic journals violate the US Constitution?" last October.  Roughly 13 months earlier, I had submitted a major revision of "Wikiversity:Externalities, contagious diseases and news"" to that same journal.  That major revision was accepted without revision and appeared last March as .  To prepare those Wikiversity articles for submission to this journal, it seems easier to have the article as much as possible already written in a style with separate "References" and "Notes" sections, as I had this article, before your change.  
I hope you will accept this logic and not be excessively upset as I revert your recent edit.  
Thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia:Prime objective, making the "sum of all human knowledge" more freely accessible.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  References vs. notes