Talk:2021 Ghotki rail crash

Title format

Should the articles 1991 Ghotki train crash, 2005 Ghotki rail crash & 2021 Ghotki rail crash all have the same format? I think train crash is best, because it's the best concise description. Jim Michael (talk) 17:33, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

@Jim Michael: I agree. Train crash is more specific, rail crash suggests it could be to do with trams, which also have rails, so it helps to distinguish between the two. CreativeNorth (talk) 20:42, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I think it should be renamed 2021 Ghotki rail disaster or back to 2021 Ghotki train collision because "rain/train crash" would give the impression that only one train was involved in the accident. I noticed the 2005 accident also involved a collision, I think the article needs to be renamed also. Dora the Axe-plorer (talk) 23:25, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I only moved this to 'rail crash' to match the other article. The 2005 incident involved 2 trains. I have no objection to the names suggested, but strongly support consistency among these articles since they are closely associated and similar in nature (at least as far as involving a train crash). The real problem is that there is no consistency on the greater WP. Rail and train are both used, and collision and crash are both used, also. I do refute that 'crash' refers to only one train, but that's no big issue. I would most support 2021 Ghotki train crash, with also moving the 2005 article to conform. ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 00:20, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with both Jim Michael and Dora the Axe-plorer, there should be commonality between the formats and support the name suggestions as this particular incident involved more than one train. To be fair, "crash" can be defined as "(of a vehicle) collide violently with an obstacle or another vehicle." (See https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+crash&rlz=1C1GCEB_enUS945US945&oq=definition+of+crash&aqs=chrome..69i57.3511j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) In this instance, "crash" does not by definition suggest that only one train was involved. Jurisdicta (talk) 04:06, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

interestingly, some reliable sources solve the plurality issue by referring to the incident as a "trains collision". for example, business recorder used "Daharki trains collision" in their article's title, while asian news international used "trains collision in Pakistan's Sindh" in theirs. however, i don't think we should follow suit, as it would break the standard established here. dying (talk) 06:59, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Train is more precise & descriptive than rail. Crash is often correctly used for transport collisions of various types in which multiple vehicles are involved. Jim Michael (talk) 05:44, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

So is xxxx Ghotki train crash the consensus? ‡ El cid, el campeador ^talk 17:00, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

personally, i consider the words "crash" and "collision" similar to the words "blast" and "explosion": the first of each pair may be the more sensationalistic word used in initial news reports (perhaps due to their somewhat onomatopoeic nature) and may also be preferred in headlines that have a character limit, while the second appears more encyclopedic in nature to me. due to this, i would prefer "collision" but would defer to consensus. admittedly, i've never been aware of one term being selected over the other due to the number of objects involved.

also, "train" seems more descriptive than "rail", at the cost of only one extra letter. i can't find any train disaster article since 2020 that uses the word "rail" in its title, aside from this one at the time of writing.

also, on a tangential note, i had preferred using "Sindh" instead of "Ghotki" in the title since there was a possibility of confusing the district of ghotki with the city of ghotki, and the accident didn't actually happen that close to the city of ghotki. (it appears that the incidents in 1991 and 2005 actually happened near the city of ghotki.) similarly, if a notable incident happened near bila tserkva, i would hesitate to use "Kyiv" in the article name, since there was a possibility of confusing the oblast of kyiv with the city of kyiv, and the incident didn't actually happen that close to the city of kyiv. (i had decided against using "Daharki" since, at the time i created the page, i had not found the city name to be widely reported.)

when using "Sindh", i had previously believed that the year was sufficient for disambiguation, but i was wrong about that. however, this accident is likely still the primary topic for "2021 Sindh train collision", since the accident in march does not have an article and appears to have caused fewer casualties. dying (talk) 01:50, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The 1991, 2005 & 2021 train crashes all had high death tolls & happened in Ghotki District. Using Ghotki in the title is correct & much more precise than Sindh, which is many times larger. Even if this were the only train crash in Sindh this year, it wouldn't be better to use a much broader area. Calling it 2021 Sindh train crash would give the false impression that it was the only one of the year. Adding June would make the title unnecessarily long. We wouldn't call the Clapham Junction rail crash the (December) 1988 London rail crash, even though it took place just outside Clapham Junction. Jim Michael (talk) 09:02, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

i agree that "Sindh" is less precise, being many times larger than ghotki district, but in this case, using "Ghotki" unqualified may be misleading, which may be a more pertinent issue here. i am assuming that i am not alone in this opinion, since the three sources i had cited at the time of article creation all chose not to state "Ghotki" in their article titles: cnn currently both states "train crash in southern Pakistan" and "crash in Sindh province", while bbc's title is "Pakistan train accident: Dozens killed in Sindh collision" and dw states "train crash in Sindh province". similarly, at the time i added a link to this article in the List of rail accidents (2020–present) article, the description for this incident had mentioned sindh but not ghotki, and it still does. wikipedia's main page blurb on the accident also mentions sindh but not ghotki. in any case, if the main concern is preciseness, i would think that the article would be more appropriately titled "2021 Daharki train collision", since ghotki district is many times larger than daharki.

currently, i do not know which geographic area is most appropriate for this article's title. some reliable sources in pakistan appear to now refer to it as the "Daharki train crash". some other reliable sources in pakistan appear to now refer to it as the "Ghotki train crash", although i would assume it is safe to say that many of their readers, by now, understand that "Ghotki" does not refer to the city itself. reliable sources outside pakistan appear to still avoid referring to ghotki in their titles, preferring to state "Sindh", "southern Pakistan", or "Pakistan".

in addition, i am aware that some people will use the name of a city to refer to it and its environs, while others will use it strictly to refer to the city. for example, someone from watford may state that they are from london and attending a conference in new york, while someone from manhattan may be bewildered when they eventually learn that the conference attendee actually lives outside greater london and the conference is actually in jersey city. i make no judgement regarding either practice in real life, as different people draw different lines in informal communication, but as this is an encyclopedia, i would assume that we should use the stricter interpretation, within reason. although i do not personally live in ghotki district, my review of reliable sources has led me to believe that "Ghotki", if unqualified, usually refers to the city, and neither the taluka nor the district, in the same way that my use of "new york" above likely led you to believe i was referring to the city, and neither the county nor the state. as a result, i would find "2021 Ghotki train collision" to be somewhat misleading. i have no issue with "2021 Ghotki district train collision", but had originally tried to bypass the issue with "2021 Sindh train collision".

by the way, whenever i see the title of an article, i often do not automatically assume that the subject of the article is uniquely described by the title. however, i might assume that the subject is the only such instance notable enough to be included in wikipedia, barring the existence of any hatnotes. i do not know if this sentiment is shared amongst other readers, but i do know that 2020 Beirut explosion appears to follow this standard, even though a different beirut explosion in october appears to have resulted in more fatalities than the sindh train accident in march. in addition, wp:precise explicitly notes wp:primarytopic as an exception. therefore, i do not believe using the name "2021 Sindh train collision" necessarily implies that there has been only one train collision in sindh this year. also, although i am aware that wp:concise is a concern, i do not think it should override other concerns specific to the subject, as seen in December 2013 Spuyten Duyvil derailment.

to be clear, i have no issues with the 1991 and 2005 articles using "Ghotki" in their titles, because in both cases, the city of ghotki appears to be the city closest to the incident. these do not need to be renamed with "Sindh" in their titles. dying (talk) 06:59, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Sources outside Pakistan are very unlikely to use Ghotki in their headlines because the vast majority of people outside the country haven't heard of it. Jim Michael (talk) 21:40, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

exactly. this is why i believe that "in this case, using 'Ghotki' unqualified may be misleading". similarly, brazilian media may refer to an aviation accident in são paulo, while the associated article on wikipedia is entitled "2014 Santos Cessna Citation accident" instead of "2014 São Paulo Cessna Citation accident", presumably because although brazilians generally understand that there is a state of são paulo and a city of são paulo, it is unclear if the same applies to readers of wikipedia.

also, i don't see any issues with naming this article after sindh or pakistan if reliable sources have done so. 2013 Mexico train accident is named after the country, not any of its subdivisions. dying (talk) 23:17, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Notes

POV in background section

I think there is currently a lot of negative POV about the state of the railways in Pakistan. There are even claims of corruption without proper sourcing (only a set of sources reporting on the accident this article deals with is given). A list of accidents is also linked to, purported to show the “frequent” occurence of them, but that deals with 21 accidents happening over the course of 31 years. Thus there isn’t even one accident per year. How does that compare to other railway systems of a similar size.Tvx1 21:09, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

See "A timeline of major train accidents in the past two decades".―― Phoenix7777 (talk) 22:10, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

when i wrote that section, i believe i had found nothing notably positive about the railway system mentioned in reliable sources. i had actually delayed writing that section until well after the rest of the article was decently developed, hoping that i could find something notably positive to say while i was developing the article, but unfortunately, i did not. most, if not all, reliable sources i found that reported on this incident provided negative information about the system as background information, if they provided any background information at all. dawn actually titled their gallery article "In pictures: Another day, another train disaster in Pakistan".

i had figured that someone might eventually raise an npov concern on the talk page, so i tried to make sure that those paragraphs were reliably sourced. in particular, the source i provided for the claim of corruption is from the new york times, which stated:

Pakistan has an abysmal train-safety record, and the state-owned system is plagued by corruption and mismanagement.

this was not the only reliable source that made such a claim, but i wanted to avoid citation overkill, and had already included four citations for that sentence.

obviously, however, i do not claim perfection, so feel free to correct any errors i may have made. also, if you have found any relevant positive background information in a reliable source, please add it to the article. dying (talk) 04:20, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Tvx1, the article has a lot of negative POV about the state of the railways in Pakistan. I am not disagreeing that this is not the case, but simply am wondering out loud if there is a better way to phrase this. I am sure that Prime Minister Imran Khan has not been the only elected official to promise to fix the rail system. I found this article (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-12/china-s-billions-are-set-to-revive-pakistan-s-dilapidated-railways) from 2018 that talked about improvements ranging from increased revenues to trains arriving on time. Just my two cents... Jurisdicta (talk) 05:26, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Jurisdicta, i agree that the section is largely negative. i tried to write it as neutrally as i could, but whether i was successful in doing so is a different matter. for example, i tried to choose less extreme words while conveying the same information, such as stating "the system sees frequent accidents" when the new york times chose to state "abysmal train-safety record" instead.

khan is probably not the only such elected official, but he seemed like the most relevant, considering that he is the current prime minister. i didn't want to pile on with a list of other such officials, but i also didn't want to single out khan as if he was the only one, which is why the previous sentence noted that "a number of governments" have similarly failed.

i think the article you found could be successfully integrated into the background section, so thank you for suggesting it. i had been thinking about adding information on the ml-1 project, since reuters reported that chairman gilani had stated that "any spending now to upgrade the track where the crash occurred would be a waste of resources" due to the project. however, i had also felt that adding this commentary would worsen the negativity problem in that section, so i had refrained from doing so. the source you provided could at least provide some positivity to that section.

also, apparently, the status of the ml-1 project has recently been put into question, but i don't know if this should be mentioned. dying (talk) 02:19, 12 June 2021 (UTC)