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A fact from Brimham Rocks appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 23 March 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that although the Brimham Rocks(example pictured) were shaped naturally by erosion, Hayman Rooke conjectured that the extraordinary shapes of some stones could have been carved in part by druids?
I have no wish to enter an edit war with User:Storye book but I just want to register my disagreement with their insertion of information about the coronavirus-related closure of the visitor centre in the lead, and I wonder what others think. This sort of edit seems to contravene all the guidance at WP:NOTDIARY and WP:NOTNEWS, and to me it seems unnecessary to mention that a tourist attraction is/was closed at a time when millions of tourist attractions are/were closed. The information will rapidly date and require updating. I don't see the point. Wikipedia is not a tourist guide.Dave.Dunford (talk) 23:16, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
(1) The National Trust, which owns and runs Brimham Rocks, owns some sites which are small enough and contained enough to close (e.g. a building) large swathes of countryside which cannot be closed, and between-sized properties which Include Brimham Rocks. Therefore the public will have to guess whether the rock park section is open, unless they are informed by a reliable source. The National Trust Brimham Rocks website citation in the article is a reliable source.
(2) The information that the site is fully closed will not rapidly date. It will remain unchanged for several months at a minimum, although UK newspapers have been suggesting that public venue closures may stay in place until next year.
(3) WP's not-diary rule is there to protect articles from being used for updating trivial daily or weekly venue schedules, for example announcing next week's gig. In the case of Brimham Rocks, there are lives at stake. There are no staff there at the moment, which means there are no first-aiders for when people without climbing skills or equipment climb the rock stacks, fall off and break bones. On every busy weekend at Brimham Rocks, the air ambulance (helicopter) is called in. Within the past year a young adult with special needs got stuck in a rock crevice and staff had to call in experts to drill the rock and get them out. The behaviour of excessive numbers of tourists at the site is difficult enough to control and deal with in normal times. There are regular accidents at Brimham Rocks where special equipment and paramedic skills are required to transport patients to hospital, such that if the public tried to get the patient into a car, the patient would be likely to die. The normal ambulance service and the air ambulance service is compromised and limited at the moment due to the epidemic. It follows from this, that if WP allows the Brimham Rocks article to say untruthfully that it is fully open, then WP will increase the chances of more deaths due to large and uncontrolled crowds on the site, with no first aiders and limited access to ambulances.
(4) Yesterday, many hundreds of tourists turned up at Brimham Rocks, overflowing the car park, blocking roads to farmers who needed access to their homes, their fields and their stock - and there was no staff to control the parking. This is because the National Trust made the mistake of announcing that although public facilities were closed, the park would be open and the car park would be free. When the National Trust realised their error, they immediately announced the closure of the site. That ought to be a better situation now, so long as the public knows that it is closed.
(5) So all in all I believe that social responsibility overrides WP rules aimed at protecting articles from wanton commercial publicity notices. All WP rules are subject to common sense and social responsibility. I shall be asking DYK admin to pull the article from its Monday slot on the Main Page, because giving the site publicity right now will only encourage people to turn up there, closed or not. It is an unfenced site. Thank you for reading this. Storye book (talk) 10:34, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I still disagree (people wanting to know up-to-date tourist-type info about tourist sites would be better advised – and more likely – to consult official websites than Wikipedia). I'm going to a) add the {{as of}} template so that the temporary nature of this information is obvious and b) clarify that this is a corona-related closure. Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dave.Dunford. Information about the closure should be placed in a tourist information section down in the body of the article, not in the lead. This type of addition of current information has been deleted from numerous leads that I've worked on. It is also not Wikipedia's job to safeguard public safety; we're an encyclopedia, not the health ministry. Yoninah (talk) 12:25, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It is not a problem for me that the closure information should be removed from the lead into the body of the article, and I have done that. The problem for me was the idea that information about closure should be omitted, leaving an untrue statement saying that the park is open. I now intend to add a short section mentioning accidents at the site, as has been recommended elsewhere. Storye book (talk) 14:23, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have now added a tourist accident section to the article, as promised. While researching, I found an acceptable citation for a murder incident which occurred on the site, and which is well-known locally. I feel that it therefore belongs in the article, so I have added it to the history section. Storye book (talk) 16:45, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The galleries of wildlife (particularly the random pictures of generalist species such as Tawny Owl) fail MOS:PERTINENCE. None of the species pictured is peculiar to this site – there must be hundreds of species present at the site, so the selection here is effectively random. User:Storye book (who added them, some while back) seems to disagree and has reverted my removal, with the edit summary "These galleries are functional. They demonstrate the point of the wildlife areas to outsiders who would not otherwise understand. Some things cannot be expressed in words, for non-specialists. If in doubt, please discuss on talk page before removing these galleries." – so I'm discussing it here as requested. Why would people looking up Brimham Rocks need to be shown what a Tawny Owl looks like – if they want to know, they would be looking up the Tawny Owl article. The pictures are little more than decorative. Thoughts? Dave.Dunford (talk) 10:55, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the pictures must remain, a smaller selection would be greatly preferable. All the birds pictured are widespread throughout the UK and could with equal justification (i.e. none) be added to any article about any natural site in the UK – they should go. The only species that appear to have any justification are one or two of the rarer plants and possibly the solitary bee. There rest are just random pictures of common and widespread British wildlife. While I'm here, the random bird observations from a single visit by a local Naturalists' Society (also added by the same editor) are out of place too. Troglodytes troglodytes is by some measures the commonest bird in the UK – it would be more remarkable if it wasn't present (Snipe and Stonechat are less everyday, but still pretty common and widespread). Dave.Dunford (talk) 11:06, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry Storye book, but your edit – and I'll ignore the bad faith implicit in your edit summary – is not good enough. The article is still cluttered by pretty pictures of random British plants and animals. Why not pictures of druids, and motor buses, and corona viruses, since they're all mentioned in the article too? People might need to know what a druid looks like /sarc. Dave.Dunford (talk)
Edit conflict. The following explains the edit which you have reverted without time for me to reply.
Firstly, the rarity. This area is an SSSI, and in an SSSI it is the mix and spread of wildlife which works together, and helps to host the rarities. Therefore all the items found there are valid for mention. All the items in the galleries were in the official SSSI reports for the site. However I have removed some on the grounds that you think they are common, therefore in your opinion, do not count, although I disagree with that. I have removed them to keep the peace here, and as a compromise.
Secondly, I have been observing wildlife from childhood. The first two things I remember noticing in the 1950s were scarlet pimpernel and corn bunting, which were pointed out to me around 1955 on the north downs of Kent. The corn bunting has now largely disappeared and although I have been in the north of England since 1982, I have not seen the scarlet pimpernel here. Rarity in certain ranges counts as important. So it is equally important that the cowberry is rare here, and it therefore counts.
Thirdly, since I have been observing wildlife actively all my life, and have belonged to various local naturalist societies, and am a life member of RSPB, I'm not a time-waster here. Like most amateur wildlife observers, I don't twitch; I see what comes along. And there are some things that I have never seen anywhere. So I have left on the page some things that I have never seen. If I haven't seen those things in all those decades, it's worth betting that most of the family-based visitors to Brimham Rocks have not seen them either. (I've seen loads of snipes, though, haha - common is in the eye of the beholder?).
Now, you must surely realise that the majority of visitors to Brimham Rocks have never noticed much or any wildlife. They come with young families in response to the Wildlife Trust website talking about climbing. They would tell you that they have never seen any of the deer in the wild, and have never seen (or noticed, really) any of the specific wild flowers, insects or birds. Most of them would be hard put to identify a chaffinch or coltsfoot. The gallery was to show them what is there, so that maybe - just maybe, they might notice something useful, instead of climbing on the rocks with baby carriers on their fronts, where one small slip would end in life-changing injuries. Did you know that most months the helicopter ambulance is called out to Brimham Rocks because of those innocent idiots, and every year there are life-changing injuries there, caused by people falling off rocks, in spite of the National Trust notices. This article is mostly read by those who want to visit the place. It does no harm to direct their interest towards something that won't break their necks. People like that don't click on links to look up wildlife species. They will scroll the article, though. If it ain't on the page, they won't see it. Storye book (talk) 12:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure which "revert" you're talking about – I haven't reverted anything (though I've tweaked my own comments as I've thought of better ways to express what I'm trying to say).
Firstly, the rarity. This area is an SSSI, and in an SSSI it is the mix and spread of wildlife which works together, and helps to host the rarities. Therefore all the items found there are valid for mention. I don't follow the logic: "there are lots of species here, so we should illustrate a load of the common ones, even though they're found in lots of other places"?
I have been observing wildlife from childhood etc. I'm not sure why you consider that your anecdotes, experiences (or lack of them) and low opinion of visitors justify random galleries of barely relevant wildlife to a Wikipedia article about a place. I'm only an amateur naturalist too, but I know what species are generalists and what are not. The only species listed here that are remotely peculiar to Brimham Rocks are cowberry, chickweed wintergreen, bog asphodel and maybe cranberry – and these are merely moorland/heathland specialities, rather than endemic to Brimham (which I know, vaguely, for the record). The birds and butterflies are generic and widespread, and the bee (which I've looked up since this started) is also fairly widespread though it seems to be a moorland specialist. But it's not really about the selection of species, it's about the pertinence of the galleries at all. The principle is that we don't generally illustrate things that are only peripherally relevant to the topic of the article, "just maybe" because people might not know what they are or what they look like – that's what wikilinks are for. If this were an article about "moorland" in general, it might be valid to illustrate a selection of moorland specialists, but I don't think that justification works for a particular place. Or are you going to be adding pictures of Stonechats to every place they've ever appeared?
Now, you must surely realise that the majority of visitors to Brimham Rocks have never noticed much or any wildlife. That's pure speculation on your part, and irrelevant to the debate.
The gallery was to show them what is there, so that maybe - just maybe, they might notice something useful, instead of climbing on the rocks with baby carriers on their fronts, where one small slip would end in life-changing injuries. That sounds suspiciously like you're using this article as a soapbox. Wikipedia is not for advocacy, nor is it a travel guide or a place to tell people how to behave. Dave.Dunford (talk) 12:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Me explaining to you about why an article matters is not the same as writing that opinion in the article. There is a difference between a discussion page and its associated article. Your comments are inappropriate and speculative. For example, "you're using this article as a soapbox. Wikipedia is not for advocacy, nor is it a travel guide or a place to tell people how to behave." does not apply to the article at all. There is no part of the article which does that. It conforms to all house style guidelines in that respect.
As for the relationship between the items remaining in the galleries and the listing of the SSSIs: an SSSI is instigated because its establishing report lists wildlife which justify its preservation and maintenance as an SSSI. Those species are listed in the article. There are no species listed in the article which are not in the SSSI establishing reports. Whether or not you think they appear elsewhere, and whether or not you think they are common, they are pertinent to the description of the SSSI. That includes some illustration where it would assist the ordinary (i.e. non-expert) reader. The reason why the cowberry is illustrated and the druid is not, is that the cowberry is a rarity in that area and according to the report was not found during the establishing assessment but may be still there. By the time the rocks were named, however, the druid was a fashionable mythical concept which is not in itself a part of Brimham Rocks. The concept of rarity of wildlife is not just about rarity worldwide. In the UK it is about rarity in a certain place. That is why the SSSI was established: some wildlife are rare in that part of the north of England, but the listed wildlife existed at the time of SSSI establishment in that place. Thus the wildlife is not peripheral to the section about the SSSI; on the contrary, the wildlife is essential because it is its reason for being. Storye book (talk) 10:15, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You justified the pictures by speculating about the abilities and behaviour of visitors – that's not "explaining why an article matters", nor is it a valid reason to add pictures of peripherally related subjects that arguably breach MOS:PERTINENCE. It's also not your place to decide "why the article matters" – that's classic WP:OWN. There's nothing "inappropriate" about my pointing any of this out, and you seem to be taking this far too personally. We don't generally clutter articles with pictures of dubious relevance, but have it your way. The galleries are largely harmless and life's too short for debate with someone so convinced of their own rightness. Dave.Dunford (talk) 13:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
