Talk:Fastnet Lighthouse

1955 plane crash

I have removed the following paragraph:

On 11 January 1955, Two Avro Shackletons (WG531 and WL743) of No. 42 Squadron of the Royal Air Force departed RAF St Eval on a routine exercise off the Fastnet Rock. The two maritime patrol aircraft took off from St Eval at 10:14 and 10:20 respectively to carry out search exercises as part of their 15-hour patrol. Radio messages received from the two airplanes through 20:00 that night indicated that they were flying at the prescribed 85 miles distance from one another, despite their having departed St. Eval with only six minutes' separation. From 20:58 all contact was lost. A three-day search was conducted, but both aircraft remained missing without a trace, leading to the assumption of a mid-air collision. In 1966, the starboard outer (#4) engine of WL743 was recovered off the southwest Irish coast, about 75 miles north of where authorities had long assumed the collision had occurred.

After reading the cited reference I concluded that the crash had no real connection with the Rock -- it was assumed to have taken place 77 miles south of the Irish coast. The only reason Fastnet Rock appears in the report is that it is the southwestern most point in Ireland, and, therefore, anything that takes place in a large area of the Atlantic can be conveniently described as "off Fastnet Rock".

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs)

I take your point. Rest assured, I know you were within your prerogative to delete my contribution, but, the fact that something is allowed to be done doesn't mean it always ought to be done. I feel that discussion should usually come before destruction in a collaborative project like Wikipedia, not after. Otherwise, an editor could conclude that his contribution had already been tried, found guilty, and executed before he could defend it.

This all came about because I found this article included in Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in 1955, but without any mention of a plane crash in the article. Instead of taking the easy way out and deleting the categorization, I did some research & found a 1955 plane crash that was related to Fastnet Rock. I added a sourced paragraph regarding the incident to this article and left the categorization in place. Given the objection to connecting the plane crash to Fastnet Rock, I'm comfortable leaving the text deleted unless a consensus develops or someone else wants to restore it. --SSBohio 13:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Apologies for the lack of signature -- that was carelessness, nothing else. As to editing style when deleting, there are three possibilities. I could:

1. blow it away
2. carefully move it to the talk page with a comment on why I removed it from the article
3. start a discussion on the talk page and then wait for comment.

1. is really annoying and I generally don't do it unless the text is clearly inappropriate. (Vandals, of course, get a Rollback).
2. is convenient and easy to change back if a consensus the other way develops. I generally use it when I think the consensus will agree with me. It has the advantage that if anyone really cares, (as you apparently do), it gets the discussion going rapidly. It's also consistent with Be Bold.
3. is most polite, as you say, but often develops no comments, so I have to use #2 anyway.

I guess I object to the word "destruction" applied to #2. It's hard to actually destroy anything on Wikipedia -- the history will always turn it up (leaving aside possibilities open only to admins with good reasons). But #2 actually makes it trivial to replace it in the article, including the reference, with one copy and paste. . . Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 23:14, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

My use of the word "destruction" was not calculated to offend, rest assured. Rather, I tried to come up with a term that summed up my perspective of what happened. Text existed in the article, then it ceased to exist in the article. In effect, it was destroyed, as surely as explosives might destroy a building or bridge. Like the case of a building or bridge, sometimes destruction is a necessary part of progress, yet unlike the case of a building or bridge, destruction of Wikipedia content can generally be undone. :)

It comes down to one's editing philosophy, and editing philosophy is a matter of personal judgment: Your first option is something I reserve for the most egregious cases, like vandalism or actual BLP issues. In the other two cases, there is a legitimate difference of opinion over the content that belongs in an article: Your second option doesn't hold much merit for me, as it neither leaves the text unobliterated nor does it acknowledge that one editor's judgment is no more worthy than another's; it imposes a destructive solution, then entreats the original editor to have a nice cup of tea and discuss it. Unless there is clear & convincing reason to warrant erasure, option 3 would almost always be my choice. No harm is being done by the text remaining in the article, and it could be copied here for discussion without its removal from the article. It's less acrimonious; it avoids the appearance of asserting one's opinion to be superior to another's, and it avoids the presumption of consensus.

Please be assured that I take no offense at the minor jibe of removing my text; Good people can & do disagree as to the right course to take. I've found in my time here that disagreements among editors which start with what could be seen as a dismissive or even aggressive act are much more difficult to amicably resolve. Here in the "calm waters" off the Fastnet Rock article, it's of no great concern; in an article that arouses more passionate advocacy, it could prove detrimental, however. Thanks for taking the time to discuss the matter. --SSBohio 13:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. We have remarkably similar edit counts and other measures of experience here, but apparently I run in rougher circles than you -- #1 is often done to me and other editors in cases similar to this. You are the first time anyone has objected to #2 as a matter of style, and I would guess that only perhaps 10% of my #2 actions have gotten any objection at all. And, as I said above, it has been my experience that unless I force the discussion with #2, that discussion never happens. And, as I said above, I can't see that "destruction", "obliterated", and the like are words that can be applied to something that can be undone with a simple copy and paste.

With that said, I will grant you that the paragraph was not wrong, merely irrelevant, so there was no real urgency in removing it. It's too bad there isn't a #2.5 method.

And, anyone who can write of the "calm waters" off Fastnet Rock, needs to read 1979 Fastnet race. . . Jim - Jameslwoodward (talk • contribs) 15:56, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm coming to this nearly 11 years later, but if there is another article into which that paragraph would fit, then I would prefer to move it there rather than outright deletion. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

External links modified

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Moved

Given that 80% of this article is about the two lighthouses, I have boldly moved to Fastnet Lighthouse. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:25, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Caption on old photo of Fastnet lighthouse has date that is wrong, probably by two decades

A caption posted with an old black and white photo of the Fastnet lighthouse claims that it was taken before 1881, because, according to the caption, that is when the lighthouse was destroyed. However, the article does not specify when the first lighthouse was destroyed. The article does however mention a "nearby Calf tower" that was destroyed in 1881. Presumably Calf tower was on nearby West Calf Island. The article mentions that the same storm that destroyed the Calf tower broke the glass in the first Fastnet lantern, suggesting that the first Fastnet lighthouse survived the storm mostly intact. Since the second Fastnet lighthouse was not built on the exact spot of the first lighthouse, the two towers could have stood simultaneously for years, or even decades, before the first tower was demolished. This page actually includes photos showing the two towers standing side by side in 1907: https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/find/Searcy/page:362 The fact that the Second Fastnet lighthouse is not visible in the incorrectly dated photo suggests that work on the second lighthouse either had not started, or, more likely, was in its early stages when the photo was taken. The photo looks too crisp and modern to have been taken before 1881. In particular, very few cameras of that era were equipped with plates sensitive enough to capture waves without blurring, especially if the camera was on a moving ship, as seems likely. Probably, the date of the photo is closer to 1900, by which time cameras had greatly improved, and work on the second lighthouse was in its early phase. 63.157.251.26 (talk) 03:13, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the "before 1881" comment seems to have been added by somebody working on the National Library of Ireland's Flickr account, and it's subsequently been copied when the file was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The NLI's catalogue record for the plate records creation as occurring "between ca. 1865-1914", and it appears that the Flickr caption was updated to "circa 1900" about ten years ago now based on observations like these. I've adjusted the description page at Wikimedia Commons accordingly. XAM2175 ^(T) 18:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)