Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Briarcliff Manor Fire Department/1

Briarcliff Manor Fire Department

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Article tagged for notability. Further action may be taken on that point, but GA concerns resolved. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:46, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My biggest qualm is with GA point 3b: this page is full of unnecessary detail. Ɱ (talk · contribs), the article's main contributor, appears to have had worked for Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society at the time, which might explain why this page is full of details only a local would find useful. Also, Abductive (talk · contribs) had raised questions about whether this GA was done properly in the first place, and whether it is properly covered by secondary sources, so throw point 2b in there.

This article is part of Wikipedia:Featured topics/Briarcliff Manor, and I'm suspicious of a few of those articles, but let's start with this one. Apocheir (talk) 02:03, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I could try to take a stab at this, but Apocheir, are there any specific examples of passages you think are too detailed? I see a few examples, like this, but wanted to ask if you had other examples in mind.

1951 was the 50th anniversary of the fire department, and so the village held a week-long celebration beginning on July 1, 1950, with a morning service at the Briarcliff Congregational Church, a band concert at Law Park, and a Fourth of July parade with 5,500 spectators, with a march led by Fred Messinger, followed by eight ex-chiefs. The parade included Scarborough's first fire engine (the red hand-pumped 1901 truck), many bands, and twelve fire departments from Westchester County municipalities. The ex-chief's dinner that evening drew 85 guests. In that year, it was noted that there were not yet any resident deaths from fires within village boundaries. - Honestly, I would have condensed this to one or two sentences.
A year later, one of the most notable fires in the village happened at about 10 pm on January 22, 1982, in the village central business district. The fire began in the basement of Briarcliff Stationers and destroyed the Briarcliff Country Store, Briar Rose, and the Shoe Bazaar. More than a hundred Briarcliff Manor, Pleasantville, and Ossining firefighters assisted to control the fire, which continued to burn at heights of 30–40 feet at midnight, but was under control by 1:30 am. Damage was estimated at $500,000 ($1,516,200 today[9]). - Again, this could be one sentence.

If your main concern is specifically with over-detail, I could try to remedy this. However, if sourcing is the other major issue, it would be much harder for me to find sources for this. Ɱ, who presumably added the main source for this article (A Century of Volunteer Service: Briarcliff Manor Fire Department 1901–2001. Briarcliff Manor Fire Department. 2001.), has unfortunately retired, and he probably has access to news sources that I don't. Epicgenius (talk) 15:53, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've finished cutting the unnecessary detail. Anyone is free to restore details that they think are relevant, or to make further cuts. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:04, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is it really encyclopedic to have a list of retired apparatus? How far back do you go with such things for completeness? Is it really encyclcopedic to inform the reader about equipment that isn't used anymore? I work with governments, and some cities tend to burn through a lot of equipment. I can only imagine if we were to keep a list like this for the police department, listing every Crown Vic they ever had 10 years ago. I will also note that the source for the current apparatus does not support the various Tahoes, Expedition, or utility truck. Hog Farm _Talk 15:19, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the "Retired apparatus" section and integrated the prose into the "history" section. I'm not even sure what to do with the current apparatus that's not backed up by this source, since I doubt whether these pickup trucks or the utility truck even count as firefighting apparatus. – Epicgenius (talk) 16:29, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Apocheir, do you have any other concerns besides the sourcing? I see you pinged Abductive to this reassessment - I'll try to fix anything that comes up to the best of my ability. However, if the fire department indeed is not notable due to a lack of secondary sources (as was alluded to in the original GAN), a merge discussion might be merited. – Epicgenius (talk) 22:27, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delay. I think the sourcing is the most important issue. If it's going to be merged, we're going to need to trim a lot more than if it remains a stand-alone article!

That said, let me respond to your earlier question. I agree with Hog Farm about the chief and assistant chief's vehicles, and I also question whether we need to state every single vehicle purchase that this fire department made, and how much it cost. It seems like every run-of-the-mill transaction the department made is mentioned. I'm suspicious of the second paragraph of the lede, outlining what seems to be an arbitrary collection of mergers and moves. In general there's a bunch of stuff that's the same as any other fire department in the US. Every fire department in 2024 uses radios, for instance. On the other hand, I wonder if the material on the 2018 embezzlement and the 2021 law giving them a carve-out could be expanded. Apocheir (talk) 20:26, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. I have trimmed down some of the info about the vehicular purchases (in particular, removing the cost). I've also added some more details about the embezzlement. There really isn't much to add about the 2021 legislation, though.

In regards to the second paragraph, it summarizes the history section. I'd argue that the mergers and moves are one of the few notable aspects of the history section that will remain if one takes out the info about the vehicular purchases. If the mergers and moves are removed from the article as well, I do not think the article will meet WP:GACR criterion 3a (i.e. the coverage would no longer be broad). – Epicgenius (talk) 16:33, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Epicgenius, Apocheir, and Hog Farm: where does this GAR stand? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:08, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are still notability questions that haven't been addressed. Each point of WP:SIRS is in question for most of these sources, as well as WP:AUD. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to some of the sources that aren't available online, but certainly not to the history of the fire department written by the fire department itself. Apocheir (talk) 03:24, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think most of my concerns have been addressed. While the unsupported ancillary vehicles have been removed from the table, they are still referred-to in text in the sentence The Briarcliff Manor Fire Department has one tower ladder, three class-A pumpers, one heavy rescue vehicle, two ambulances, three chief's cars, a utility truck, and an antique engine. The department also has a trailer for safety demonstrations with a source that does not mention the chief's cars, the utility truck, or the trailer. Additionally, I don't see how it's possibly a due detail to reference the $7,000 trade-in value on the ambulance, especially when it can apparently only be cited to the board minutes that approved it. Hog Farm _Talk 00:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@AirshipJungleman29, I think notability might be an even greater problem. I was really hoping that I would be able to add reliable secondary sources, such as the NYT, but most of the mentions of the fire department that I could find on ProQuest, newspapers.com, and fultonhistory.com are passing mentions. Even The Journal News, which serves this region, doesn't talk about this much. Like I said, Ɱ, the main contributor, probably has access to news sources that I don't; he hasn't edited in months, though. It is a shame, as I was really hoping to save this article by replacing many of the instances of the fire-department history source. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:28, 4 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Epicgenius and Apocheir: if notability is a problem, does one of you want to take this to AfD? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:38, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have we hit all the points of WP:BEFORE? Someone might want to fill out {{Source assess table}} or {{ORGCRIT assess table}} as well. We should have a pretty well-developed case before bringing a good-rated article to AfD. Apocheir (talk) 01:11, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.