Talk:West Coast Airlines Flight 956

Coords

The coords given place the crash site on the Washington side of the river... Katr67 (talk) 21:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look, thanks for the catch --Trashbag (talk) 21:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Ok, so I took the original coordinates from page 3 of the NTSB Report. When I check the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center's Crash Locator it appears that the latitude minutes should be 15 instead of 51. --Trashbag (talk) 22:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

This is definitely not the first time that the NTSB and the CAB have published incorrect crash coordinates, believe me. It's more common than one might reasonably expect. I've learned to try to find other sources for corroboration, such as wreck chaser websites, and to use mapping services like Google Earth to see if the published coordinates make any sense. --Itsfullofstars (talk) 18:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I have looked for this DC9 several times. It is not where Google earth has it located as far as I could see. Looked for it in June of 09. The thing is you can walk right by a crash in the forest and not see it. Sometimes you have to step on them or trip over them to see them. Oregonwreckchaser

Project tags

There's nothing wrong with adding tags or ratings before an article is "done". They're never done, and they're easy enough to change. See WP:OWN. BTW, {{talkheader}} is really only needed on articles that might be controversial or inspire chatting. Katr67 (talk) 01:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Coordinate error

You have the wrong spot marked for the crash site. See 45°15.577′N 121°59.714′W Type this in Google Earth. Treeless spot on slope. N9101 is there. I have been there. Look at Picasa wreckchasing in Oregon.

{{geodata-check}}

The following coordinate fixes are need for

—Kp57 (talk) 06:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I just reviewed the sources in the article, and it looks like it is all messed up, in agreement with the conversation above which began a couple years ago. Do you have a source for this coordinate? —EncMstr (talk) 07:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The coords given by Kp57, above - 45°15.577′N 121°59.714′W - point to a location which is only about 400 meters from those already in the article. I don't know if that's the error that KP57 is complaining of or whether it's the fact that when you click on the coordinates currently in the article - 45°15.35′N 121°59.6′W - and then select Google Earth "Open" from GeoHack it takes you to the wrong place (specifically, to 45.21082778, -121.80559167, instead of 45.255833, -121.993333, which is about 15.5 km out of place). The latter error is a (known) Google error, not a Wikipedia error (it can also occur with Google Maps and with the "w/ meta data" link for Google Earth, though the meta data link gives correct results in this case). I don't know whether the coords in the article are correct or the ones proposed by Kp57 are correct, but Google Earth takes you to the wrong place. A couple of notes:

• This is not the 15 vs 51 error discussed above cropping back up, because 51 takes you to an entirely different place over 30 km away.
• There is a marker rectangle in Wikimapia for this wreck site which includes the coords currently given in the article.
• Per this Panoramio picture made by this guy, Kp57 is correct.

I'll let someone else make the call, but I think that Kp57 is probably correct and that the coords and the Wikimapia rectangle probably ought to be changed. Regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 22:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm bothered by several aspects:

1) The article's current coordinate appears to be unsourced.

2) The NTSB report gives the crash site at 45°51′21″N 121°59′36″W—obviously wildly wrong—being 66.4 kilometres (41.3 mi) almost perfectly due north of the crash area. The current article coordinate is 422 metres (1,385 ft) away from the Kp57 one. map of these points

3) NTSB says the craft came to rest at elevation 3890. The topographic map at this point shows it is just above 4000—perhaps 4020—close enough for me. The report characterizes the ridge as being 4090 feet, which does not convincingly well agree with current maps showing 4144. A lot of the ridge length around this area is at about 4100 ft.

I'm inclined to agree that Kp57 is right. He's probably been there and positively identified the wreckage. But I'm not sure how to go about sourcing that. —EncMstr (talk) 23:36, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Though there is no express exception to Wikipedia's general rule about sourcing for coordinates, there seems to be something approaching consensus by silence that while sourcing coordinates is the best practice, that coordinates do not have to be sourced. (See this brief discussion.) Part of the problem is that if coords are inserted, as usual, in the title of the article and/or in an infobox as part of the built-in parameters of the box, there's frequently no non-clumsy way of adding a source reference (the source parameter in the coord tag is expressly intended for use by bots per the tag documentation; adding a ref in an infobox — which worked in this case — may well break other infoboxes, especially if the ref is long, complex, or has unusual characters). (See this discussion.) But in my mind, the bigger problem is that that many subjects which lend themselves to being given coordinates simply cannot be located except through original research or reliance on sources which would not be considered to be reliable for other purposes. For example, Wikipedia:Obtaining_geographic_coordinates#Manually says that it is an acceptable practice to provide coords for an article by going to that place yourself and using a GPS unit to obtain the coords. Similarly, on a number of occasions, I've provided or corrected coordinates for articles by simply looking up the street address of a place through Google Maps and then using Google street view (or, in both instances, some other similar service) to confirm that the place on the map that the search has taken me is really the place the article is about. Though I'm a strong believer in proper sourcing for article content, I'm, frankly, okay with this situation. To me, coordinates are a lagniappe or "add-on" to the article, as are images, which are also generally unsourced except for copyright compliance, or are from unreliable sources, and are frequently original research (e.g. my panorama which appears in the Bisbee, Arizona article). The only time that sourcing should be a requirement for such things is when a dispute arises about them. I don't think there's a dispute here, but the divergence between the official coords, the corrected official coords, and Kp57's on the ground coords makes me reluctant to immediately change the article. I'd like to know how Kp57 got the coords and will post that question on his talk page. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 15:08, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Kp57 says here that he determined the coordinates using a GPS unit at the site. Per Wikipedia:Obtaining_geographic_coordinates#Manually that's enough to reliably source the coordinates in this case and I'm changing them in the article to match. Best regards, TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 14:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)