Talk:Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Iran Air 655

This should be prominently mentioned in the "See Also" Section, if not in body of the article as it is the one incident that has had the most obvious parallels. The geopolitical consequences of this incident were discussed in considerable detail by many different commentators and definitely passes the threshold for notability and relevance.[1] [2] [3] 150.251.3.1 (talk) 22:06, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Hi. We don't include in the see also because it would be filled with every shootdown incident (KAL007, IRAN655 etc). Stickee (talk) 22:23, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@150.251.3.1: AFAIK there were also discussed, compared and contrasted (and referenced) parallels with KAL 007, El AL 402 and Pan Am 103, and perhaps other airliner shootdowns/incidents. So the question here is which of them and why should be mentioned in the "See also" section - and so far the agreed answer (as far as I can check in the talk archives) was that linking the List of aircraft accidents and incidents resulting in at least 50 fatalities was the least flame-baiting solution.

Directly to the point, including the specific mention of the "Iran Air 655" only in the "See also" section can be seem as an instance of WP:UNDUE.-ז62 (talk) 22:29, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Stickee and ז62, although I did find that "Hidden Hypocrisy" article by Samarth Gupta in the Harvard Political Review particularly good and I hope there might be an opportunity to use it somewhere. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Vladyslav Voloshyn

Vladyslav Voloshyn, the pilot that Russia alleges shot down MH17, committed suicide yesterday (BBC News). Not sure whether yet another Russian denial needs adding or not, so am opening for discussion and consensus. Mjroots (talk) 11:38, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

The article doesn't make it clear that his death is related to MH17 and in fact indicates depression as the cause. - Ahunt (talk) 12:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Completely normal in the case to clean the evidence. Similar to Jack Ruby case. So claims now are more objective. --PetarM (talk) 16:59, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Voloshyn is currently not named in the article, I believe the relevant sentence is this one: "On 21 July 2014, the Russian Ministry of Defence held a press conference and said that while the Boeing 777 was crashing, a Ukrainian Su-25 ground-attack aircraft approached to within 3 to 5 kilometres (1.9 to 3.1 mi) of the Malaysian airliner." I assume the following wsj.com source, dated 22 July, supports this claim, but I many sources: [Vladyslav Voloshyn can't see the whole article. When was Voloshyn named as the culprit? Should he now be named in the article? The suicide is reported in many sources, besides BBC: Kyivpost, Newsweek, New York Post, The Daily Telegraph. Martinevans123 (talk) 20:21, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Voloshyn is currently not even named in the article so, in my opinion, including his 'suicide' in the article now would give - in one way or other - undue weight to Russian propagandist/conspirational claims (moreover - the Russian official/semi-official propaganda presented several mutually contradictory versions, not just this one). If the identity of pilot falsely accused by Russia (and it's pretty clear that Russian version is just fake news, unsupported by evidence) was not important previously, it hardly becomes important when he dies for unrelated reasons - unless there are some new facts/evidence.

On an unrelated note, it seems to me that a lot of people blamed by Russian administration for something "kill themselves" lately, but that's neither here nor there.-ז62 (talk) 17:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree, including this gives too much weight to the Russian attempts to blame the shoot down on Ukraine. There is nothing linking this death to MH17. - Ahunt (talk) 17:41, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

The depression may have been caused by the accusations, but that in itself does not make his death relevant to the MH17 article (although it would make MH17 relevant to the Vladyslav Voloshyn if it is ever created). So fully agree that this has no place here. Arnoutf (talk) 18:14, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Comparison to other accidents

I saw the "Accident Trivia" section on the old talk page. I respect everyone's opinion. But I feel that comparing this to other accidents IS important for various reasons: 1. Other articles do list the death toll and compare them to other aviation accidents, while this one doesn't list any except for MH370. 2. In a no survivors crash, the word "all" is usually typed up in parenthesis next to the # of fatalities, whic is to prevent confusion. I don't know why, but some poeple feel that the "all" is unnecessary, but I think with out it, it would be confusing, so therefore, it is necessary! Also I typed this into the article multiple times, but people kept removing it (no offense to them by the way):

"The 298 death toll also makes MH17 the deadliest accident in the history of Malaysia Airlines, the deadliest aviation accident to occur in Ukraine, the deadliest aviation accident involving the Boeing 777, and (as of March 2018) the deadliest aviation accident of the 21st century."

So what do you think. do you agree or disagree? Be honest!Tigerdude9 (talk) 22:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

No objection. But I realise some editors see it as a waste of effort. Perhaps it's best left to the List of Accidents (and other?) tables? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:32, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

No, I disagree with addition of further trivia, as have other editors. There is already a trivia sentence in the lead: "The crash is the deadliest airliner shootdown, seventh-deadliest aviation disaster, and was Malaysia Airlines' second aircraft loss during 2014 after the disappearance of Flight 370 on 8 March.[5]". As for the "(all)" - there is already "survivors = 0" in the infobox. It is redundant to double it up. Stickee (talk) 22:56, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Ok, you are right. the long part about MH17 being the deadliest of the 21st century is too much and should either: not be there at all and have the trivia remain the same, edited to be ample, or just put the whole thing on the bottom. of the top page. To be honest I think I'm just going to with the first option.

However, if I do make another edit about death tolls (which I probably won't), would the following be considered ample? "The crash is also the deadliest accident involving the Boeing 777." I noticed that for an article on the deadliest accident involving a certain type of aircraft the article usually says it is the deadliest involving said type of aircraft. But as I said earlier, I'm not trying to bloat up the trivia or cause further confusion. Thank you.Tigerdude9 (talk) 16:12, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Here's an opinionated mini-essay about what I would consider to be trivia, and what I wouldn't. What is trivia: Generally, trivia are factoids that may be true but whose truth value have no discernable consequence in the real world. One way to create trivia is the misuse of categorization to create a potentially unlimited number of meaningless comparisons. I don't consider it trivia to mention that Malaysia Airlines lost two airliners in 2014, because there were real-world (financial) consequences of that fact for the airline, and because it's likely that some readers may get these events confused. So for those reasons I wouldn't consider that factoid to be trivia, it's actually kind of useful because I consider these two MH accidents to be a natural category. I would consider "deadliest accident in an even-numbered year" to be trivia because it would be based on an artificial category. "Deadliest accident ever", if it were true, would be a natural category and therefore more likely to have meaning.

In practice, not all trivia is bad, but much of it is. Ultimately whether an item of trivia should be mentioned or not depends on whether sources are discussing it, and how much depth of coverage it gets. Usually, they don't tend to cover lists of deadliest accidents much. There are lots of sources talking about this incident, few if any are worried about where this ranks in terms of 777 accidents, so there's no strong reason to mention this. Yes, there are online databases for enthusiasts, where you can find this information if you seek it out. Those sites are potentially usable as sources, especially if you have a list article that is designed to rank things. But since few other sources care about these comparisons, it should generally be left out of the main article. "Deadliest Accident Ever" is something that sources will probably discuss widely, so that would be included. How widespread a factoid is being discussed in reliable sources is the most important thing in determining whether a factoid should be included in a Wikipedia article, the term for this principle is "Weight". In theory, this means that the decision about what is "important" or not is made by sources and not Wikipedia editors.

It's my personal opinion that an ideal article would cover everything that has sufficient weight, and no more. I believe that not all information is equally useful, and that useful facts are actually made less useful when they're buried in irrelevant ones--even if all the facts are verifiable and known to be true. Not everyone necessarily sees it that way. In practice, when using the Weight criterion, different editors disagree about what has Weight and what doesn't, and how much Weight things seem to have, and this often gives rise to debates until some kind of agreement (consensus) is reached between a majority of editors. The harder it was to get consensus on something, the less friendly and welcoming established editors will usually be towards anyone that tries to change it! Also the editors that wrote one article may have had nothing to do with another article, so expect some variation between articles. This subject matter has a lot of geopolitical overtones, so there may be less overlap between this particular group of editors and the ones that might be editing an article about some crash caused by pilot error than you might expect.

I don't know why so many crash articles have "(all)" mentioned when it isn't necessary for encyclopedic prose. A plausible hypothesis is that the editors who write aviation articles may be more likely than others to be culturally/habitually attuned to the importance of redundancy in mission critical checklists. I don't see how that would confuse anyone, but if this weren't a Wikipedia article and actual lives were depending on all the numbers tallying, then I would feel differently about it. Geogene (talk) 20:16, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Keep in mind that MH17 was not an accident, it was shot down, so any comparisons to aviation accidents is not really relevant. Also we have a consensus to not write "all" and "survivors = 0", as it is redundant. - Ahunt (talk) 20:57, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

I concur, although I'm not convinced it was actually fully intended to shoot down a passenger airliner. We don't tend to compare civil disasters with wartime ones. In the UK maritime world RMS Titanic and RMS Lusitania are not really usefully compared, are they? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:08, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Capitalization

Is "Russian Government" a proper noun as a whole? Or is "Russian" an adjective and "government" a noun? It matters for capitalization. The article is presently at variance with itself. Heptor (talk) 23:37, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Googling site:en.wikipedia.org "russian government" reveals that most don't capitalise the word "government". Stickee (talk) 07:43, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Since Russian is derived from the proper noun Russia, I'd think it will always have a capital letter. In British English you'll often find Government with a capital g. But Wikipedia likes to have special rules on capitalisation. Martinevans123 (talk) 07:51, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

I googled a bit more. It seems like in many cases the word "Government" is capitalized when the writer is within the jurisdiction of that government. In other words, when the writer feels like it's his or her own Government it feels more natural to write it with a capital G, but when it's somebody else's government, the proper adjective[4] is often used to clarify which government the writer has in mind. Based on that I'd argue that Wikipedia should never capitalize the G for any government, since Wikipedia aims to be WP:Global. Heptor (talk) 00:31, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Intercepts

Regarding the two (currently last) sentences in the lead: "In late July 2014, communications intercepts were made public in which, it is claimed, separatists are heard discussing an aircraft that they had downed.[21][22][23][24] A video from the crash site, recorded by the rebels and obtained by the News Corp Australia, shows the first rebel soldiers to arrive at the crash site. At first they assumed that the downed aircraft was a Ukrainian military jet, and were dismayed when they started to realise that it was a civilian airliner. [25]". I suspect that the intercepts and the video of the crash published by the rebels are the same. Heptor (talk) 09:55, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

They're different. Follow the links and you can listen to the intercept and watch the video. Stickee (talk) 07:42, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! Heptor (talk) 00:32, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Last paragraph

I think the last paragraph [Ed: in the lead] should be moved to the "Aftermath" section. The lead is definitely longer than four well-formed paragraphs. Also, as written, the lead seems to go out of its way to mention the word "Russia" as many times as possible, so it kindof reads like propaganda. There were a few other propagandist devices that I cleaned up recently, essentially using guilt-by-association: [5], [6]. I'm very concerned that it stayed in the articles for so long. Heptor (talk) 10:35, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I removed most of the excessive use of "Russia"[7], so it doesn't look too bad now in that sense. Still too long though. Heptor (talk) 11:57, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

I now moved the paragraph to the "Aftermath" section as "discussed" above. We should be extra careful about giving descriptions like this undue weight, since it vaguely insinuates guilt. As per above, a Wikipedia article shouldn't read like propaganda for either side. Heptor (talk) 10:26, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Comment: These changes were surely "proposed", but not actually "discussed", as far I was able to find. (Personally I've noticed some changes made earlier, but haven't really noticed all what was going on in the article in the last few days.) As for the what's due and what's undue, it can work both ways: move of the Malaysian UNSC proposal (vetoed by Russia) from intro to "Aftermath": it seemed to me to be a pretty notable event in the context of the whole incident, so moving it into the section "Aftermath", without prior establishing general consensus, and under pretense of copy-editing, seems to me to be a rather large change. And attempts to remove allegedly "excessive" use of words "Russia/Russian" can also be seen in another way - Russian connection was usually pretty well supported by sources quoted (as I skimmed the changes), and it usually served to make more clear what forces were meant in the given context - so their removal can be also seen as an attempt to tone down the Russian involvement, which could be a case of wp:FALSEBALANCE. Not that I'm going to revert the changes, but I'd not going to oppose anyone who would like to review them in greater detail.-ז62 (talk) 20:15, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi ז62. Thank you for your comment. I wrote "discussed" in quotations marks somewhat ironically since I didn't get any responses to my post. I don't mind to re-open the topic, which of course deserves a thorough debate. That being said, I think the lead is reasonably balanced as it stands now: the Russian involvement is mentioned and thoroughly discussed, it's just that the word "Russia" isn't mentioned twice in every sentence as you can find in some Ukrainian sources, e.g. the public announcement by Yatsenyuk that is quoted in the article. Copy-editing is a valid supplementary argument, not a pretense: the lead was (still is) too long by Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section. My concern about the content is that that paragraph, when out of context, seems to insinuate that the Russian government may have blocked the investigation of the incident. This is at best an oversimplification: the DPR allowed observers unrestricted access to the crash site and also collaborated with the investigation in other manners. So this paragraph, when standing by itself and given a lot of weight, seems to create a one-sided impression of the situation to a less than fully diligent reader, thus violating WP:NPOV. Heptor (talk) 03:23, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

It's not about your opinion of balance, it's about whether the article's balance matches that of reliable sources. Stickee (talk) 10:44, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

@Heptor:

"Russia" and "Russian" served to identify clearly what side/forces etc. were meant (for the same purpose as "Ukraine" and "Ukrainian" are used there), in a quite complicated structure of sentences, depicting quite convoluted sequence of events, with involvement of forces of Ukraine, Russia and "pro-Russian-though-officially-not-supported insurgents" - not to assign any sort of blame on Russia as you for some reason imagined, in an undoubtedly well intentioned, but not quite so well thought through attempt at the article improvement.

What I mean - one-sided removal of words "Russia"/"Russian" do not improve readability of the intro, and their retaining would do not compromise balance of the intro in any way, as they serve merely to clarify/clearly identify what side/forces were meant, as supported by references.

Your mention of Ukrainian sources does not seem to be related to the copyediting of the English Wikipedia at all. Can you please clarify why you mentioned them?

'My concern about the content is that that paragraph, when out of context, seems to insinuate that the Russian government may have blocked the investigation of the incident.

No, it clearly states that the Russian government vetoed the 2015 proposal to prosecute those deemed responsible. Your concerns about possible misinterpretation seem to be a bit overreaacting and what disturbs me is your barely hidden intent to protect Russian government against even such a far-fetched possibility you somehow imagined.

You should also perhaps re-consider if the word re-open [the topic] is really appropriate here, as so far it hasn't been closed, and it would be pointless to think othwerwise.--ז62 (talk) 14:56, 22 May 2018 (UTC)