Talk:History of the world's tallest structures

Tallest Twin Towers

In the second Table “Tallest destroyed structures by category, not surpassed by existing structures”, The category “Twin Towers” lists “One & Two World Trade Center” in New York, USA, with height 417/415 meters. However the main table (existing structures) correctly lists “Petronas Twin Towers” in Malaysia as tallest with height of 452 meters. Hence the “tallest destroyed” should not list the “One & Two World Trade Center” as these were not taller than Petronas “Petronas Twin Towers” (or the table title should not mentions “…not surpassed by existing structures” in the future cambodia phnom penh capital city of cambodia there will be thai boon roong twin tower world trade center 561.7 meters 1843 feets vojtik2009

Warsaw radio mast

It was the tallest structure in the world for over 20 years, yet not mentioned in historical tallest structures list.

Bottom table

What is the point of the table at the bottom of this article? It doesn't have its own section, but it's the one titled "Tallest structures through time". Is it supposed to be a list of the tallest structures through time? Because if so, then it's missing a ton of things. And if not, then I don't know what it's supposed to be. Right now it looks almost identical to the Tallest freestanding structures on land section's History subsection. I don't know why we'd have the same list twice. The only legitimate difference between them right now is that the Warsaw Radio Mast isn't freestanding. But it's absurd to list the whole table twice, rather than just listing it once, then having a note at the bottom that just says that a list of freestanding structures would be identical, but without the Warsaw Radio Mast. We don't seem to be able to maintain a single table, let alone two.

It looks like we've got a lot of issues like this. A bunch of redundant lists of similar things which aren't being maintained. I'd like to clean up the whole thing. - Burner89751654 (talk) 17:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I've now fixed it. It was a huge change. - Burner89751654 (talk) 03:22, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Merge proposal

There is a merge discussion in progress that affects this page. Please participate at this link and not here. Thank you. - Burner89751654 (talk) 20:43, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

They have now been merged. - Burner89751654 (talk) 03:22, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

KCTV Broadcast Tower for tallest tower of 1956?

In the section where we list the tallest tower throughout history, should we include the KCTV Broadcast Tower? That section says it excludes other tall TV towers because they have guy-wires for support, and it only wants to include freestanding towers. But the KCTV Broadcast Tower is unusual in that despite the fact that it's a tall TV tower, it's actually freestanding. No guy-wires. So maybe we should include it in the list of historical record holders.

The list also says it's only supposed to include towers that are meant for regular access by humans. And the KCTV Broadcast Tower might not meet that standard. But I doubt people were considering that tower when they created the criteria. What do you guys say?

Wikipedia used to have two lists of tallest towers. I just merged them, and this tower was on one of the lists, but not the other one. It's debatable whether it should be on the merged list. Although I'm in favor of adding it. It's interesting, and I don't think it hurts anything to have it on the list. - Burner89751654 (talk) 03:24, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Underwater structures

In the past, the section with the history of tallest structures excluded the Petronius oil platform, since most of it was underwater. I have now added it to the section for tallest overall structures, and created a separate section for tallest structures on dry land, which excludes it. I think that's the best way to handle these situations where some criteria exclude some structures.

But there may be other tall structures underwater that held the record for tallest structure. Is there a list of those somewhere? I found these articles on Tension-leg platforms and Floating production storage and offloading units, which mention some tall structures. Although those articles don't seem to have many details (like dates), and they might be missing some historically significant structures. And the structures they list either don't have Wikipedia articles of their own at all, or have articles without many details. In many cases the articles list how deep they go underwater, but not their total height (including height above water). - Burner89751654 (talk) 23:07, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

In the oil platform article, I put together a section for the History of deepest offshore oil wells. Although I'm not sure they were all part of structures that went all the way to the water's surface. And even if they did go to the surface at one point, that might've just been temporary (especially for dry wells). I haven't found much detail on that in the reading I've done. But I'm not an expert. Can anyone else add those details to that list? - Burner89751654 (talk) 14:52, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Move proposal

Wikipedia has an article titled List of tallest buildings which is a list of the tallest buildings. And it has an article titled List of tallest structures which is a list of the tallest structures of all types. Then it has this article, which is titled "List of tallest buildings and structures," although that isn't what it is. I suggest we move it to a different title. Two, actually. The bottom section should be moved to "History of the world's tallest structures," which is phrased similarly to the similar article History of the world's tallest buildings. The top section should be split off into a new article titled "Tallest structures by category." If people are ok with this, then I'll implement it myself, and change the links that currently point to this article (or many of them, at least). At the new split-off article, I'll also leave a note in the first edit directing people back to the old article, if they ever want to look up its history. - Burner89751654 (talk) 02:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I wish there was a more elaborate way to explain this, but all these decisions here and above were just not well thought-out. The present state of the article is clearly superior to the ever-elaboration that followed, and I suggest you post somewhere more visible (like maybe WT:WikiProject Architecture) to discuss these structural and scope problems you have with it, because I simply don't understand the general motivation and the crux of the issue seems to be you've had very little ability to bounce ideas off other editors. Reading your points on Talk:List of tallest structures, it seems your main issue is redundancy—but why? The point is to help readers by presenting information in a useful and contextualized manner, not by making sure there's as little double-cover as possible. Remsense ‥ 论 22:13, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The version from March is definitely not superior to my latest version, and I can't imagine why you'd think it is. It would take a long time to count the exact number, but I'd estimate that your recent edits have introduced approximately 200 errors. For example, just from the bottom part of the single section List of tallest buildings and structures#Tallest structures, freestanding structures, and buildings: between 1884 and 2010, 13 different structures held the title of tallest structure in the world. Your edit omits 11 of those 13. That's not even all that errors in that half of that single section, and you've introduced similar errors in the other sections.

I'll give you a chance to respond, and I'm happy to discuss this somewhere else if you want, but I intend to switch it back to my version. If you think there is something specific about the March version that's better than my version, then you're welcome to change that specific thing. But you shouldn't switch the whole thing back unless you have some reason to think it's better to have a table that omits 11 of the 13 most recent records. This is an excellent example of why you shouldn't revert an entire major edit, or multiple major edits, without taking the time to review precisely what they did. Especially when, as you acknowledged, you don't know what was motivating their edits, and you didn't bother to ask. Several of your recent edits introduce allegations that aren't just wrong, but they even contradict each other.

My motivation wasn't to eliminate redundancy, although that's certainly a good cause on its own. My motivation was to fix an article that was full of errors and omissions. But it's easier to fix the errors after eliminating all the redundancy, since then I only had to fix them once. I suspect the redundancy contributed to all the errors, because it's harder to keep something free of errors if it lists the same thing over and over again, and you have to check multiple lists. - Burner89751654 (talk) 14:28, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

For page moves, use WP:RM to get consensus. For massive changes like you did, make it in your sandbox, then get consensus for the change beforehand. This is a high profile article with lots of people watching, you can't do whatever you want and not expect to be reverted. If you are really right, you should have no trouble convincing others your way is an improvement. Another way s piecemeal, make a small number of changes, along with a talk page discussion explaining what you did and why and a link to the diff, then wait for others to respond before proceeding. If you edit war ("switch back") at this point, you will likely be on the road to getting blocked. Wikipedia is consensus based. -- GreenC 17:50, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

In my experience, people don't always agree with something just because it's right. But I appreciate your suggestion to ask about something on the talk page, then wait for others to respond before making a big, controversial change. If you scroll up, you'll see that most of this talk page consists of me doing that. As opposed to Remsense, who reverted changes he clearly didn't even understand, without any discussion.

It's been a few days, and it seems like there's no strong argument for omitting 11 of the 13 latest records, so I'll switch it back to the version that fixes all the errors. If people insist on adding back some of the redundancy, then I still think that's a bad idea, but I'm not too strongly opposed to it. As long as they don't add hundreds of errors to the article in the process. - Burner89751654 (talk) 21:24, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

KRDK-TV mast

In 1998 they briefly added a flagpole to the KRDK-TV mast. There are references for that, and nobody seems to be disputing it. So I added it to the article, since that made it the tallest structure in the world at the time. Although it seems strange that it hasn't already been acknowledged in a ton of places. Any comments? - Burner89751654 (talk) 19:48, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Disputes

It seems like the heights we listed for Old St Paul's Cathedral and Lincoln Cathedral are good, although they are disputed. The article already noted the dispute about the Lincoln Cathedral, and I added a note about the dispute about Old St Paul's Cathedral.

There's also a disputed claim that the Kanishka Stupa was once the tallest structure in the world. It looks like it probably wasn't, so I didn't include it in our list, but I did note the dispute at the bottom. I think that's the best way to handle these disputes.

I'd also like to add the Yongning Pagoda. It's disputed, but it may well have been the tallest structure. Although I'd like to get a better source for the best estimate of its height. Can anyone help with that? - Burner89751654 (talk) 19:49, 26 May 2025 (UTC)