Talk:History of coal mining

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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.

If this is expanded, this should be linked as "main article" from history section of coal mining article.

If it is not expanded, it should be merged with coal mining. Gene Nygaard 21:31, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 AfD 1.1 = 2 Expansion 3 References? 4 Future diggings

[edit] AfD

I am not a good person to AfD things, but somone needs to merge this with coal mining and Afd this artocle. If it becomes necessary, it can be recreated in the future. MPS 15:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it needs to be expanded rather than deleted - coal mining has a long history and was an important industry in many countries. I could do Wales but I know very little about coal mining in other countries. However if enough people chip in it could become a decent article. Wikipedia is very weak on industrial history at the moment. Rhion 14:52, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] =

If anybody reading this knows students at colleges in regions where coal mining is common perhaps they could recruit some of them to edit this article?

[edit] Expansion

I would oppose the merging of this with coal mining. However this is a vast subject, and probably needs to be dealt with by providing regional overviews for each major coalfield in each country. Indeed some of these may need separate articles with this one providing an overview.

Even the present bibliography on Great Britain is severely incomplete, lacking scholarly works by J. U. Nef, John Hatcher, M. W. Flinn and others. Peterkingiron 08:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I upgraded the bibliography. Rjensen 08:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References?

I think someone has confused the reference section with a general "Further reading"-list. I mean, the darned thing is longer than the article. I've moved the list here to the talkpage. Please don't move it back without sorting out the actual references first. And do try to keep it a bit more compact.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:31, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Let's solve the problem by calling it a bibliography. It is useful to users and to the editors who will actually write some substance in this very thin article. Rjensen 11:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Try to solve the problem by cleaning it up first. It looks absolutely awful right now. Not even FAs have bibliographies of this size, and they actually use them.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

It's been over two months already and the list is still just a dumping ground for random books on coal mining. Please amend the problem, or I will do it for you and to hell with what I actually know about the literature.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

The bibliography is NOT a dumping ground. I selected most of the titles after looking at about 10x as many. The goal is to give people 'something to work with ---if they are interested in the topic they can follow it out through the bibliography. Someday we will have much better text as well, but meanwhile we should go with what strengths we have. Rjensen 21:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

That's setting a very low standard for article quality. Content should fit the article, not other way around, especially when it's just sitting there for months. Not even FAs have bibliographies of this size, so you're aiming for an ideal that doesn't exist.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:32, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually the article contains a valuable bibliography for everyone interested in coal mining. That seems useful. People who want to see more text should write text. Rjensen 18:11, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The bibliography is too ambitious. Listing some 50 or so titles isn't particularly helpful to the general readership. The extreme bias towards Britain and the US doesn't exactly improve the situation. And, no, adding another 50 titles about "world" coal mining wouldn't solve the problem.

Peter ^Isotalo 11:09, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

The Bibliography is useful to Wiki users and will not in any way hurt or hinder anyone. It closely reflects the English language serious literature...Not that British Empire and USA dominated coal mining well int o20c. (There is rather little English language lit on German or French mining--I added what I found.) Rjensen 03:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future diggings

Thanks :-)

The article still needs a lot of expansion, After all there massive biblogrpahy shows there is a lot that can be written on the subject..

It might also be worht mentioning in passing things like

Davey lamp,Geordie lamp. School of the Mines, the discover of coke, role of coal in gas production etc (gas works were a major coal user in the UK until natural gas was found in the North Sea), Role of coilers in labour relations (like for example the General Strike in 1926) etc etc...

ShakespeareFan00 22:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. I will keep digging into the US materials and add something on Canada. Maybe Germany too. Rjensen 23:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)