Talk:B-17 Flying Fortress

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Archives /Archive 1 (Pre-FA) Feb 5, 2007

Contents 1 Ball turret size 2 Access dates of references 3 Comment 4 Surviving Aircraft

[edit] Ball turret size

It would be helpful if the article included the diameter of the ball turret, especially the inside diameter! (I can't find this information anywhere.)

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.216.11.5 (talk) 19:54, 31 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Access dates of references

I think these need to be in a specific format, although I am not sure of the exact constraints. If not in this format, it seems that they appear as red links. Snowman 17:00, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Again, there are no rules for this, but the reader should be able to navigate via one system of dates rather than three, which was the case. I adopted the first date system employed and used it throughout. Bzuk 17:04 4 February 2007 (UTC). See your date above, you also use this system.

My date is not linked. I am trying to avoid all the red linked dates. To maintain the one consistent format (which I presume is your preferred option), I guess that the red linked dates would all need to be piped. Alternatively; the current date format within the main text could remain to be internally consistent, and the assess dates could all be changed to the format that is recognised by the software. ("2007-01-30" works). Actually, I see no reason why the software does not recognise your date format. Snowman 17:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

A separate field called "accessyear" can be added to the references, so that "accessdate" contains the month and day (or vice-versa), and "accessyear" contains the year. Here's how it stands now:

{{cite web |url= http://www.boeing.com/history/chronology/chron04.html |title= The Boeing Logbook: 1933 – 1938|accessdate=18 December 2006|format= |work= Boeing.com}}

…and here is how it's supposed to be:

{{cite web |url= http://www.boeing.com/history/chronology/chron04.html |title= The Boeing Logbook: 1933 – 1938|accessdate=18 December|accessyear=2006|format= |work= Boeing.com}}

This way, references will display the access dates properly. I'll convert a few references for starters, but I hope I'll get some help to fix them all. —Squalla 17:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Update: I started fixing the dates, and noticed that the year was not appearing at some of the references. Whilst trying to figure out what I was doing wrong I noticed you had converted most of the dates, and just noticed that you reverted some of them. I'll do a little search to see if I can find out what's wrong. —Squalla 19:15, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Similarly, I do not know why the year date is not displayed for a few of the links. At the time, I reverted the page, because I thought I did something wrong with the "find/replace" & "RegEx" on AWB. Snowman 19:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

For my 2¢, I'm not sure why the references needed to be changed at all. If the reader has a preference to how a date should be shown, then they can select that form in their user preferences. Right now I have chosen wikilinked dates to be shown as "16:12, January 15, 2001". So no matter how a date is formed in the article, whether it be [[8 January]] [[2007]], [[January 8]] [[2007]], or [[2007-01-08]], it all shows up as 8 January 2007, 2007-01-08, January 8, 2007 (to me they all appear alike). Yes, they look different when you are editing the article, but we are doing this for the reader, not the editor. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 20:32, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

You might have been referring to an earlier change, but talking about this evenings changes, if you look back, the links that have been changed this evening were red links (ie 7 March 2006), which have been changed with only partial success to a format that you are indicating (ie 7 March 2006). Red links were created prior to this. At first inspection there appears to be a fault in accessdates, or misunderstanding about the format that is needed for the software. Is it worth asking the "Village pump (technical)" for help? Snowman 20:55, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I have asked at "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)" to see if anyone knows what is wrong. Snowman 11:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It has been analysed at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#References. It seems that it is "cite" does not allow both accessdate and accessyear. It would be possible to have accessmonth and accessyear together or the accessdate ("2006-2-28"). Suggest use "3 February 2006" in the text and "2006-2-28" for the accessdates, with an explanatory footnote. Is there a consensus opinion for date formats for this page. Snowman 13:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think it's fine to use the YYYY-MM-DD format for references; it may not look as good, but it's a much shorter format (which saves space for both editors and readers), and we know that it will work for every reference, not just some of them. I vote for going back to the YYYY-MM-DD format—at least until there's a reliable way to cite everything in the "Month DD, YYYY" format. —Squalla 14:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

What if the reader has "no preference" selected for date/time (like 99.999% of all wikipedia readers). What would these readers see?Bzuk 21:04 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Are there default settings depending on the localization? Snowman 20:57, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

The setting will format any date that is wikilinked, and if they have no preference then they will see it the way it was written. But, if they have no preference, then it would seem that they don't care how they see the date. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 21:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Then it typically looks like a mess with three different dates even to the casual reader, it is so much easier to do one date system and not bounce around with changes in dates. As I mentioned before, Trevor, there is an established date system for historical writing and it usually prevails in publishing, but in Wikipedia, anything goes. Bzuk 21:34 4 February 2007 (UTC).

The problem is that "cite" does not allow accessdate and accessyear together, so at the present time is in impossible on the wiki to use the English format with "cite" to generate blue links. Perhaps some one will make the wiki software more consistent. Snowman 14:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just done an edit that I think will appease everyones concerns. Using the accessmonthday and accessyear fields, this is how the cite will appear:

• The Boeing Logbook: 1933 – 1938. Boeing.com. Retrieved on 18 December, 2006.

The date will be formated in the preferred DD Month YYYY format, and in unlinked so that the only link in the ref will be either the website or the IBSN #. For now there is an extraneous comma between the month and year, but am going to propose at Template_talk:Cite_web that the template be changed such that if someone enters "DD Month" instead of "Month DD", the comma will be ommited. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 16:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that "accessmonthday" will only work with {{Cite web}}, but not with {{Cite journal}} (which is used for many citations in the article). —Squalla 16:41, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I see. I've commented at Template_talk:Cite_journal#Accessdate. We'll just have to wait for some feedback from the people involved there before updating the templates to allow this. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 17:23, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Not getting any response yet at the templates, so I've been bold and edited the cite web template. We can now use a new parameter to get the desired date format (I'll edit an example now). If this causes no uproar overnight, I'll update cite journal as well, in the morning. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 04:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

This generates an unlinked date with "cite". It can not be used with "journal", but blue links are generated by "journal" by the existing "journal" format. Some blue links and some black links probably will probably look odd. Suggest liaise with template projects. Snowman 10:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and changed the cite journal template to allow this date format. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 22:55, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Surviving Aircraft

There is a flying B-17, named "Yankee Lady" at the Yankee Air Museum in Ypsilanti, MI. I haven't edited it into the article because I don't have the extra info that is there for the other aircraft. Orionhawk 19:21, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

There are others too. Should they have a separate page? Snowman 14:33, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I think if the two sections about individual aircraft gets any longer it will have to be moved to a separate page. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 15:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)