Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide

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The Aviation WikiProject's style guide is intended to apply to all articles within the project's scope—in other words, to all articles related to aviation. While the recommendations presented here are well-suited for the vast majority of such articles, there exist a number of peculiar cases where, for lack of a better solution, alternate approaches have been taken. These exceptions are often the result of protracted negotiation; if something seems unusual or out-of-place, it may be worthwhile to ask before attempting to change it, as there might be reasons for the oddity that are not immediately obvious!

Contents


[edit] Naming conventions

[edit] Accidents

An article should be named as "AIRLINE FLIGHT NUMBER", for example Air Florida Flight 90, or in ther eis no flight number, then "DATE LOCATION AIRCRAFT TYPE crash", for example 2007 Mogadishu TransAVIAexport Airlines Il-76 crash.

[edit] Aircraft/Rotorcraft/Gliders

Main article: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft)

Every article in Wikipedia has a name, and most aircraft articles are named by their manufacturer, then by name and/or designation number, for example Boeing 747, Supermarine Spitfire.

Articles should always be named as generally as possible, so an article should only be named after a subtype (e.g. Messerschmitt Bf 109G) if writing about that specific version of the aircraft. Usually this will mean that we already have a more general article about the aircraft, relevant to all subtypes. If no general article exists, it may be worthwhile expanding the article slightly so that it encompasses all variants of the aircraft.

[edit] Airlines

Articles are placed under the most common english version of their name, for example Malaysia Airlines, El Al.

[edit] Airports

Main article: Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports/Airport names

When creating airport articles, redirects should be created from any additional names that the airport may be known as. Check to see if other airports have the same name, which is quite common if you use a common name like Tri-Cities Airport or Tri-City Airport. Likewise only using the city/state/country name can also produce conflicts like San Jose Airport. Be aware that many airport articles do not yet exist so doing a search on Wikipedia for other airports with the same name can produce misleading results.

Criteria
  1. Conider the wikipedia naming conventions including Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision) and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). In general these guidelines encourage using the word airport in the article name.
  2. Try to avoid long and unwieldy names like Dakar-Yoff-Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport, this statement does not preclude the use of such names.
  3. Try to use a name that is sourced from a government agency, or the airport operator. If you have multiple choices, use the name that is most commonly used and is precise so that a dab is not needed.

[edit] Category names

A number of naming conventions exist specifically for category names; most of these are used to ensure consistent naming among all the sub-categories of a particular category.

"X by country" 
In most cases, sub-categories of a category named "X by country" take names of the form "X of [the] Y", where Y is the most common name of the country in question. For example:
"X by era" 
In most cases, sub-categories of a category named "X by era" take names of the form "X Y", where Y is the name of the era of the subject in question. For example:
"X by type" 
In most cases, sub-categories of a category named "X by type" take names of the form "Y X", where Y describes the type in question. For example:
Note that this form of category tree tends to exhibit more varied naming than the others. For example, Category:Aircraft by type also includes the non-standard Category:Airliners (since "Airliner aircraft" would be a cumbersome name).
Intersection categories 
The names of intersection categories generally follow the same conventions as above, with the name components of their parent categories placed in normal grammatical order (usually with era given after country). This produces, for example, "Canadian aircraft 1960-1969" (country and era) and "Canadian military trainer aircraft 1930-1939" (country, type, and era).

[edit] Notability

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Notability.

In general, a topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

In particular, the following types of individuals will almost always have sufficient coverage to qualify:

  • Recipients of a country's highest military decoration.
  • Aviation accidents resulting an loss of life.
  • All airlines companies.

[edit] Aircraft

Main article: Wikipedia:Notability (aircraft)

Aircraft types will almost always be notable. Aircraft subtypes and variants may be notable. Aircraft types currently or once under development may be notable. Individual aircraft will very seldom be notable.

[edit] Aviation accidents

An incident/accident/crash is "notable" in Wikipedia terms if:

  • General criteria:
    • It involves unusual circumstances.
    • One or more of the passengers on board is notable.
    • The flight crew, military, airline, airport or air traffic professionals are dismissed or severely reprimanded for their related actions
  • Air carrier criteria:
    • It involves a scheduled or charter air carrier and results in serious injury or loss of life.
    • It is a non-injury incident which materially contributes to a change in industry or aircraft procedures.
    • It is the result of military or terrorist action, including hijacking, against a civilian target
    • It is the first or worst accident for a particular airline or airliner
  • Military aircraft:
    • Accidents/incidents to military aircraft (as opposed to civilian aircraft) are not in the purvue of this discussion.
    • Loss-of-life is not necessarily a valid criteria (due to the nature of military aviation, training crashes resulting in loss of life are not typically notable).
    • It is notable if there are unusual circumstances involved
    • It occurs in the civilian world and causes civilian casualties.
    • It is the first crash of a particular type of aircraft.
  • General aviation/corporate aviation/private aircraft:
    • Accidents are generally not notable unless unusual circumstances are involved, notable people are involved, or the incident/accident otherwise results in downstream changes to the industry or procedures. Note: momentary news coverage, which would not last beyond the immediate timeframe of the accident, does not confer notability.

[edit] Article content

[edit] Article structure

The structures suggested in this section are intended to serve as a starting point for writing a good article; they are not meant to enforce a single, binding structure on all articles, nor to limit the topics a fully developed article will discuss.

[edit] Aircraft

Main article: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft/page_content#Introduction

The opening paragraph (or lead section) should concisely convey:

  1. The name of the aircraft
  2. Its manufacturer(s)
  3. The general category of aircraft it belongs to.

Without going any further, a reader should already have a good basic idea of what kind of aircraft the article is describing.

The article can be structured along these lines:

  1. The development and history behind the aircraft, often discussing why a manufacturer, airline, or air force felt there was a need for such an aircraft.
  2. The design and major features of the aircraft. This can be combined with above section as "Design and Development" if both sections are small, or if the text works better it they are covered together.
  3. The Operational history, describing the history of the aircraft in use. This section is something like a "biography" of the aircraft.
  4. Major variants and subtypes of the aircraft. These can be arranged in subsections - see Messerschmitt Me 163 for an example of how this can be done.
  5. The operators, usually a collection of links to airlines or individual air force squadrons that used this type. May be separated into Military and Civilan sections if applicable and workable.
  6. A list of survivors; aircraft exhibited in museums. When large amount of aircraft is still preserved, list should be limited to most prominent ones.
  7. Specifications :
Main article: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft/page_content#Aircraft_specifications

[edit] Airlines

Main article: Wikipedia:WikiProject Airlines/page content#Introduction

The opening paragraph (or lead section) should concisely convey:

  1. The airlines name, owner of the airline and some general comments about the airline
  2. The IATA and ICAO codes
  3. The operational status (cargo/charter/defunct)
  4. The country of origin

Without going any further, a reader should already have a good basic idea of what kind of aircraft the article is describing.

The article can be structured along these lines:

  1. The development and history behind the airline- Care should be taken in the structure so that different versions of the airline are clearly marked.
  2. A destinations list: following the world based format show in articles like Airline destinations. Once an airline has more then 10 destinations, especially international ones, they could be listed in a stand alone article
  3. A list of aircraft flown by the airline and the quantity of each
  4. Information about frequent flyer programs and membership clubs.
  5. Major incidents and accidents over the airline's history.
See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Airlines/Destinations
See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Airlines/Affinity programs

[edit] Popular culture

"In popular culture" sections should be avoided unless the subject has had a well-cited and notable impact on popular culture. Any popular culture reference being considered for inclusion must be attributed to a reliable source for the article topic. Items meeting these requirements should typically be worked into the text of the article; a separate section for popular culture items, and in particular the following, should be avoided:

  • Compendiums of every trivial appearance of the subject in pop culture (trivia)
  • Unsupported speculation about cultural significance or fictional likenesses (original research)

This tends to be a particular problem in articles on aircraft ; for example, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the Spitfire may appear in any World War II film, and their many appearances don't warrant an exhaustive list. On the other hand, the overall idea of the B-17s as a symbol of American power, is certainly notable.

[edit] Usage and style

[edit] Capitalization

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)#Military terms.

[edit] Flag icons

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags).

In general, the use of flag icons is not recommended; neither, however, is it prohibited. When deciding whether flag icons are appropriate in a particular context, consider:

  • Do the icons convey useful information to the reader, or are they merely decorative? Icons that differentiate among several parties (for example, icons used to indicate commander allegiance in Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945)) are likely to be useful, while icons that convey irrelevant or redundant information are usually not.
  • Can flag icons be used consistently? In other words, do all the groups in a given list have usable flags? If only a few have them, it may be better to omit flags for all the items than to have a different layout for each one.
  • Will adding icons disrupt the existing structure or flow of the text?

When flag icons are used, they should be historically accurate ones. In particular:

  • When dealing with items related to a particular time period, avoid using anachronistic flags from other time periods. Be especially careful to avoid using the flags of modern countries for ancient ones; in many cases, the proper successor of a country no longer in existence is a matter of considerable controversy.
  • Avoid using national flags in inappropriate contexts, such as for groups or individuals not aligned with any country.

When dealing with biographical infobox templates, the most common practice is to use flag icons to indicate allegiance or branch of service, but not place of birth or death. However, there remains considerable disagreement regarding the appropriateness of flags in such cases, so editors should not regard this as a universal rule.


[edit] Sourcing and citation

[edit] Sources

Shortcut:
WP:MILMOS#SOURCES

Policy requires that articles reference only reliable sources; however, this is a minimal condition, rather than a final goal. With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should aim to be based primarily on published secondary works by reputable historians. The use of high-quality primary sources is also appropriate, but care should be taken to use them correctly, without straying into original research. Editors are encouraged to extensively survey the available literature—and, in particular, any available historiographic commentary—regarding an article's topic in order to identify every source considered to be authoritative or significant; these sources should, if possible, be directly consulted when writing the article.

[edit] Citations

Shortcut:
WP:MILMOS#CITE

The nature of historical material requires that articles be thoroughly—even exhaustively—cited. At a minimum, the following all require direct citation:

  1. Direct quotations of outside material
  2. Paraphase or other borrowing of ideas from an outside source
  3. Controversial or disputed statements
  4. Subjective or qualitative judgements
  5. Numerical quantities or statistics

In general, any statement for which a citation has been explicitly requested by another editor should be provided with one as well.

Beyond this, editors are encouraged to cite any statement that is obscure or difficult to find in the available sources, as well as any significant statement in general. There is no numerical requirement for a particular density of citations or for some predetermined number of citations in an article; editors are expected to use their best judgement as to how much citation is appropriate. When in doubt, cite; additional citations are harmless at worst, and may prove invaluable in the long term.

[edit] Citation styles

For more details on this topic, see Wikipedia:Citing sources#Inline citations.

In general, articles may use one of two citation styles:

  • Footnotes
    Footnotes are generally the more appropriate option when the level of citation is very dense, or where the citations include additional commentary. A number of different formatting styles are available; so long as an article is internally consistent, the choice of which to use is left to the discretion of the major editors. For example, discursive notes may either be combined with citations (as here and here), or separated (as here).
    A single footnote may be used to provide citations for any amount of material; while they typically apply to one or a few sentences, they may also cover entire paragraphs or sections of text. In cases where the connection between the citations and the material cited is not obvious, it is helpful to describe it explicitly (for example, "For the details of the operation, see Smith, First Book, 143–188, and Jones, Another Book, chapters 2–7; for the international reaction, see Thomas, Yet Another Book, 122–191").
  • Harvard-style references
    Harvard-style references are useful where a limited number of simple citations is needed; they typically should not be used if the article has a significant number of other items in parentheses, or if citations must be accompanied by commentary.

The final choice of which style to follow is left to the discretion of an article's editors.

[edit] Requesting citations

Editors should attempt to take a reasonable approach when requesting citations. Unless the accuracy of a statement is in significant doubt, it is generally better to start with a request for citations on the article's talk page, rather than by inserting {{fact}} tags—particularly large numbers of such tags—into the article. Over-tagging should be avoided; if a large portion of the article is uncited, adding an {{unreferenced}} or {{citation style}} tag to an entire section is usually more helpful than simply placing {{fact}} tags on every sentence. Note that some articles contain per-paragraph citations, so checking the citations at the end of a paragraph may yield information about facts or figures in the paragraph as a whole.

[edit] Templates

The various primary and auxiliary infobox templates and navigation templates maintained by the Aviation WikiProject are all coded to use a common set of styling characteristics, as it is beneficial for providing a consistent appearance to the entire set of articles within our scope.

[edit] Infobox templates

A few general guidelines apply to all aviation infoboxes:

  1. Most of the fields in each infobox can be omitted if desired; the choice of which ones are appropriate for a particular article is left to the discretion of the article's editors.
  2. Multiple values given in a single field should be separated by both commas and, where appropriate, line breaks; merely spacing them onto separate lines can confuse screen reader software, and is ambiguous when long terms wrap onto multiple lines in their own right.
  3. Any use of flag icons should follow the relevant guidelines.

[edit] Primary infoboxes

A primary infobox is intended to provide a summary table for some topic. It should generally be placed at the top of an article, before the lead section; this will cause it to be displayed in the top right corner.

{{Infobox Aviation}} 
For general aviation topics e.g. Gyrodyne
{{Infobox Aircraft}} 
Used for aircraft (Including gliders, rotorcraft, and UAVs).
{{Infobox Airport}} 
Used for airports.
{{Infobox Airline}} 
Used for airlines.
{{Infobox Aviator}} 
Used for aviators.
{{Infobox Red Bull Air Race Pilot}} 
Used for Red Bull pilots
{{Infobox Military Person}} 
Used for military aviators
{{Infobox Person}} 
Used in all other cases
{{Infobox Airliner accident}} 
Used for accidents
{{Infobox Mid-air accident}} 
Used for accidents
{{Infobox Company}} 
Used for companies.
{{Infobox Defunct Company}} 
Used for defunct companies
See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Templates

[edit] Navigation templates

The various navigation templates maintained by the Aviation WikiProject are all intended to be implemented using the standard navigation box format. This is beneficial for providing a consistent appearance to the entire set of articles within our scope.

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aircraft/Templates#Footers


[edit] Categories

[edit] Overview

An alternate to this scheme is currently drafted at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Categories/Proposed update.

The category scheme originates in one root category—Category:Aviation—and can be thought of as a tree structure. A guide to the top-level sub-categories of this category is presented below; for brevity, a number of categories that are rarely used or lie outside the scope of this project have been omitted.

Category:Aviation 
Root category for matters related to aviation. This category should be empty of articles,
Category:Aerobatics 
Root category for all topics related to aerobatics.

.....

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Categories

[edit] General principles

[edit] Naming

For naming conventions related to categories, see the section on naming conventions above.

[edit] Most specific categories

In general, articles and categories should be placed in the most specific applicable categories, and should not be placed directly in a "parent" category if they are already present in one of its sub-categories. In other words, if an article is placed in Category:United States airliners 1940-1949, there is no need to place it in Category:United States civil aircraft 1940-1949 or Category:Aircraft manufactured by the United States as well.

Note, however, that this applies only to direct placement into a "parent" category; it is normal for a category to have multiple indirect paths up to some other category higher in the tree. For example, Category:United States military transport aircraft 1940-1949 is both a sub-category of Category:Military transport aircraft 1940-1949 (which is a sub-category of Category:Military aircraft 1940-1949) and a sub-category of Category:United States military aircraft 1940-1949 (which is also a sub-category Category:Military aircraft 1940-1949); thus, there are two distinct paths from Category:United States military transport aircraft 1940-1949 up to Category:Military aircraft 1940-1949. This is especially common when dealing with intersection categories.

[edit] Nested categories

[edit] Intersection categories

[edit] Aircraft

[edit] Airlines

[edit] Airports

[edit] Related items to perhaps be included

Main article: Wikipedia:MOSBOLD#Boldface
  • Use italics, not boldface, for emphasis in article text. Use boldface in the remainder of the article only for a few special uses:
Main article: Wikipedia:Proseline
  • The inevitable scramble to add up-to-the-minute information to appropriate articles can often result in something we shall call proseline—segments of articles that attempt to be (and should be) prose, but end up looking like timelines.
Main article: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags)

Flag icons may be helpful in certain situations:

  • They can aid navigation in long lists or tables of countries as many readers can more quickly scan a series of flag icons due to the visual differences between flags. However, since not all readers can do this, the flags should be accompanied with country names (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (flags)#Accompany flags with country names).
  • Repeated use of a flag in a table or infobox (usually to save space and avoid repeating the country name) should only be done if the flag has been used previously in the table with the country name.

[edit] Unformatted text pulled from various projects

[edit] Airport Guidelines

This list is not complete and could use some general comments on what should be provided.

Consider including the following headings in each article:

  • An infobox, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Infobox Airport
  • Introduction
  • History
  • Airlines and destinations if only one terminal or terminal(s) not identified otherwise Terminals and destinations Include an entry for each major terminal. Unless otherwise listed, the terminal is expected to be a passenger terminal (not cargo).
    1. Do not list secondary carriers for code share flights. For example, if Air New Zealand operates a domestic flight under its own flight number and an additional Singapore Airlines codeshare, the codeshare should not be listed.
    2. For flights operated by one airline but marketed by another, so that the flight uses only the marketing airline's flight number, avoid using the term dba, an abbreviation of the American business term doing business as. The preferred notation is:
    3. Differentiate between multiple airports in one city using "-" (eg London-Heathrow) vs (London Heathrow).
    4. List city names; do not wikilink them.
    5. List non-stop and direct flights only. That means the flight number and the aircraft, starts at this airport and continues to one or more airports. Avoid using the description 'via' since that is more correctly listed as another destination. If passengers can not disembark at a stop on a direct flight, then do not list it as a destination or as 'via'. Direct flights are not always non-stop flights. However, avoid listing direct flights that contain a stop at a domestic hub, as virtually all of these are simply flights from one "spoke city" to a hub, with the plane continuing from the hub to a second spoke city. Furthermore, these flights often involve plane changes, despite the direct designation. Including these flights dramatically increases the length of destination listings, artificially inflates the airline's presence at a location and requires constant updating, as these "timetable direct" destinations have little rhyme or reason and may change as often as every week or two.
    6. For flights that do not operate year round, add - [seasonal] - after the destination. eg: (Chicago-Midway [seasonal]). Do not add beginning or ending dates.
    7. For future destinations, add: "[begins date service begins]" - after the destination.
    8. For destinations with termination dates that have already been announced, add: "[ends date service ends]" - after the destination.
    9. Dates should not include the year unless the begin/end is 13 or more months from the current date. Dates should be linked as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Autoformatting and linking
    10. Do not include flags for airlines as it is not always clear as to which countries flag should be used.
  • External links A link to the airport's web site. If the entry has an infobox then links to mapping sites are available by clicking on the linked coordinates.
  • Optionally you may add Template:WPAVIATION to the article's discussion page (insert {{WPAVIATION|Airports-project=yes}} ) so other editors are directed to this project.










Finally, remember that you're in no way obliged to follow all, or even any, of these guidelines to contribute an article.