Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft/Archive 19

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F-4 Phantom FARC review latest

The latest comments on the Reatured Aircraft review is that the use of Personal websites such as Joe Baugher's Phantom website, and Greg Goebels Vectorsite is not acceptable, and User:SandyGeorgia has put large number of unreliable source tags on the article. These sites in particular and many like them are heavily used in WP:Aircraft, and if they cannot be used then it clearly has serious implications for a lot of articles. Some help is needed to either gain some consensus about whether these sources are acceptable or to find alternatives references.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Just ventilating here but there is a difference between an extensively referenced and "balanced" account compared to the usual personal "fanboy" website. Baugher and Goebel have been reliable sources of information no different from any other published article in either print or non-print media. I would venture to guess that their work predates Wikipedia and had been used as "starting points" for many aviation articles in Wikywacky world. IMHO Bzuk (talk) 21:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC). After looking at the F-4 article and the comments made in the FARC, ask for a different reviewer. I would not expect the same reaction from a reviewer with a background in aviation. Sorry for the harsh indictment, but this may the issue more than the use of references. I would wait till the revisions are made, thank the reviewer politely for the work done and get someone else in place. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 21:26, 25 January 2008 (UTC).
I see little point in asking for a different reviewer. From the review page there appears to be a consensus against this article amongst the reviewers. Since most of the reviewers seem to consider large chunks of the article to be cruft and think that the references are a load of rubbish, I don't think that any effort would keep this as a featured article. The only hope is that the article doesn't get completly wrecked or AfD'd before its done.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:25, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Nigel, in case you don't regularly follow FAR, both Marskell and I (and most FAR regular participants) go to extreme lengths to try to preserve featured status. Further, if an article is brought to status, previous Removes are ignored. This case is frustrating me because the article has sat there for two months (as I've been busy) with limited and slow improvement, while I've been quite busy elsewhere. I'd still like to see it saved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:59, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Instead of asking for a different reviewer, you could thank the one who's doing the crappy work of actually properly presenting citations. Marskell (talk) 21:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't get the Vectorsite one. It has a bibliography for each page. Baugher's pages have that too, I think. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
  • How do you know the author correctly represents the original sources? The article has a huge bibiliography of reliable sources; why does it rely on personal websites instead of those sources? I will put a list of all of the questionable sources I've found so far at the bottom of this section (in a minute). I highly suggest you ask the MilHist guys to participate in this discussion; don't they have an Aircraft group? Bzuk, there's no such thing as "another reviewer in place" and the amount of work this article needs is quite large; if you want these sources accepted as reliable sources, the best thing to do is to establish that they are reliable according to Wiki policies, and try to get knowledgeable folks from the MilHist group to weigh in. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Without looking specifically: show that the website authors have been published in articles that obviously meet WP:V, and show that they cite their own sources. The first is particularly important for "fan" sites. Fansites can be fine—when maintained by a published academic. Marskell (talk) 21:20, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Questionable sources found so far in F-4 Phantom II‎.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I'm not going to be following this page: the discussion should be on the FAR page, which is where I'm working. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, Policy is quite strict about personal websites not being regarded as reliable under anything but exceptional circumstances, and unfortunately, neither Dr Joe Baugher's nor Greg Goebel's sites meet the strict criteria (none of Dr Baugher's publications are in the field of aviation history). It's worth noting that, under policy, the quality of the source (perceived or actual) is quite irrelevant. It could be the most comprehensive, most perfectly referenced resource on the topic in existence: if it's self-published (personal website or vanity-press book) it is unreliable.

But per Nigel's comments above; don't worry - this literal, hard-line application of policy really has very little connection with how Wikipedia by-and-large operates; it's pretty much exclusively the provenance of the GA/FA process (and of course in content disputes). The irony, of course, is that (per SandyGeorgia's comment), of course we don't know that Baugher and Goebbels have correctly represented their original sources; any more than we know that any Wikipedian contributing material here is correctly representing a reliable source that they cite. Good faith stops at the border :)

Fortunately, if anyone cares about the FA status of the F-4 article, Baugher's and Goebel's sites are so well-referenced that it should be relatively easy to track down their sources, verify that neither gentleman is distorting the facts, and cite their sources directly. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Please note that Baughers website homepage is http://home.att.net/~jbaugher not as above, I have also corrected it in the F-4 article. Strange that a well respected aviation website like this is questioned. Perhaps as suggested we should try an replace the refs to keep the system happy. MilborneOne (talk) 23:00, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
It's not strange. Baugher's site simply doesn't meet policy. It's a self-published, hobbyist site. If people want to track things through his bibliography, the FAR can stay open. Marskell (talk) 10:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
And remember, MilborneOne, as I pointed out above, the quality of the source is absolutely irrelevant for the purpose of this exercise: just keep in mind that this is box-ticking, pure and simple. Replace the refs simply to meet the rigid application of an arbitrary standard? Bah. I'd rather the FA status were lost, but of course others may feel differently! :) --Rlandmann (talk) 11:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Our verifiability policy is box-ticking? Nonsense. We don't allow self-published sources for very good reasons—I'd hardly call it an arbitrary distinction. Marskell (talk) 11:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
No; the blanket categorisation of self-published sources as unreliable is box-ticking, in that there is no attempt to appraise or evaluate the sources. The "allowability" of such a source is therefore a purely mechanical and arbitrary decision; or rather non-decision. Don't get me wrong: verifiability is a good and very imporant thing, but black-and-white policies are plain and patent shrubbery. --Rlandmann (talk) 11:50, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
"... there is no attempt to appraise or evaluate the sources." Wikipedia is not in a position to appraise and evaluate self-published sources. That's not we do. If, heaven forbid, the policy advised editors to evaluate self-published sources themselves, then every enthusiast would claim their enthusiast web sources are reliable. That's untenable. WP:SPS is quite reasonable. If you can show that Baugher has been published in the relevant field, then the site may be admissable. If you can't, then he remains an amateur, however conscientious. Marskell (talk) 12:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Every contributor to Wikipedia appraises and evaluates sources all the time, in deciding what information to take from where (and, of course, what to disregard). Of course more caution needs to be exercised when dealing with self-published material, but to tar it all with the same brush is, IMHO, ridiculous. I'm not suggesting that Baugher is anything other than a conscientious amateur; but when the level of an amateur's conscientiousness is evident, I believe that the sensible course is to extend the same good faith that we extend to submissions here. You evidently disagree; that's fine - I'm not attempting to convince you otherwise. However, other contributors here are demonstrably confused and incredulous that a high-quality resource is not deemed worthy of inclusion as a source. I think it's important to be transparent about why that is so. I agree 100% with your interpretation of what policy states; it's just that I happen to think that it's a bad policy. --Rlandmann (talk) 12:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
"But when the level of an amateur's conscientiousness is evident, I believe that the sensible course is to extend the same good faith that we extend to submissions here." But: Wikipedia is not a reliable source. It doesn't claim to be. If you want to extend to Baugher's site what we extend to ourselves, then you would, in fact, not allow its use. What the argument amounts to is amateurs evaluating amateurs and declaring them good enough. That's not sensible policy.
And the problem is, to be sure, with policy, not with FAR. You can bring it up at V—for the hundredth time—but I doubt you'll get much traction. The talk histories of V, ATT, and RS are full of discussion on this—what became known as the "Pop culture exception". Note the F-4 Phantom II is not pop cult; this is not a topic area where there's any obvious reason to bend policy. Marskell (talk) 13:13, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
You'd probably get away with it if a reliable source referenced it.- (User) WolfKeeper (Talk) 20:13, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

(carriage return) I place a bit more faith in our contributors than that. It really doesn't take very much effort or skill to evaluate (to keep using our current example) Baugher's website and judge it as a high-quality resource, nor to decline to place faith in your average Geocities fanboi "Wow! The F-4 is so cool!" page. That's why people here are surprised; and their surprise is, to my mind, a warning sign of a bad policy. Which, in and of itself, has, we agree, nothing to do with FAR per se. I'm well aware of the places in which to lobby to have the policy changed, and if I ever feel like tilting at windmills, I'll take Marskell up on it. But not today.

So, what about the F-4? GA/FA/FAR's greatest weakness, IMHO, is its tendency towards the bloody-minded, slavish application of the excruciating minutiae of policy - good and bad (and yes, policy can be bad). This pigs-is-pigs mentality is a purely cultural phenomenon that has emerged over the last few years and which has grown gradually ever-more petrified; somewhere along the line, "rigorous" has become conflated with "rigid". What people here must understand is that the Baugher and Goebels references do not meet policy as it stands, and that because of that FAR will not tolerate them, no matter how good or how useful they are.

In short, those who care about the F-4's FA status should replace the references now; or, alternatively, make the conscious decision not to play, and let the prevailing winds just take their course. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:28, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Until now I haven’t felt the need to comment on this page, but there are just a few things that I’d like to say. I’ve not been contributing for as long as many of the other aircraft enthusiasts, including several who are currently or have previously worked with aircraft as well as those who professionally write aviation-related articles and publications, and who therefore possess far more knowledge of the subject and expertise in creating what I believe to be excellent articles than I. Consequently, I have tried to follow their example in whatever I have done, and have become aware of (and am still learning) many of the MoS guidelines along the way. I’ve built a trust in their collective judgement, including the acceptance of websites such as Baugher’s and Goebel’s as being sufficiently reliable to use as references having compared them to written publications and found them to be balanced, well-sourced and accurate. OK, I know that original written publications are preferred; no argument there, but in their absence (as in my case despite recent efforts) I don’t see why a bit of slack couldn’t be cut in view of the sites' general standing among "those who know".
If anyone cares to look at the versions of both the F-4 and B-17 Flying Fortress when they were awarded FA status, they will find both of the websites in question cited. In the F-4’s case, they will particularly note how much the reference list has grown with many more in-line cites within essentially similar sections of text, rather than a single cite at the end of paragraphs (which IMHO is quite sufficient where it covers all of the information contained therein), and that there are some totally un-cited paragraphs. Bolding of marks/variants are also present throughout both articles, which in my view are beneficial to what can be complex and lengthy articles by providing a convenient means of navigating through them and accessing points of interest more easily, and should be regarded as being acceptable practise where it will enhance the article.
Have the FA status criteria changed? Or will the response be that neither article should have been awarded the star? Both Marskell and SandyGeorgia will understandably have arguments in favour of adhering to the guidelines as there is a standard to maintain, and will probably comment accordingly, but I’m coming round to the viewpoint held by Rlandmann. --Red Sunset 13:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Rob, Rudi: I agree with both of your observations. This "tag-team" acted as more than editors but as arbitors hautingly and dismissively deriding any commentary that didn't jibe with their preconveived notions of veracity. I don't think you are the only ones with this impression, Nigel has also mentioned his frustrations with the "scalloping" of countless hours of work. Early in the process, I had taken one look at the revisions that were proposed, and had questioned the methods that were being employed. After I had a cursory look at the numerous errors in formatting that were left in place after the first "sweep" that only confirmed for me that these two editors were the wrong editors to undertake a FA, regardless of their lofty opionions of their work. I had even asked for a new FA Review from a different reviewer but the review continued relentlessly. I resigned myself to the conclusion that nothing was going to sway the team from their inevitable conclusions. I think this exercise remains as a word of caution to anyone attempting a major project in WP:Aviation. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 14:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC).

Reminder of the Philip Greenspun Illustration project

Hi. You may be familiar with the Philip Greenspun Illustration Project. $20,000 has been donated to pay for the creation of high quality diagrams for Wikipedia and its sister projects.

Requests are currently being taken at m:Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests and input from members of this project would be very welcome. If you can think of any diagrams (not photos or maps) that would be useful then I encourage you to suggest them at this page. If there is any free content material that would assist in drawing the diagram then it would be great if you could list that, too.

If there are any related (or unrelated) WikiProjects you think might have some suggestions then please pass this request over. Thanks. --Cherry blossom tree 16:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Chinese crystal ball gazing

I've just been installing navboxes on PRC military aircraft and noticed our article on the Chengdu J-13. At the moment, this reads as pure speculation, sourced only to internet forums; does anyone know of anything reliable on such a thing? If not, we should probably PROD.

The Chengdu Super-10 is little better. The one reliable scrap of information (this short piece in JDW) is already contained in the J-10 article; is there anything more to say about it at this point in time? --Rlandmann (talk) 20:42, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Concur. And the Shenyang J-XX page is probably no better. - BillCJ (talk) 11:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
True. I had thought it might be marginally better, since I was sure that I'd seen the term thrown around somewhere reliable, but I can't actually find any such thing now. This one should get PRODded too then --Rlandmann (talk) 22:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

ecoJet

The ecoJet page has been around since last June, was last edited in September, and is still no more than two sentences! Is there enough info out there to make this a decent stub, or should we just merge it to the EasyJet airline page, since the ecoJet was really just a study, and not a proposed design as such. - BillCJ (talk) 11:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Agree - probably done to raise the airlines green credentials! MilborneOne (talk) 22:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Variant article?

There is a red link in Supermarine Spitfire, sub-types I think. This got me searching and we don't seem to have an article describing the general conventions of variant or sub-type naming or even what a variant basically is (for the non air-minded readers). I thought of creating Variant (aircraft) or Type (aircraft) but thought I would confer first. It should not be too difficult to create a short stub to start with that could be expanded in time. Seems that countries have different ways of doing it, which would be a good place to start (e.g. F-104A, Spitfire Mk V,) I am assuming that I have looked in the right places and that we don't already have an article like this? Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 16:57, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking of an opening paragraph something like this:
  • A variant used in the case of aircraft describes a significantly developed version sufficient to change the name or suffix from that of the basic prototype. In most cases the numbered types will alter their suffix to indicate a developed variant where the change is not large. For example the F-104A Starfighter became the F-104B Starfighter when it was developed into a two seat aircraft. This convention can differ between countries, operating air forces and aircraft manufacturers. To use De Havilland as a further example (who used both letters and Roman numerals for describing their variants) as they did with the DH 82A Tiger Moth II.

I know this is a bit clumsy and could open a 'can of worms' but if it was kept general enough I think it could be helpful and possibly fill a gap. Nimbus227 (talk) 17:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

My first thoughts are do we really need this? I can imagine a number of visitors who might require a further explanation but... picture the scenario of tagging every variant list with a wikilink to the term. Still not sure if it is needed. I can be convinced otherwise, however. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 19:17, 3 February 2008 (UTC).
  • If you go with this, either remove the "from that of the basic prototype" part or change to previous version/variant. That way it'll apply to later variants too. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I can see where you are coming from. It would not be the intention to link it to every aircraft article although editors would be free to link on the first use of the word 'variant' if they wanted to. Variant is self-explanatory to us but may not be to everyone else. I have had requests from self-proclaimed 'laymen' to clarify things in some of the articles I have been involved with. Whoever created that redlink was probably thinking along the same lines. The easy way is to unlink it but I have been pulled up for doing that (and I can understand why now). What do airliner 'Dash numbers' mean? Bigger the number, the newer the type to me. I have no strong feelings on this, just thought we should discuss it. Supermarine Spitfire is looking better now, n'est ce pas? Should get the nice guy back who reviewed it for GA soon. Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 19:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Hi FN, sure. That text was thrown together. If it was decided to go for this then we could start it in a (my?) sandbox before unleashing it. Not sure how it would be reffed though. Nimbus227 (talk) 19:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, refs would be a problem. It would basically be original research at this point, which is beyond our purview. However, as I right this, I had an idea: Intitially, I thought we could do a internet search, and see if a reputable aviation magazine has done an article on this, and use that as the basis. THen I remebered the Flight International archives that go back to 1909. With that much scope for back issues, they just just might have such an article at some point in time, at least one that good let us cite the basic definitions to go in our article. It's worth a look there, and elsewhere too. - BillCJ (talk) 19:52, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
-Sure. I think an aircraft encyclopedia would somewhat explain what a variant is. I'll look in my Frawley Mil directory and others to see. Commercials variants can be larger/stretched or improved in other ways, like newer/better engines, higher gross weight, avionics, etc. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:56, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Just a minor point Tiger Moth II is an air force designation nothing to do with de Havilland! I think an explanation of the terms would do no harm particularly as I have never heard of Dash number before. MilborneOne (talk) 20:01, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Good thinking BillCJ, I lost most of yesterday in the Flight archives, doh! Yep, appreciate the comment about the Tiger Moth (I own a share in one so I pick on the type often), there is a mixture there of DH82 'A' (DeH) and 'II' (RAF). 747-400 equals 747 dash 400, at least I think that is what most people use. I have the 'American Fighter' book which explains all the US prefixes like F, XF, P, B etc. Nimbus227 (talk) 20:15, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Just found the following articles: Military Aircraft, RLM aircraft designations, Idflieg aircraft designation system, Japanese military aircraft designation systems, British military aircraft designation systems and USSR military aircraft designation systems. There are probably more. None of these turned up on a search for 'variant' or 'type' and other combinations of these words including 'aircraft' , perhaps that is a limitation of the Wiki search engine. Some link to each other. It would be good to have them all described briefly and linked on one page, the Century Series article does this for instance (the page, whatever it was called would have to be intuitively found). Nimbus227 (talk) 21:45, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Dont confuse designation systems with variants particularly military designations which may change due to a change in role or user and may or may not be a new or different variants! MilborneOne (talk) 21:48, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely clear on that, but if you look in some of those articles you can see that they don't always apply to military designations and frustratingly the words 'variant' 'type' and 'aircraft' sit together in the text. I think there are a lot of AfDs or merges where the editor started an article in good faith after searching thoroughly. Nimbus227 (talk) 21:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps an explanatory article on how aircraft are named that would cover models, types, designations, variants etc. and both company, civil, military and even some airlines have used their own names. MilborneOne (talk) 22:03, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
That is what I was thinking of, but what to call it? Nimbus227 (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
It's very problematic. On the one hand, an article simply on what a "variant" is would be a dicdef; on the other, we already have articles on many different (military) designation systems. An article such as we're discussing that draws together and discusses the bases common to many such systems would indeed be useful, but would have to take a published secondary source as a starting point to avoid being Original Research. Can anyone think of such a source? --Rlandmann (talk) 00:36, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

(Return) Muddy waters indeed. Thinking about it overnight the redlink sub-types in the Spitfire article was perhaps created with just this aircraft in mind. There were 24 main variants, 48 including all the A,B,C's,LF's, PR's etc. As there is a Supermarine Spitfire Variants article that covers this (and it is linked just before sub-types)it should be acceptable in this case to clear the redlink. I will try to link to the designation articles whenever it is appropriate to make them more visible. Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 11:04, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Chengdu Super-10

An article that you have been involved in editing, Chengdu Super-10, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chengdu Super-10. Thank you. Rlandmann (talk) 01:07, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Catalina

PBY Catalina has just been moved to Consolidated PBY on the grounds that Catalina was the British name for the aircraft. Reference I have says the United States Navy designation was PBY Catalina. I have asked on the article talk page just thought I would ask here if the move was right or not. MilborneOne (talk) 23:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks User:Rlandmann, change has been reverted. MilborneOne (talk) 12:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Is there any information about the adoption date of PBY Cataline instead of just PBY-xx ? I have two partial electronic copies of a PBY-5A (1/45) and prelimnary PBY-6A (12/44) manual and both state Navy model PBY-xx airplane on their cover. I have not fully read those but i did not yet see Catalina there. --Denniss (talk) 13:33, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what date the name was adopted but remember that popular names may not have been used on all documents. There is a full list of Aircraft Designations and Popular Names in United States Naval Aviation 1910-1995[1] which on Page 484 shows Catalina as the Popular Name for the PBY . Document is produced by the Naval Historical Center Department of the Navy and is a good read for anybody interested in naval aviation. MilborneOne (talk) 19:41, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

The Importance of References

I know that most of the people who are formally signed up as part of this project are pretty scrupulous about adding references to the articles in the project and also removing unsourced statements. If anyone isn't convinced by WP:Sources that refs are required then I suggest that you read this CBC article. As you can see in it Wikipedia is internationally under the gun for lack of sources for some articles. The subject here wasn't an aircraft article, but the point applies generally to all Wikipedia writing. Food for thought. - Ahunt (talk) 22:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Doubly so where WP:BLP issues are involved, as in the case mentioned in the CBC article. Askari Mark (Talk) 04:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Naming inconsistencies

Is there a particular reason why Avro Aircraft Limited (Canada) {Avro Canada) products are listed under just Avro, while Pratt & Whitney Canada products are all listed as Pratt & Whitney Canada, not Pratt & Whitney. To me, the current names are confusing, as it implies these are products developed by the patent Avro company in Britain, and not separately in Canada as most of these products were. I understand that Canadian logic is quite different than what most Americans are used to, so I am asking rather than simply trying to move Avro Chinook, Avro Orenda, Avro CF-100, etc to names that match the Avro Canada Jetliner page. And before someone tries to claim that PW and PWC are completely separate companies under UTC, the websites of both companies state that PWC is a direct subsidiary of PW. If you disagree, please call/email PW and PWC and tell them their websites are wrong. :) - BillCJ (talk) 22:47, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have several print sources, including Wilson, Stewart (2000). Combat Aircraft since 1945. Fyshwick, ACT, Australia: Aerospace Publications Pty Ltd, 34. ISBN 1-875671-50-1. , that list the Avro Canada products under Avro Canada, not Avro. Interestingly, Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation (1989 edition) lists them under Canadian Avro.
Cant see any reason why they should not be Avro Canada and moved as you suggest. MilborneOne (talk) 22:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
Agree that Avro Canada products should be named as such; please go ahead and move! --Rlandmann (talk) 02:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'll move what can be moved by a non-admin. If there are any I can't do, I'll let you know. (It would be nice if they'd add full (or at least more) move functions to the Rollback duties!) - BillCJ (talk) 03:02, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to make things even more muddied: the actual company name was A.V. Roe Canada as a subsidiary of the Hawker Siddeley Group and Avro Canada was merely a familiar or popular derivation. In 1952, the company further split into airframe and engine divisions, named Avro Aircraft Ltd. and Avro Orenda Ltd., respectively. On its demise as a company in 1961, A.V. Roe Canada disappeared as a trade name and although Orenda continued on, the aircraft manufacturer became Hawker Siddeley Canada, named after the company that took over the bankrupt firm. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 04:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC).

If you want to rename the Avro Canada CF-100 page to A.V. Roe Canada subsidiary of the Hawker Siddeley Group later Avro Aircraft Ltd later Hawker Siddeley Canada CF-100, then go ahead! I think my way is a lot simpler! ;) - BillCJ (talk) 06:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, Avro Canada is fine and is acceptable as the "popular" name of the company. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 18:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC).

AfD nomination of Shenyang J-XX

An article that you have been involved in editing, Shenyang J-XX, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shenyang J-XX. Thank you. Rlandmann (talk) 21:23, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Silver State

FYI Folks, with the recent and dramatic shut down of Silver State Helicopters some one may want to keep an eye on the article. A lot of edits have been happening since Sunday --Trashbag (talk) 14:15, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I had a look at it - I see what you mean. It certainly needs some work. I removed the compnay letter and press release that were posted there, but the whole article needs a copy-edit, too! - Ahunt (talk) 15:44, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi All, is the "Swift Chopper Pilots for Truth" external link appropriate for an article? See External Links Thanks, --Trashbag (talk) 19:30, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
I did see that when it was posted earlier today. I also read through the linked website. It is pretty strong stuff, but I can't tell how accurate it is. The real test of whether it should stay or go is whether it conforms to WP:EL. It seems to meet the what to link criteria and also some of the links to be avaoided criteria, too, particularly "unverifiable research". - Ahunt (talk) 22:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

VLJ operators list

Is the List of very light jet operators really something we need? Isn't such a list in each aircraft's article sufficient? Just asking. - BillCJ (talk) 09:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

As a list, this does not seem to be adding much (and probably is never going to be anywhere near complete). There may be room for an article on use of VLJs for air taxi operations (which could probably even be sourced properly without too much pain, but this, as it stands, isn't it. Nigel Ish (talk) 15:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

P-40 Reference Question

Working on the Curtis P-40 Survivors series - have a couple questions for the big guys regarding naming etc... the first one is a biggie;

  1. Should it be Curtiss P-40 Survivors. While the USAAC did create and order the initial P-40's, Curtiss also sold these aircraft as Hawk Model 81A-1/A-2/A-3 these were direct purchase by the RAF & France. While I believe it would be simpler to just to name the whole article P-40 Survivors and seperate it in the heading article.
  2. Next question again dealing with the direct purchase aircraft, most references list the RAF aircraft as P-40C's (for example) these aircraft were purchased as Hawk 81A-3 Tomahawk IIB - should the individual section for these aircraft be under the P-40C section or should I create a new section titled Hawk 81A-3. I think for accuracy, these direct purchase aircraft should be under a seperate category with the compatable USAAC type in Par. afterwards i.e. Hawk 81A-3 (P-40C) CU (Buffalo). This convention then can be phased out as the later P-40's from lend-lease stock appears (ie the P-40E's Etc...)
  3. P-36 survivors should they be included or seperate - I think seperate as the list is small enough to be part of the P-36 page Davegnz (talk) 17:58, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
Agree with you on all three counts! --Rlandmann (talk) 19:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

757 or 767?

In this edit summary, and IP user has stated that the plane is a 757, not a 767. Given that Adrian Pingstone was the original photographer, I'm inclined to believe it's a 767 - he is usually correct on these thisgs. Also, the fuselage doens't look skinny enough for a 75. The reg number is G-BZHB, if anyone knows how to check that. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 05:30, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

The British CAA registry says that G-BZHB is a 767-336. --Carnildo (talk) 05:50, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Do you have the link for the CAA registry Davegnz (talk) 14:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
You can find many of them listed (including the UK's) at Aircraft_registration#External_links - Ahunt (talk) 14:53, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks everyone. Now that I have some reliable links to use, I can do the checking myself the next time suchan issue comes up. - BillCJ (talk) 19:03, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

D.H.5 or DH.5

Is it known which of "D.H.5" or "DH.5" is the correct or preferred spelling of this aircraft? All the links in the De Havilland info box seem to use the "DH.n" designation. Could someone confirm that this is the preferred name, before I move this page. Thanks. -- MightyWarrior (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 13:29, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Modern useage would actually be DH 5. Bzuk (talk) 13:44, 23 January 2008 (UTC).
I think DH.5, D.H.5, DH-5, DH5 and DH 5 are all equally valid. Does Wikipedia favour one style over the others? Drutt (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
They might all be valid (and therefore a user searching for any of them will be taken to the article via redirects), but it makes sense to standardise on a particular form for article writing and for article naming purposes within Wikipedia – it looks more "professional" if things like this match! -- MightyWarrior (talk) 11:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually it might make sense to standardise on "DH.5" - purely for consistency with "DH.4" etc. But none of the forms mentioned has any claim to be the only "correct" one, in fact "D.H.5" is probably the most widely used in older sources. Soundofmusicals (talk) 10:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

It looks like "DH.5" is still the front-runner. Changing all the articles to "DH n" (with a space) might be a huge job! I'll give it a few more days in case anyone vehemently disagrees, then if it's still okay, I'll change the article accordingly. -- MightyWarrior (talk) 11:36, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Although there is certainly a large number of different designations, the "standard" as such that was adopted in the United Kingdom after the Second World War was to eliminate the "period" in military designations, for example, "Mk. IX" became "Mk IX" and DH. 108 became "DH 108." Dependant on the date of publication, you will continue to see a wide variation in the so-called standard, but [2] and [3] give examples of current use. It probably matters little because the first authors/editors influenced the use of designations in the articles but if you check De Havilland Aircraft, you will notice the preponderance of "DH" designations compared to "DH." From this point on in historical research, the use of the "DH." prefix will gradually disappear, despite the efforts of some "purists" who will continue to support the older convention. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 13:13, 25 January 2008 (UTC). Not that there is anything wrong with being a "purist" in the best Seinfeld tradition of not really taking a stand. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 14:12, 25 January 2008 (UTC).
I have bitten the bullet and moved this one - although all the other Airco DH types will need moving to match. I have fixed a few of the links - but there are still some to do. Is there an automatic way of doing this?? Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
That's a big job you've undertaken there. It's not just the De Havilland planes that use the XX.Y or X.Y numbering format on Wikipedia, but most British manufacturers of the day. Drutt (talk) 01:05, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
Note: page moved back to Airco DH.5 by Trevor MacInnis (talk · contribs) on 28 January 2008 for consistency with other DH articles. -- MightyWarrior (talk) 23:05, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Just going to say before it was moved back - although I agree with Bzuks summary I would think it would be easier to leave this one as DH.5 to conform with all the other DH articles - otherwise it is a lot of them to change and redirect, templates, lists etc. etc. . MilborneOne (talk) 23:11, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

(Return) We had a similar discussion at [4] just above. Although the de Havilland DH.60 article has a full stop in the title, I took most of the stops out to read DH 60, I think it reads better this way. To add another alternative, the UK CAA currently call the Tiger Moth a DH82A (no spaces) Nimbus227 (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

For appearances think saying DH-98 would be best DH98 is a little crowded DH 98 seems disjointed 9two words) - the hypen links the number with abbreviation (ie MD-80 B-707). Another question regardin periods for id'ing and RAF squadron do you say 111Sq or 111Sq. of No.111sq or No.111Sq. (this has way too many periods)Davegnz (talk) 16:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
RAF Squadrons are always abbreviated 111 Sqn in common usage, when being more formal you add the No at the front No. 111 Squadron. Other combination shouldnt really be used and Sq is not a recognised abbreviation for squadron in the RAF. Also de Havilland never used the hyphen is would wither DH 111 or DH.111 the later is the one we have agreed on for de havilland. MilborneOne (talk) 16:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

List of aircraft of the Royal Malaysian Air Force

User:DavidDCM has split the list of active aircraft at List of aircraft of the Royal Malaysian Air Force into fixed wing and helicopters. I have reverted it a few times and dont want to again and break 3rr rules. The user insists that I need a good argument to keep reverting the article back to what is was before! despite my comments that it was standard practice to have a list in alphabetic order - which he states is confusing, appreciate any help from project members even to tell me I am wrong! MilborneOne (talk) 22:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

As some one who loves to argue over anything, you can ignore my comment, is this really worth the fight? Just asking. If the two tables dramatically affect redability an ese of use, that is a good point to consider. - BillCJ (talk) 22:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks BillCJ I have taken your advise, the user has now come back with a reasoned argument so no point in arguing. MilborneOne (talk) 22:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't aware there was a standard approach. Myself, I've usually split fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft out – and would probably do the same with UAVs – since there's a clear, intuitively obvious distinction, and the lists otherwise can get quite long. The general approach I've used can be seen at Armenian Air Force. Askari Mark (Talk) 19:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Fourth generation jet fighter

The Fourth generation jet fighter has endured ongoing disputes since at least August 2007, with the two current "usernames" arguing since November (perhaps longer under other names) It has been protected and semi-protected numerous times, yet the disputes rage on, and shows no sign of ending, despite the intervention of numerous editors and admins. What can the project do about this situation? I'm seriously considering just AFDing the page as original research. Granted, there are over 25 references throughout the article, but reference specific comparisons and statements, not the actual definition of "Fourth generation", or the classification of aircraft as 4th or 5th generation. The the nature of ongoing disputes clearly demontrates that the issue is highly subjective and contentious. However, I doubt an AFD would be any less contentious, and I'm not sure it could come to a clear consensus either. Another thought is to just marginalize the article, and reduce the pages linking to it. However, since the disputes have spilled over to F-22 and Typhoon, among others, I'm not sure that would do any good either. I would fully expect to see the issue pop up elsewhere, perhaps even on marginally-related articles such as turbofan, B-25 Mitchell, aircraft carrier, or even Spirit of St. Louis! :) Perhaps an ARBCOM is worth looking at, because they can take more drastic decisions. However, given the amount of IPs editing the article and it's talk page, and all the main protaginists denial of using sock puppets, yet the IPs edits continued, I doubt blocks or bans would do any good either, as some of the stalking problems "certain users" have been having with IPs date back to the original August 07 dispute. For what it's worth, User:Downtrip has vowed to bow out of the dispute, and I hope that the controversy will die down soon. But if it does not, where do we go from here? Do we just ignore it,and hope it goes away? - BillCJ (talk) 22:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I am with you, Bill. I don't see a lot of value in the article, as opposed to the individual articles on the actual aircraft. Who is going to use this article for a homework assignment or similar? - Ahunt (talk) 22:45, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The article appears to be a random collection of information and is not properly constructed - probably because nobody can agree what the generations actually are. It also looks like a collector for all the information that keeps getting thrown out of other fighter articles. I have just read the article and still dont really known what it means by fourth generation jet fighter. Getting rid of some of the fanboy junk has been tried already I believe. I think your suggestion of culling may be worth a try. MilborneOne (talk) 22:59, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Just a note that Downtrip actually had a good idea for replacing the article with one with a different name and focus, but I can't remember his suggested name/focus,or where he suggested it! (I think the suggestion was back in Nov/Dec, if someone wants to wade through his contributions.) Also, the Fighter aircraft article focuses far too much on the generations issue, and not enough on basic roles, tactics, and individual innovations. I also think covering jet fighters by decade is a better way of tracking the innovations than trying to any other arbitrary classification method - at least the dates are real! - BillCJ (talk) 23:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I have to ask, Bill - is there any real scholarship or government publication that uses this "generations" model for classifying jet fighters? I always thought it was started by one or two "aircraft enthusiast book authors" and that it was strictly arbitrary and mostly just used to conveniently divide their books into chapters. I have never found any USAF docs, CF docs or true scholarship that acknowledges that these "generations" really exist. - Ahunt (talk) 23:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I honestly have no idea, but I do think the term "generation" is just too arbitrary to be really meaningful in an encyclopedic sense, and certianly too contentious. So much (but not all) of the improvements in aircraft design in the last 30 years have involved internal items such as radar, and other sensors and avionics. Older airframes and designs - the B-52 a major case in point, tho not a fighter - can keep soldering on, but with avionics fits that could barely be imagined when they were first built. - BillCJ (talk) 23:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
That is rather what I thought. I have read the article and I can't think of too many reasons for keeping it. It seems rife with personal opinions and OR. - Ahunt (talk) 23:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Having just looked at the article, my thoughts are identical to those of MilborneOne – and if the article is kept, amputate everything below the list of 4th, possibly 4.5th generation aircraft; the rest just doesn't seem to directly further the intro in defining/explaining the subject. --Red Sunset 00:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
This is one of those topics that while thoroughly encyclopedic, is terribly difficult (if not impossible) to find citations for. Probably the best place to track this issue – which affects both the Fighter aircraft and 4th generation jet fighter articles is at Talk:Fighter aircraft#Overhaul of Fighter aircraft and 4th generation jet fighter articles?. As I pointed out in my essay Defining Jet Fighter Generations, one of the biggest problems with this subject is that there is, in fact, no “official definition.” The generations are defined by a consensus among aerospace and defense professionals that evolves among them to differentiate something real but intangible. In fact, folks like me are already trying to figure out what the sixth generation will be. (Some say UCAVs, but the jury is long from even a preliminary judgment.)
I had committed to do a rewrite over the holidays of both these articles, and had suggested two approaches, but “real life” intervened and hasn’t yet loosened its grip on me. Because of the ongoing dissension, I’ll try to make it a priority again, but I can’t say when I might have redrafts in my sandbox. Askari Mark (Talk) 22:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
The ongoing dispute and rancourous debate that has ensued over this article requires an admin to oversee the stalled consensus vote in the talk page and to put all the feuding Hatfields and McCoy families off in their respective corners and let the article be developed by some knowledgable folk such as Mark and Jeff. I have probably used up all my metaphors in this outburst. Personally, I tried to get excited about the article but couldn't bring myself to the point of intervening further. All the spillage here seems to have come here from the now dormant F-22 Raptor and Eurofighter Typhoon squabbles, but this mess hasn't been resolved. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 22:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC).

Image deletion alert

In the last few days, I've noticed that a large number of Commons images are being deleted, mostly for improper copyright status. Just a heads-ups, as many of these images are in the Lead on a lot of aircraft articles. Some of the interwikis seems to have been hit even harder, as I've seen a few articles with 4 of 5 pics having been deleted. If anyone knows a Commons admin with some time on their hands, it might be worth double-checking these pics to see if they are recoverable. My experience in mass pic-deletions has shown that many are salvagable with very little work to clear up their status. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 21:16, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

"Illustrated" Encyclopedias

I am perplexed by this edit by an editor, the summary of which states: "Please don't cite illustrated encyclopedias". What is this about? While there was no publisher or printer's information in the given cite, the page number was 774, which indicates it's a sizable volume. I know some books are mostly pictures, and often use the term "Illustrated", but that term alone is used widely in aircraft publications. (I'm asking here for reasons of openness and accountability, as I prefer not to get into direct conflicts with certain users as I am trying to avoid getting into direct conflicts with any users at this time.) - BillCJ (talk) 23:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Beats me! I have used those sorts of books as refs, generally they are as reliable as any other as they are often based on Janes and other sound refs. Sounds like someone with an axe to grind. - Ahunt (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Some unpleasant remarks on that editors talk page, shrug shoulders and carry on. I don't have a single aviation book without photos or drawings in it. Very strange. Is Wikipedia not an 'illustrated encyclopedia?' Nimbus227 (talk) 23:41, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
It's a very reliable source; we even have an article on it here. Along with Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation, one of the most comprehensive encyclopedias of aircraft ever published (we'll be up there soon!) --Rlandmann (talk) 23:56, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
I happen to HAVE this reference and, though sizeable, the bulk of the content is, well, pictures. You reverted my replacement of one unreliable source (Yeah, I did the 'fact checking' myself) with another one that is more authoritative. I don't think there is any need to cite the Illustrated encyclopedia when the Manufacturer's web site corraborates the fact well enough. Ahunt, please check your target before you pull the trigger. --Asams10 (talk) 00:10, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Is there any particular reason why you have removed two editor's comments from this section (one was mine)? Nimbus227 (talk) 00:17, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I have it as well; and can assure you that it does indeed meet the requirements of WP:V. Of course, it you have a more reliable source for a particular fact, by all means cite it; but there's no need to remove citations to this source, nor for the edit summary you provided. I also disagree with you assessment that the bulk of the content is pictures - are we talking about the same series here? --Rlandmann (talk) 00:22, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Template:USAF fighters

Okay, is adding the <small> texts a problem...? Sardanaphalus (talk) 11:13, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

    • The main issue, as I see it, is that this template is just one of many dozens used by WikiProject:Aircraft to provide navigation amongst the multitude of designation sequences we cover. I'm strongly opposed to any efforts to tinker with any of these templates in any way that will reduce the uniformity of presentation. If you want to suggest tweaks that could be applied universally across these templates, then please do so, but don't try "evolving" just one of them; because the next person will try to evolve a different one in a different direction. --Rlandmann (talk) 11:19, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm strongly opposed to any efforts to tinker with any of these templates in any way that will reduce the uniformity of presentation.
I guess you mean outside a sandbox or the like. Okay, then, imagine the work just done on Template:USAF fighters as if done on a copy of the template in such a sandbox. Dislikes...? Sardanaphalus (talk) 11:24, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Dislikes? The single most relevant: it's markedly and visibly different from every other template we use. It did however, clarify for me the need to explicitly indicate how the PB- and FM- subsequences fitted in (similar to how it's been handled on a number of other templates; {{USAF trainer aircraft}} springs to mind). --Rlandmann (talk) 12:18, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I have to support Rlandmann views that all these templates have to add a uniform look and feel. Not against change but the last version was ugly and hard to read far to much blue and all the links are in different formats. Remember this is just a simple navigation infobox it should not need to be complicated. I would not support the changes as shown in the above dif. MilborneOne (talk) 12:28, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Okeydokey, I get the picture. Sardanaphalus (talk) 14:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Vickers aircraft

Hi, I wonder if somone could create a Vickers aircraft template? A lot of articles could use it. I don't have a clue how to make one, perhaps I should learn if I knew where to start. I posted this on the template talk page but I was not sure how many people have that on their watchlist. Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 19:08, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I think I have worked out how to do it and am having a play in the sandbox. I assume when it is complete that I just create a page called Template:Vickers aircraft? I also wonder how the box knows which page it is on (the subject aircraft is highlighted automatically), Clever stuff! Nimbus227 (talk) 19:28, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I've cracked it now thanks, there is one at the bottom of Vickers VC10, I have not added it to the list of templates yet just in case there is a problem with it. Nimbus227 (talk) 20:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Looks OK - perhaps you may want to rename it Template:Vickers aircraft to make it the same as all the others! MilborneOne (talk) 20:21, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Looks like you have two templates one called Vickers linked from the VC10 and Vickers aircraft linked above! - OK you need to make sure that the name is the same as the template or the edit button goes to the wrong one!!! MilborneOne (talk) 20:24, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
I have corrected the name in Vickers aircraft to stop the redirect to the wrong template - perhaps we should loose the other one before it gets confusing! MilborneOne (talk) 20:27, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Great, I thought I had made two, can you delete the wrong one for me, my head is starting to hurt! Nimbus227 (talk) 20:32, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Other one deleted. FWIW, I created a template to automate "kicking off" these navboxes. You can use {{subst:aerotempstart}} on a blank page to create a (very basic) one. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Great, it has been a learning experience! Cheers. Nimbus227 (talk) 20:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

(undent) What a fun piece of tag-team editing! :) Some last issues: the RAF Museum Thesaurus mentions a Vickers Vannock and Vickers Pumpkin (!) - does anyone have any idea what these were? The Smithsonian Directory of Airplanes also mentions a "G.F.B.1" through "G.F.B.3" - were these subtypes/redesignations of the E.F.B.1 through E.F.B.3 or something else entirely?

That Vickers type number list is now the most comprehensive I've seen so far! (but then, I don't have the Putnam book). --Rlandmann (talk) 02:25, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Great team work, I lost the plot a few hours ago. Vickers Pumpkin? Sure to be a streamlined machine! Besides being great fun it was a bit of a learning experience flicking through all the articles. Wasn't the Spitfire a Vickers-Supermarine product? OK, we give in. Bleeding finger tips and square eyes! Nimbus227 (talk) 02:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force

Some of you might be aware of the mess that the "inventory" section of this article is in, with a rapid succession of editors adding all kinds of unsourced figures. The inventory itself was added by an anonymous editor nearly 12 months ago, and is referenced to: "World Military Aircraft Inventory", Aerospace Source Book 2007, Aviation Week & Space Technology.

I'm hoping that someone here has ready access to this publication and could please verify for me that the list of aircraft and (especially) their numbers visible in this edit matches what the original source document provides.

If so, I'll "reboot" the table to that version and steps can then be taken to better control what information goes in there.

Any help on this one greatly appreciated. --Rlandmann (talk) 08:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Seriously, but without tools, there's not much more I can do that won't just get reverted. Between the Juan Carlos I L61) pennant number fight using only pictures from the dockyard as a source for "L61" to Segregator's unique interpretations of "Comparable" aircraft and stubborn insistance on repeatedly putting them back in, among many others, I'm totally burned out from those kinds of fights. So to prove how burned out I am on this:
I suggest, only partly in jest, that we ask Jimbo to set up an Internation English Wiki for people who want to use poor-quality pictures and internet forums from there home country's military as sources. No US or Britsh sources would be allowed, so as not to taint the purity of quality information from other nations. Why should people who can barley wright in English be subjected to such "impirialistic policees" such as NOPV, OR, RS, Verifiability, etc, which are clearly designed by the Americans and their British lackeys (or is it the British and their American lackeys? I get confused) to limit genuine and true information from the non-Western world. This site would also use true "International English" spelling and grammar, using correct plurals such as "aircrafts", so as not to humiliate non-English speakers with artificial grammer and spelling rules imposed by imperialistic American and British editors.
Note - With the exception of "aircrafts", all my mis-spellings were inadvertant - I just decide to leave them there. To those of you who are not proficient in English, yet try to do your best to use reliable sources, and accept corrections when needed, this is in NO way meant to make fun of you. Rather, it is simply a vent for my frustrations in dealing with people who seem to think they are exempt from the policies on Wikipedia because they don't speak good English, or who just don't care, and who think they have a right to put in anything related to their home countries, regardless of WP attribution and other policies.) - BillCJ (talk) 02:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
LOL. Thanks for heaving a levity log on the fire. Binksternet (talk) 02:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
I know it's hard Bill, I am starting to feel it myself. Think back to the 'Stefo' days, my what fun. A single sheep is a sheep and more than one sheep is still sheep, I never understood that! I put a tag on an aircraft article written by a Pole recently, just did not know where to start. We do need more control here, the time spent on fixing IP vandalism must be outrageous. It occurs to me that we will have written all the articles soon and we will just be 'maintaining'. Would be nice. Nimbus227 (talk) 03:12, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Big thanks to User:MilborneOne for jumping in with the 2008 edition! --Rlandmann (talk) 20:33, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem - although aviation week ignores most of the Iranian-built aircraft so I have left them alone! MilborneOne (talk) 21:22, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Reliable sources needed

The On Mark Engineering page was created about 3 weeks ago by a new user who has not contributed since then. The company is definitely notable, as it performed several types of conversions of A-26/B-26 Invader aircraft. The article is fairly detailed, but there are no reliable sources whatsover, and two in-text links on a tengental item. I'm concered it might be a copyvio from a printed source (possibly British, as it follows some Commonwealth grammatical rules), as an internet search on key phrases only turned up the article itself. I added on EL from a one-owner site on the Van Nuys Airport that contians some of the details, but it uses no reliable sources either. In addition, the article is not wikified at all, such as no cats or wikilinks. I have no problem adding the links, but I'd rather not spend time to wikify the article if it is going to be cut back drastically to only sourceable info, or even deleted. In my opinion, the article is worth trying to save in some form. Thanks for any advice, comments, or assistance. - BillCJ (talk) 06:01, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

While unsourced information may be challenged or removed at any time, this should not be misinterpreted to mean "should be" much less "must be". There's no need to cut back the article or delete it; what the contributor gave us gels well with the other snippets about this company that can be gleaned from the web or my few print references to them. I've wikified it and added a reference to Gunston, but beyond that I think we can assume good faith as far as the factual content goes. I share your concerns about the possibility of a copyvio, though; the initial edit is atypical to say the least! I'll leave the contributor a note in case he comes back. --Rlandmann (talk) 06:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

RL, thanks for the wikifying - I didn't mind doing it myself, but wanted to get other opinions first. I wasn't trying to be alarmist in anyway, but just over-cautious. I always try to remeber that with deletionists, "may" is read as "DELETE ME NOW!" That book you added, World Encyclopedia of Aircraft Manufacturers, looks like a great source to have. Amazon.com has the new 2006 edition for US$70. (!!!), so I will try to find a copy used somewhere. Thanks again, great job! - BillCJ (talk) 06:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyvio from here. I've speedied it. Sigh. As to other concerns, I'm unfortunately all too familiar with the deletionist mindset; however, if you ever spot anyone deleting uncontroversial facts simply because they're unsourced, they're seriously overstepping the line and need to be called on it. Gunston is a great reference; articles are typically very short - sometimes only a couple of sentences for minor firms, but a fantastic and very thorough ready reference. Try abebooks,com for a copy - plenty to be had for around $US 10. --Rlandmann (talk) 06:58, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I hate it when I'm right! (Actually, I love it! But in this case, I hate it.) Do you have enough sources to start a new article, or at least point us in the right direction? I'd definetely like to see an article on the firm. ANd thanks for the online bookstore link - I'll check it out. - BillCJ (talk) 07:06, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

I'll kick it off with what little there is in Gunston. The site that the original article was cribbed from could be used to flesh it out some, until and unless more reliable sources come along. --Rlandmann (talk) 07:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
A new user PeterWD has done a lot of research on the A-26 conversions and On Mark Engineering in particular I am sure he would be interested in improving the article and providing citations. He has little experience yet of Wikipedia but I am sure he would come up with the goods in time. MilborneOne (talk) 19:38, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

AH-1Z user article, comments?

A few of us have been working on a User:ANigg/AH-1Z Viper user space article on and off a few weeks. I'm asking for suggestions on what can be improved. I think it is about ready to be moved to main space (regular article), but not sure if everything has been caught. Reply on the user article's talk page, please. Thanks for your help. -Fnlayson (talk) 02:14, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the help given. It looks ready to move to main space, imo... -Fnlayson (talk) 00:32, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
Concur on move, and on the thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 00:58, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

AEW/AWACS merger

I've been running a poll for a month now on mergeing the Airborne Warning and Control System article into Airborne Early Warning, and moving the compined page to Airborne Early Warning and Control. After on month, there is just one vote added yesterday, and that's an "oppose", sort of! With so little interest, we need further input on what to do with these pages. Whatever your position, please comment at Talk:Airborne Early Warning#Requested merger. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 19:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Procedurally, if after a month you've only received one response, I'd say that's evidence that the proposed merge is uncontroversial and you can be bold and do as you see fit (even if the one response was negative, sort of). --Rlandmann (talk) 20:23, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
An approach I sometimes use to avoid this problem is ask: "anyone object if I...?" That way if you hear nothing (usual) then you can assume it is okay. - Ahunt (talk) 22:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
I'd almost merged it on the 23rd. Oh the joys of procrastination! Anyway, we've enough support now to go ahead, but I'll give the "opposer" tiem to clarify what he wants. A separate article on the histroy of the E-3 AWACS program might be a good idea, but as this point, the E-3 article has little background on the program, so that's probably the place to start. - BillCJ (talk) 22:22, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

AfD candidate?

I was just wondering how useful this article is to the project: Comparison of P-80 variants Looks a bit 'unloved' to me. Nimbus227 (talk) 23:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

That's an ugly table and as the only thing on the page if it won't merge across then AfD seems a good idea. GraemeLeggett (talk) 09:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Agreed; I guess the other possibility would be to use it as a jumping-off point if someone wants to expand it into a full-blown Lockheed P-80 variants article? I'm sure that Baugher would provide a good framework. --Rlandmann (talk) 10:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I thought the FA-wikigods said we couldn't use Baugher anymore? Aren't we bowing to all their wishes now? ;) - BillCJ (talk) 10:38, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify; there's absolutely no reasons why a P-80 variants article here couldn't be modelled on what Baugher provides (after all, he's done the hard yards), but anyone who cares about any possible GA or FA for the article should avoid citing him as a source. There's no reason he couldn't be linked as an external link, either. --Rlandmann (talk) 11:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
If that table was narrowed and the first two lines removed it could replace the specifications currently in P-80 Shooting Star, the figures are in the same order I think. P-80 variants is a project for a rainy weekend, Angellucci (The American Fighter) gives 44 variants! He does include the T-33 Shooting Star, CT-133 Silver Star and the T2V SeaStar. There is some discussion of merges on those article talk pages. It was the word 'comparison' that brought me here as we have deleted two comparison articles recently (Ki-61 and WWII bomber load?). Looks like the later versions of the P-80 were a little bit faster and a little bit heavier, unsurprisingly!! Nimbus227 (talk) 16:42, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Please let's not go there; at the moment we have a situation where virtually every aircraft article has its specs provided in one of two transcluded templates. The last thing we need is to let hardcoded tables creep back in. --Rlandmann (talk) 18:56, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Yep, it could start a trend, I see that. The table could be merged into two specs fields like P-51 Mustang which looks ok. Nimbus227 (talk) 19:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Navbox categories

As some of you are aware, someone went through Category:Aviation navigational boxes yesterday on a mad categorising spree until a couple of pointed questions from some regulars here caused them to reconsider. The problem with what they were doing wasn't so much that they were categorising these templates, but they were categorising them in a way that was utterly useless to the way we use them. Having said that, it probably does make sense to move our navigation footers into Category:Aircraft navigational boxes (to separate them from airports etc), and within that to split into designation-based templates and manufacturer-based templates. Designation-based templates could then be split along country lines (if only to separate off the large number of US-based templates). I'm willing to do the work (or suggest it to the categoriser from last night), but (A) does anyone feel that this is worthwhile? and if so (B) do the divisions I'm suggesting make sense? --Rlandmann (talk) 23:28, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I wonder who that was?! Not me BTW folks :-) As long as they are easy to find I don't care. We need some more please RL, Vought and Republic that I can think of, would be happy for you to start them as I made a mess of that last time! Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 00:32, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Support Rlandmann idea - any reason why the manufacturers cant be country based as well? MilborneOne (talk) 22:45, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Probably because the USA has had more aircraft manufacturers than any other country in the world, and this is unfair to other nations whose cat pages can't be as large, and part of an evil plot by George W. Bush to dominate the Galaxy through superior capitalism! ;) - BillCJ (talk) 00:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
LOL evil plot aside, I think that subdividing the manufacturers is probably unnecessary and possibly counter-productive; if someone is checking to see whether a manufacturer has been covered yet, the simplest way to check is to see whether it's there in alphabetical order. Sure, people will know which country to look under for the big, famous manufacturers; but a large and ever-increasing majority of the manufacturers we've got templates for are small and rather obscure... --Rlandmann (talk) 00:43, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
OK good point about obscurity etc - support your original idea then!! MilborneOne (talk) 09:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Done. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:45, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Another serious point is that many of the more-modern manufacturers are now multinational: AgustaWestland, EADS/Airbus/Eurocopter, BAE Systems to a large extent, with many holdings in North America, RR (including the former Allison and other NA holdings), and so on. - BillCJ (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Help in Quebec-French

I'm having difficulty convincing a new user that the lists of air ambulance services in the Air ambulance page are only for those services which have articles in Wikipedia, per this diff and two previous ones. The list on the page was growing so quickly that we had to limit it to only those services that have notability proven though having an article in WP which has third-party sources. Assuming good faith, the problem may be the fact that the user primarily speaks French (another assumption). Can any of our bi-lingual Canadian editors reach out to this user, and see if y'all can help him understand the situation? Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 04:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Mais oui, mon ami, c'est un ambulance aérienne notamment au Québec. Bill, from a cursory look at the program developed by this non-profit organization, they truly do have a long-established lineage and are an important element in aerial ambulance services in that part of the world. There are a number of other organizations that should also be mentioned including the Saskatchewan and Manitoba government air services which have major air ambulance operations. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 07:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC).

Thanks BillZ. I had looked at their website, and it seemed legit to me too. THe problem is we're trying to limit the amount of services placed on the list, because it has been growing exponentially before we started cutting it back. Limiting the list to services with articles seemed the best way to go, since our articles are required to assert notability besed on third-party sources, or at least can be challenged on that basis. What needs to happen in this case is for an article to be created with proper citations and sourcing, and then we can list it. Since the primary source is in French, and biligualism in Canada apparently is only one way (yes, that's dig at Quebec!), I really can't help out there. - BillCJ (talk) 07:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Tell you what, what if I set up a couple of quick articles in the next few days on some of the aerial ambulance services in Canada. I have a bit of experience here as some of the companies that belong to my organization are in that business. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 07:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC).

That would be great! I wasn't going to volunteer you to do it, as I know you're busy enough. Familiarity with the topic is something I don't have, but if you need any help with copyediting, proof-reading, or any of the nit-picky things, just let me know! - BillCJ (talk) 08:30, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Section reordering

There's a discussion underway here about a bot that's been developed that could re-order the supplementary sections (See also, References, External links) that we've been working on manually. It's a Wikipedia-wide proposal, but it obviously has direct consequences for this project, since we're still cleaning up. Assuming that it works correctly, it could save a lot of time and effort - I just wanted to see what people here thought so I could take it back to the discussion? --Rlandmann (talk) 22:25, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Having a bot running round the whole of Wikipedia changing willy-nilly moving sections about seems like a recipe for disaster - its fine a bot looking for pages and possibly tagging them but changing things without any intelligent intervention has far too much risk of breaking things like templates, references etc, which of course the people who set the Bot running will be of no help fixing. Of course the same could be said of most of the things that get imposed by MOS - much of which is of no use to the content or usability of Wikipedia.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
Sure, there are indeed concerns about whether the bot will do the job it's supposed to; I guess what I'm asking is whether (assuming that the bot actually works) anyone here can think of any reason why it would be preferable to do this job by hand? Any misgivings about whether it's a good idea generally should be taken up on the page linked above where the actual discussion is taking place. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:20, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The last bot we had re-ordering our section,. by request, did its best, but we're still cleaning up the messes it left doing what it was supposed to do, along with the things it didn't change. I'm not sure it was any easier with the bot than it would have been without it! The sections are far too complicted, in my opinion, to just turn a bot loose, especially those in our project. If they do decide to run such a bot, I sincerely hope they'll test run it on a limited number of articles, and make absolutely sure that it does everything right. We all know how self-righteous some bot owners can be about what there bots do, and we have enough helpful bots running around as it is. We sure don't need another one like those! - BillCJ (talk) 23:53, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm with Bill on this one - that last bot was more hindrance than help. Having seen what the bots do on Wikipedia, I have become more convinced that human intervention is preferable, if only because humans have to read the results. - Ahunt (talk) 01:17, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

OK OK guys! :) I'll take the message back :) But for clarification: the only "messes" that I'm aware of that Gimmebot left in its wake were in articles where human editors had nested navboxes inside Template:Aircontent; something that the template was never designed to do and which no-one should ever have tried to make it do. That being said, the ill-effects amounted to something like a few dozen articles out of something like three thousand that the bot updated. Not sure if that really counts as more hindrance than help... :) --Rlandmann (talk) 04:57, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

  • True, but it took users to move the aviation lists navbox to the bottom after the bot added those to all the aircraft articles. No big deal, but a lot of busy work. -Fnlayson (talk) 05:14, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
In the overwhelming majority of cases, the aviation lists navbox was (correctly) located at the bottom of the page. The only times this wasn't true was when some editors had gone against this project's page content guidelines and had inserted extra sections after the old "Related content" (usually because they were trying to get the article to conform to the MOS "preferred" section order). --Rlandmann (talk) 05:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Fair enough and I was one of them trying to get ahead. done.. -Fnlayson (talk) 05:44, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I expressed a positive opinion on this, what the bot appears to have to do is relatively straightforward. A trial run, possibly through one manufacturer's category is certainly a good idea. An occasional problem I have seen when moving the sections manually is that I've spotted text that said 'see image below' or 'as mentioned above' etc so I left the sections as they were, the bot would not see this either I guess. There does not seem to be an urgent need to change the order of the sections, we could when making other edits in articles have a look at the order and align them if needed. Cheers. Nimbus227 (talk) 12:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

New navbox

An editor has creafted the Template:United States Military Aerial Refueling Aircraft, and I'm wondering if this is really necessary. Comments? - BillCJ (talk) 00:10, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

  • I think it should be changed to cover all (modern) Military Aerial Refueling Aircraft. That'd add the A300? MRTT, L-1011 tanker, the KDC-10 (like KC-10/KDC-10) and maybe a couple others I don't know about. A template for a few US tankers seems marginal to me... -Fnlayson (talk) 00:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Agreed that we shouldn't keep it in its current form, since we haven't been (and IMHO shouldn't be) creating templates based around MM designations. This also touches on the as-yet undiscussed relationship between categories and navboxes within the project. We already have Category:United States military tanker aircraft to handle the relationship between these aircraft, and of course Category:Military tanker aircraft upstream of that. Personally, I think that's enough for the MMs. --Rlandmann (talk) 00:54, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
The navboxes are for navigation particularly if it is difficult to do with the cats - as tankers have a reasonable cat the navbox is not needed (in my opinion). The few related aircraft could be dealt with in see also/related aircraft if really needed. MilborneOne (talk) 09:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Just to confuse somebody has just created Category:Air refueling. MilborneOne (talk) 09:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
There seems to be a trend towards navbox bloat that probably should be reconsidered. Like Rlandmann points out, they often duplicate existing categories. Is one more click that inconvenient for users who are truly interested in related content? ericg ✈ 07:40, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

New article alert

The Military Transport Aircraft page was recently created. Currently, it's only one sentence, 1 "extenal", and 3 "see also" links. I don't see that it needs to be a separate page from EADS at this point. Btw, there are a few similar article on the EADS divisions created by the same user, but I've not had a chance to check them out. - BillCJ (talk) 02:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Some of the associated articles (CASA FITS in particular) seem like they've been translated by machine... "FITS is predestined for this area of application due to its real-time display of navigation data." Why, of course it is! ericg ✈ 07:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
It should really be incorporated into EADS and that page made a redirect. It doesn't serve any real purpose outside of EADS that I can see. - Ahunt (talk) 12:14, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Assessment question

When assessing an article that has both Aircraft and MilHist tags on the talk page is it normal to change both at the same time? The criteria look the same, was just thinking that the MilHist project might have slightly different standards. I noticed some articles where only one banner was changed and a bot followed and changed the other one. Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 11:33, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Note sure for everybody. I update both ratings since the criteria seems the same and I've signed up with both projects. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I don't think that it should be automatic - as for example MilHist viewpoint on whether an article covers a subject completely may differ from Aircraft - assessors could be looking for different things.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

New "year in aviation" template

Pinching the idea (and markup!) from someone who made a similar thing for "year in film", I've created a template to automatically create the "year in aviation" links that many of us use. {{avyear|1948}} will create the same effect as what we've been doing by hand. Cuts down on a little typing!

On a completely different subject, I'm very excited to see new articles proliferating this month; many from new contributors to the project. I can't help but think it's the navboxes stimulating this in part (people wanting to fill in redlinks) --Rlandmann (talk) 21:52, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Shouldn't that template be limited to just year dates and not full dates (month, day & year)? I doubt the user preferences on full dates will work with that. No big deal really, just wanted to point that out. -Fnlayson (talk) 22:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
I have been using the year in dates just in the infobox which dont normally have full dates in them - didnt we stop using them in the article body? MilborneOne (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, confirming that it doesn't work with user preferences; just as the hand-coded "year in aviation" links don't. I don't recall any consensus about limiting this type of link to the infobox; but of course, the template will work no matter where it's used. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:34, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Searching memory banks here, but I believe that there was a discussion and consensus to limit the use of year in aviation to the infobox only. I believe it was Pietr that brought the topic to this discussion forum. FWIW Bzuk (talk) 23:15, 8 March 2008 (UTC).

Italian translator

I'm working on a couple of new articles, and need someone to translate two articles on the It.WIki.

  1. it:Aeritalia, to go in Aeritalia.
  2. it:Aeritalia G-91Y, to go in User:BillCJ/Sandbox/Aeritalia G.91Y

Neither Italian article is sourced properly, but at least it'll give me something to work with. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 21:08, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, Google's Italian-to-English automated translations usually result in something vaguely intelligible (though nothing approaching real English of course). Maybe you could begin there and then ask around for any specific passages that make no sense at all? When I need translation help, I usually look to the regular contributors to the relevant country's WikiProject. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

THanks for the suggestions. I've also asked USER:EH101, who is Italian, but seems to have been inactice for the last few days. Anyway, from the Stephano fiasco, I remember there were several WPAIR members who read Italian, but since I could't remember who, I decided to ask here. - BillCJ (talk) 22:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

I'll put my hand up - please feel free to leave me the odd knotty section on my talk page --Rlandmann (talk) 22:35, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks! I'll try to get to it in a couple of days. Also, the Fiat G.91 page still has remnats of Stefano's "translation" work. I've fixed a few phrases, but there are still some more that are just plain bewildering, which I can't make out. What's the best inline tag to use for stuff like that? - BillCJ (talk) 00:56, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

V-22 accident page

I'm considering nominating Accidents and incidents involving the V-22 Osprey for deletion.

Reason? Lack of noteability. Only four crashes over the entire span of development of an aircraft is nothing remarkable, especially when you look at the number of F-14s lost in crashes ([[5] 42] or the number of Harrier crashes (138!). A minor amount of media coverage doesn't make something noteable. Jtrainor (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Notability is not a matter of numbers. Look at all the press those accidents have gotten. Also, that's not a fair comparison. Fighter and ground attack aircraft will get shot down sometimes. I fixed the wiki link for you. Check out Help:Link. -Fnlayson (talk) 04:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Notability is defined in part as continuing coverage in the press. Every major press article done on the V-22, including the hit-piece by Time late last year, covers most all these accidents, major and minor. The first thing every major critic of the V-22 mentions is these accidents, and the total amount of people killed in them. With the amount of reliable sources in the article, you're going to have a hard time proving it's non-notable by WP standards. - BillCJ (talk) 04:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Dump It! The article, might have notability, but only as much as we (editors) give it. This should be placed in the V-22 Main. Incidents: like “Delivery of the Osprey to a combat zone for the first time, one of the ten aircraft experienced an unidentified malfunction which required it to land in Jordan, before continuing on to Iraq” WOW! Sorry but that’s kinda stretching fellas. I think Jtrainor shows a great point, if you have a article for the V-22 accidents, then you should have separate article for all aircraft, especially aircraft like the AV-8 HarrierANigg (talk) 04:57, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Please don't delete words such as "Notability" from other peoples commetns, in this case mine. I assume it was inadvertant, but please try to be careful. As to your suggestion, you're welcome to nominate it if you like. However, I strongly recommend that you read through the V-22 Osprey talk page carefully and in detail to get a sense for why I suggested creating the separate article in the first place. The incident section was so controversial and detailed that it was taking away from the article itself, so I recommended splitting it off. Also, please be aware that if the new page is deleted, the whole page will not be merged to the V-22 page, but just a short summary of the major incidents, and none of the minor ones. And again, with the amount of reliable sources in the article, you or anyone else is going to have a hard time proving it's non-notable by WP standards. Also, if you really think all aircraft should have separate articles for accidents, then by all means start creating them. However, they will each be judged on their own merits, and those not meeting WP's Notability and other policies for articles will be AFDed by someone, and most likely deleted. - BillCJ (talk) 05:00, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure how many aircraft have separate accident pages, but several do. The JAS 39 Gripen has had several accidents, and in Sweden the issue is just as contentious there as it is for the V-22 here, with it's accident page being split off that article for the same reasons as with the V-22. Also, most major aircraft accidents have separate articles, with the main aircraft page for that type just being a brief summary. Rather than create separate pages on each accident, most of which would be easily pass notability guidelines, we created combined pages for the V-22 and JAS 39, as the controversy surrounding the incidents was as important as the incidents themselves, and it was better to cover them together rather duplicate info across several pages. SOmething similar was done for the Dash 8/QSeries landing gear incidents last year. Each accident received a separate article (3 accidents in just a few weeks time), and all three passed AFD nominations. Afterwards, merge proposals were made, and the pages were combined into one article which covered the incidents and the aftermath of SAS grounding its Dash 8s all in one place. In the case of the four 9/11 plane crashes, there is both an overview page of the events of the day, and a separate page on each crash. My point is that each aircraft type, and its accidents/incidents need to be judged on their own merits. Most major accidents will warrant their own articles, while simple incidents would probably not. If there is a connection between a series of incidents and accidents, then a combined page might be the best way to go, as I believe it was in the cases of the JAS 39 and V-22. - BillCJ (talk) 05:15, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
Andrew, if you're interested in how aviation accidents are covered on WP, and contributing to such pages, the Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Aviation accident task force might interest you. I was a meber there for nearly a year, but withdrew as I felt I was stetching myself too thin, and distracting from other areas of primary interest to me on WP. - BillCJ (talk) 05:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Bill for removal of your "notability" it was purely accidentally. I was copying it for proper spelling; I don’t want make waves here, so I will look into it. Honestly though still looks kinda trivial to meANigg (talk) 05:20, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

No problem. If you haven't read the TIME and Wired articles yet (they're linked on the main V-22 page), you should - They spends alot of coverage on the accidents, which is the key element in most opposition to the V-22. Media coverage is what largely deterimines notable on WP, and both the TIME and Wired are mainstream publications whose articles have had an effect on the V-22's reputation. - BillCJ (talk) 05:31, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Help needed on Vickers Vimy - Chinese translation needed

There is an unreferenced section in the article on the Vickers Vimy about use of some of the Vimy Commercials delivered as airliners to China as bombers in the Second Zhili-Fengtian War. After extensive Googleing, I have managed to find this link http://cwlam2000hk.sinaman.com/caf05.htm, which appears to say something about Chinese military use of the Vimy - can someone who can understand Chinese please check whether the link confirms what the section of the article claims about Chinese use? Nigel Ish (talk) 18:59, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Nigel: Actually Dictionary.com does a pretty good job on it - I just gave it a try! - Ahunt (talk) 19:19, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Nigel, here is translation made by Google tool. Translated text is quite understandable even for non-native speakers. Regards, Piotr Mikołajski (talk) 08:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Info boxes for glider articles

The aerotable isn't really applicable to gliders eg nothing about competition class, minimum sink or best glide angle. However a couple of articles I have added have been tagged as lacking this box. Any ideas? JMcC (talk) 20:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

{{aerospecs}} allows entry of glide angle and sink rate if that helps. MilborneOne (talk) 20:11, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Like MilborneOne says, {{aerospecs}} has sink rate and glide ratio built in; and competition class is easily described in {{Infobox Aircraft}} in the "type" parameter - ie "Type: Standard-class sailplane". There's no reason why glider articles should be formatted any differently from any other aircraft. See an example here.
We really need to clean up the glider articles and format them like the rest of our aircraft coverage. If nothing else, it sets a really bad precedent for anybody else who comes along and decides that, for example, fighter planes should have a different style, or helicopters, or... or... or... --Rlandmann (talk) 20:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
As an alternative, (copied from what I posted on Jmcc150's Talkpage), using the {{Aircraft specifications}} template then the additional performance specs could be added using the more performance field. Agreed that we should try to keep sport glider articles looking like the rest of aircraft articles.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:38, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
An article I edited here was Schempp-Hirth Mini-Nimbus, it has an infobox of sorts. Could this be modified to be more like the format of the usual infobox? Agree that the glider articles should be similar in layout and quality, I can help here. Perhaps this box is a bit long (but it replaces 'specs') and on the other hand it does not contain any timeframe (maiden flight, years produced etc, if known) or the type of engine used (if it is a self-sustainer). I guess we should ask what would a reader expect to find in the infobox of a glider article? Secret's out! Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 21:19, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
It could be, but I strongly believe that it shouldn't be. One of the beauties of standard templates is that if at any point in the future, this project (or bodies further up the food chain, or a re-user of our content) decides that (for a stupid exmaple) all aircraft infoboxes should have a blue background - a trivial adjustment would need to be made to one template, and the change would be instantly reflected in several thousand articles. So yes, the custom infobox in that article could be tweaked to look more like {{Infobox Aircraft}}, but it wouldn't behave like that template.
As an aside, this is why I'm so firmly committed to using the {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}} templates for references: if a reuser (or future Wikipedia) prefers MLA, or APA, or whatever citation style they want, they only have to reformat the templates; they don't need to touch the data in thousands upon thousands of articles.
Separating content and formatting is a Good Thing. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
There are other infoboxes for UAVs and airships (I think), is there room for an 'infobox glider' template?. Do we have any hot air balloons (have not looked)? They might need something slightly different. Will have a look at the cite templates you mention, some of the formatting on WP can be quite daunting for a new user who may wish just to add facts quickly and easily. Is the glider taskforce still active? Must stress that I am easy on this (and only one opinion) and agree that standardisation (as long as it is not too rigid) has got to be an aid for readers and editors alike. Nimbus227 (talk) 22:43, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
Must have read discussion on UAV infoboxes as there seems to be only two, 'aircraft' and 'future' aircraft'. I can see that this would be the way to go with perhaps some 'nowiki' notes in the aircraft infobox to prompt (as I have seen before). Nimbus227 (talk) 22:54, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm with RL. Aircraft should use the same Infobox without specs. The templates for specs can be different, but not an excessive variety. -Fnlayson (talk) 23:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
No - you're correct, Nimbus227 - there is a UAV infobox out there on some articles. All of this illustrates perfectly the inherent dangers in this approach. Someone goes off and creates an infobox for glider articles; someone else does something different for Airships; someone else something different again for UAVS... {{Infobox Aircraft}} and {{aerospecs}} have been designed to cater for all vehicles within the scope of WikiProject Aircraft. If there's a glaring problem or omission, then the solution is to fix these templates, not to start forking. --Rlandmann (talk) 01:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

(Return) As a concession to gliders then can the 'specs' templates be modified to allow the addition of important parameters like water ballast capacity and the speeds that the minimum sink and best glide angle are flown at? I am quite willing to try this in the Mini Nimbus article, then we can all see how it looks. Nimbus227 (talk) 23:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd oppose the addition of those speeds to the templates, only in that it's a level of detail that's not consistent with the other data we report, with the data that's usually presented in most reference works, or with an encyclopedia article (which is, of course, what we're trying to write). I thought long and hard about including water ballast when designing {{aerospecs}} but in the end omitted it for the same reasons.
For any aircraft, there's an almost infinite variety of specifications we could provide - the trick is deciding which to leave out as much as which to put in. And of course, if the ballast capacity of a particular glider is noteworthy for some reason, then it not only can, but should be discussed in the article text itself. --Rlandmann (talk) 01:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
If the table lacks the key performance measures of a glider there is not much incentive for anyone to convert the existing tables of the data to the standard aircraft table. JMcC (talk) 12:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
Practically every performance figure we quote is contingent upon one or more other factors, but noting these takes us to a level of detail not generally contained in reference works on aircraft aimed at a general readership. The level of detail that we provide right across the project should be comparable. None of us can afford to get too fussy about a particular aircraft or class of aircraft because it's an area of special interest for us personally; otherwise where do we draw the line? The worst excess I've seen was someone creating a giant Jane's style specs table for a particular favourite type containing everything right down to the distance from the ground to the centreline of the propeller hubs (inboard and outboard). While I don't think anyone here would be arguing for that, the point is that although it's an arbitrary line, it has to be drawn somewhere... --Rlandmann (talk) 20:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
It may also be worth bearing in mind that in the course of contributing aircraft articles, most of us are constantly making various concessions to things that we don't necessarily like or agree with, but which we do for the sake of the uniformity of the project. --Rlandmann (talk) 00:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Where we should draw the line is the point where all the essential data about an aircraft is tabulated. The distances of propellers to the ground is minor, but the glide angle and min. sink of a glider are what horse-power is to powered aircraft. They dictate how far you go between climbs and then how fast you climb. I think it would be useful to have an example of one glider article that reaches the necessary standard, ie meeting the requirements of the Aircraft Project and providing the essential tabular data about performance when describing a glider. Perhaps Rlandmann would show us how it should be done on Schempp-Hirth Discus for example. JMcC (talk) 15:40, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
I left this discussion for a couple of days as I did not think it was achieving anything and also felt that 'the door had been firmly shut'. My last thoughts on this, I am quite happy with the current aircraft infobox as I mentioned but the best glide, min sink and speeds at which these occur are very important aspects of a sailplane's performance and not trivia, these are the numbers that glider manufacturer's push (and sometimes exaggerate) to sell their machines. As gliders do not generally have engines, avionics, guns, bombs and rockets, thrust, cruising speed, climb rate or range figures these fields would remain blank and invisible resulting in a shorter than usual specs table which might possibly have room for a couple of extra 'notable' details. As JMcC has said there is not a lot of incentive to change the glider articles if we are going to lose 'relevant' information, it is also going to be quite time consuming to re-enter the details of many articles (which is a separate matter). If I could use the specs format of Jane's World Sailplanes and Motor Gliders (Andrew Coates, 1978) as a respected example, the specs for every glider are listed in this order: Name, manufacturer, first flight, wingspan, length, height, wing area, wing section, aspect ratio, empty weight, max weight, water ballast, max wing loading, max speed, stalling speed, minimum sinking speed (sink rate and airspeed), max rough air speed and best glide ratio (ratio and airspeed). Name, manufacturer and first flight would be covered in our infobox, rough air speed we could live without which leaves four items not covered by our current specs table, aspect ratio, water ballast, min sink and best glide airspeeds. Many gliders do not carry water ballast which would reduce the number of 'extra' specifications to only three. What I am trying to say (in a long winded way) is that I would hope that there is some leeway here, I assume that the specifications template was not always as comprehensive as it is now so it must have grown at some stage in the past, through discussion hopefully. I have only the best intentions for the project at heart, some of the glider articles do need a 'spruce up'. Cheers Nimbus227 (talk) 17:13, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Aspect ratio, glide ratio, and sink rate have been part of {{aerospecs}} since day one; the fact that these specifications are missing from {{aircraft specifications}} is symptomatic of just how skewed the older template is towards conventional, powered, heavier-than-air machines. As I said earlier - every performance figure is always contingent upon others, and in the past, one of the criticisms levelled at WP:AIR has been that we don't generally provide these; the altitude at which maximum speed or maximum cruise is attained, the weight at which maximum climb or maximum range is attained. The designers of {{aircraft specifications}} evidently took these criticisms to heart, and built the facility to add these qualifiers into templated data. However, if you look around the project, this is very seldom used, a fact I regard as significant.
One of the first steps in the design process for {{aerospecs}} was a literature survey. I spent a few days in our State Library and in three local suburban libraries taking a look at the books about aircraft aimed at the general reader, and what they included in specifications data. Mindful of the "Miller and his donkey" phenomenon, I was especially interested in a number of features that I knew or suspected had been included in {{aircraft specifications}} as a direct response to criticisms made of WP:AIR in the past, one of these being the qualifiers on performance figures. I was not surprised to find that with very few exceptions, the only books providing that extra level of data were books on specific (celebrated) types; it was generally not a feature of "encyclopedia" type works.
I interpreted this on two levels. On a pragmatic level, it meant building into the new template a feature to accommodate data that would only be readily available for a tiny fraction of the aircraft that we cover. On a philosophical level, I took it to mean that in deciding what level of fine-ness or coarseness was appropriate to the detail provided in an encyclopedia article on an aircraft (as opposed to a pilot's manual, sales brochure, or JAWA entry), there is a large and long-standing body of evidence from the publishing world to draw upon that advises us that the general reader wants to know how fast a plane goes, but isn't particularly interested in the altitude at which it does that. I set the level of coarseness accordingly.
The door is never closed. However, the arguments that I personally will take as most persuasive on this subject are not those about how important a specification is, or how often it's cited in sales brochures, but in whether it's commensurate with the level of data generally reported in books about aircraft aimed at a general reader. For the record, I'd agree that Coates is a book aimed at just such an audience; but I'd also say that the level of detail that he provides is atypical and shouldn't be a model for what we do here. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:00, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

(Return) Glad to hear the door is never closed. Rather than more whining I spent tonight having a look at the glider articles, in particular the Schleicher Ka 6. There appears to be a 'glitch' with the 'aerospecs' template which provides the extraneous word 'each' after the gross weight figure, in Schempp-Hirth Nimbus-4 you can see it twice. Perhaps that could be fixed (or you can tell me what I'm doing wrong). I also updated the Schleicher template and added it to the template list and will add it to the articles when I can. In the K6 article I added the best glide speed after the ratio manually, I hope that this does not look offensive. I could not add the speed to the minimum sink without problems. There is a big, big performance difference between a glide ratio of 1:40 at 50 knots and 1:40 at 80 knots, I accept that this is not of interest to non-glider enthusiasts. Nimbus227 (talk) 22:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The extra "each" was caused by cutting out some of the template code that supports adding data for engines for aircraft that use them. The code won't prevent you from manually adding speed after the glide ratio; but if you're going to do so, you should add it in km/h and mph (the order being determined by the country of original manufacture). Of course, for the reasons I've exhaustively outlined, I really wish you wouldn't. Please take into account that our primary audience is not glider enthusiasts and make your decision accordingly. I've also taken up the "poisoned chalice" handed to me and standardised Schempp-Hirth Discus, with the predictable loss of fine-ness. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:58, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
And in the Schempp-Hirth Nimbus-4, the extra-extra "each" was caused by putting something other than a number into the "engine number" parameter (ie, the word "optional"). I've moved this information elsewhere. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:01, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Great, I must have copied that problem because I did not touch the code, thanks for fixing. I see you noticed the good sink rate on the Ka 6! I just came across this: Schleicher ASW 24, it has a normal aircraft infobox and a thoughtfully modified (in my view) 'aircraft specifications' section, I note the editor has put cockpit width in, which may be excessive info but it is another important factor when someone is choosing a glider (I am also aware that WP is not a market place), Motorcycle articles often have seat height, why do they put that in? I would not add that parameter personally. This article is almost how I would expect a glider article to appear. Nimbus227 (talk) 23:33, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Many thanks to Rlandmann for accepting the chalice. I hope that it wasn't all that poisonous. We now have a definitive example for gliding which we could adapt for other types, if we wished. Like Rlandmann, I think the previous version of the article looked more aesthetically pleasing with all the information is a single table. I do not think that this loss is outweighed by the gain in consistency with other types of aircraft. I agree that glider pilots are a minuscule minority of the population; there are only 120,000 in the world, but I suspect they will be the main users of the data. Consequently I hope other members of the Wikiproject Gliding will give their opinion on the two versions of the Discus article. Incidentally, if Nimbus227 sat in the 'a' version of the Discus, he/she would understand why cockpit width is important. JMcC (talk) 00:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, if you browse Category:Sailplanes you'll find plenty of other gliders and motorgliders using the standard layout; I added another two only yesterday. Where did I say that I found the previous version of the article more aesthetically pleasing? That's not the case at all. And any glider pilot who uses Wikipedia as a source of the information they should be getting from a manual or manufacturer's spec sheet will probably get what they deserve! :) As for cabin widths, the question is not whether you, I, or Nimbus227 would find it "important": the question is whether this is the sort of information that one would expect to find in an encyclopedia article. Not even Coates whom we were discussing earlier or Michael Hardy in his Gliders and Sailplanes of the World provide this. And, speaking practically, I seriously doubt that this information is easily available for any but a small fraction of the sailplanes that we cover.
Out of all the various specifications that people occasionally suggest that we include, some of them are unquestionably important to the operation of the aircraft in question; over the years, I've seen fuel capacity, take-off and landing runs, stall speed, and no doubt others I can't immediately remember loudly advocated at one time or another. Yet none of these are the sorts of data usually presented in encyclopedias of aircraft or encyclopedia-type works. But I'm very happy to be proven wrong on that point, by Gliding taskforce members or anybody else.
If it's merely a question of the aesthetics of separating some of the data to the infobox and some to the standard specifications section; I really couldn't care less either way. But anyone campaigning to reunite this data into the one table (the way we used to) should be campaigning to do it in all aircraft articles. There's nothing intrinsically different about gliders (or helicopters or airships or airliners or fighter planes) that dictates whether the information should be presented in one place or in two. --Rlandmann (talk) 03:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there are other articles in a similar format to Schempp-Hirth Discus, but until I knew of one that was certified as coming up to the standard, I would not want to spend time converting other articles. I thought your comment "with the predictable loss of fine-ness" meant that having re-formatted the Discus article, the result was less fine, as you yourself had predicted. I read articles on Nimbuses and etas etc out of interest without having any intention of flying one tomorrow, and, of course, I would the manual if I were to. Actually I agree with you about cockpit width. I guess that it has been reproduced here purely because it existed in books like Hardy's. There are only a few types where it is a tight squeeze. Discussing it has detracted from the issue of min. sink and glide ratio. The meaning of your statement that "there's nothing intrinsically different about gliders..." depends on the word 'intrinsically'. I think it means 'essentially' and so I would disagree with you. However I now know that the key performance will be tabulated in a fashion, so I think we are only discussing whether uniformity is so important that it outweighs aesthetics.JMcC (talk) 09:32, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
OK I see what you mean - no, I was talking about the fine-ness and coarseness of the level of data we present (see above). Templating the data meant reporting the best glide ratio without saying what speed that was attained at; which we both knew would happen. I'll also point out that even before I touched it, the article reported the minimum sink rate without attaching a speed to it - yet this is data that has been claimed as "essential" in this discussion. As for the essential or intrinsic difference of gliders, please read my whole sentence - there's nothing different about them that means that all their data needs to be reported in one place. If you still disagree with this, I'd be very curious to know why! ;) --Rlandmann (talk) 11:20, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Just to clarify that I do think cockpit width is important hence the words 'but it is another important factor when someone is choosing a glider', I was commenting that it might be excessive info for an encyclopedia article which is the main thrust of this discussion and conceding that it might not necessarily be added (I would not take it out either though if I saw it in an existing article). I have spent many happy hours with my elbows wedged in to my ears in the smaller ones! This info can be added legitimately under variants as I think they give the different fwd fuselage sizes a sub type letter and is sometimes the only major difference between them. Happy thermalling! Nimbus227 (talk) 13:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I am, I believe, the original introducer of the glider infoboxes in wikipedia, so my opinion may be biased. I wish to present three points. The first relates to utility, the second to content and the third to aesthetics:

1. Yes, it would be good to have a scripted gliding infobox which allows systematic data queries, easy reformating or other manipulations by third parties. I myself do not have the technical knowledge to build this sort of thing, but others in Wikipedia certainly do.

2. Nevertheless, this does NOT mean that a box good for aviation in general is good for gliding. I am very sorry, but I really do not believe that data categories applicable e.g. to fighters are relevant to gliders. Trying to fit articles for both into the same format will result in impoverishing one or both of them. This is because it will be necessary - by definition - to seek the least common denominator, and what fighters and gliders have in common is very little.

3. The listings that Project_Aircraft uses to display technical data are ugly, sprawling eyesores.

Looks can always be improved, but loss of data is hard to fix. I was shocked when, some time ago, I saw the first conversions of gliding articles into what was the "aircraft" format of the day. It was grotesque. The infobox at the beginning of the article included such senseless trivia (for gliders) as "countries operating the type", while all the essential data about gliders had either disappeared or been moved, so to speak, to the backyard.

I understand there are at least three factors driving the present disagreement about infoboxes: the first is expectations, the second is knowledge and the third is politics. Let's have a look at them:

a) Expectations. Common assumptions about which data should be presented with an aircraft type have been molded by books and magazines intended for airplane spotters and aviation buffs. Such media seldom or never include gliders. What they do feature prominently are size, paint schemes and engine power, which are things anyone can relate to, plus minutae such as descriptions of serials and variants and other trivia which are of interest to the aiation enthusiasts which represent the major market for this kind of literature. Wikipedia Project_Aircraft articles have been influenced by this style and content. Should they?

b) Knowledge. The gliding articles have been conspicuously written by glider pilots. Naturally the type of information this group expects to find in the description of a glider is not the same as that of the "aviation enthusiast". Glider pilots are as a group technology-minded; they understand boundary layers, spanwise flow and vortex generation; they want to know the wing profile and the aspect ratio; for this group, there is a world of difference beween a 39:1 and a 42:1 glide ratio; the availability of ballast makes all the difference in the use of a glider; handling parameters, that the aviation buff cannot even start to appreciate, are of the essence; and so forth.

c) Politics. Therefore, the issue really is political. To whom are the Wikipedia glider articles addressed? Who is entitled to decide what belongs in glider articles and what must be thrown away? Perhaps the people who have enough dedication to write and read them? About the latter I have no information, but the former are - as anyone can see by reading the article histories - a remarkably collaborative and conflict-free group. It is a small pool of workers, therefore content develops slowly, but maybe they know what they are doing? Perhaps they cannot avoid a smile when less glider-savvy contributers try to help?

In Wikipedia, as in the real world, numbers count. The aircraft group is larger than the gliders group and desirous of a certain hegemony. Gliding has been pushed around in the real world by the needs, real or imaginary, of interests larger than itself. In Wikipedia, just know, gliding is being pushed around too.

(By the way, someone made earlier the observation that there are already many glider articles in the "standard format". Of course there are, they have been CHANGED into that format a posteriori, and not by members of Glider Project.)

In conclusion:

- Help in the technical aspects of setting up systematic content is certainly welcome, as well as criticism and general ribbing to improve articles.

- I do not perceive any value or utility in having the same structure and content for all aircraft articles. So what if ballooning fills its infoboxes with the parameters of FAI Sporting Code/Section 1, rather than the parameters of Project_Aircraft? I would call that sanity... Harmonisation sometimes is a sterile, self-referential pursuit; on occasion (not here) it may even become a very rude word.

- Let us by all means follow common article naming conventions; let us have some common fields for structured data queries; let us adopt the best of what we see in other's work. Let us not impose upon others our preferred way of working.

- can Project_Aircraft be shamed into developing a better style for its presentation of technical data?

Kind regards, 194.79.95.241 (talk) 02:53, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Trying to "shame" people is probably not a good way to attempt to arive at an acceptable solution. Nor are accusations on internal politics. Presenting your case is fine - insulting the very people you wish to sway is not, your "kind regrds" notwithstanding. - BillCJ (talk) 03:05, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
He had some very good points and put it very eloquently whilst remaining civil and reasoned. His reference to 'politics' was from his perceived 'closed door' society of this project which I also feel at times. Nimbus227 (talk) 03:48, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Good points indeed; I'd like to address them point-by-point:
1. At least we agree that content should be developed in an extensible fashion. No arguments there.
2. Certain types of data are indeed common to all aircraft; and a certain "extended" set may be identified that is applicable to large groups of aircraft and is therefore provided for in {{aerospecs}}. Specifically, aspect ratio, glide ratio, and sink speed are all specifically provided for. Conversely, of course, motorgliders can make use of the standardised engine parameters, and the performance parameters that they hold in common with powered aircraft. It should go without saying that when writing up any aircraft, there's no expectation (or even possibility) of filling all fields available. One only needs to fill in what's relevant to the aircraft being described. Who cares how many fields are being left unused in any given template?
3. "Ugly sprawling eyesores" is a matter of taste, I guess. More importantly, however, it does not really constitute an argument for or against adopting a different layout for gliders; presumably the eyesores are as ugly and as sprawling when used in articles on powered aircraft; and the question is therefore better put whether a more general revision is in order.
4. I concur that the level and tone of aircraft coverage in Wikipedia most closely resembles that of "aviation buff" publications. I believe that this is appropriate for an encyclopedia aimed at a non-specialised audience, and don't see it as a problem, either for powered or unpowered aircraft. The data we provide is commensurate with other aviation encyclopedias and encyclopedia-type works.
5. I agree with your assessment of what extra details may be of specific interest to a glider pilot. However, I maintain that this is as irrelevant as noting that private pilots might like to know the take off and landing distances, or fuel capacity of GA aircraft that we cover. We're not writing specifically for glider pilots.
6. Of course it's a political process; that's inevitable when different people or different groups of people are working together but discover that they have slightly different priorities and goals. However, it's a false dichotomy to characterise this as a difference of opinion between those interested in writing and reading Wikipedia's glider articles and "everybody else". There are editors regularly contributing glider articles who do so using the standard layout that we use for every other aircraft. It's also therefore both inaccurate and unfair to say that the only glider articles using the standard layout are those that have been altered to do so.
7. If you have some concrete suggestions about developing a better style for Wikipedia's presentation of technical data, please go ahead and build consensus; but let's do it in a consistent and extensible fashion. And if you sincerely believe that there's data about gliders that the standard layout does not allow for and which is consistent with the type of data and level of detail generally presented in encyclopedia type works aimed at a general readership, then I for one would be particularly interested in hearing about it. --Rlandmann (talk) 06:56, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Operators List

I think some of these list needs some clean up. There are Italics with Bold & non bold print. Some structured some not. Phases like "UH-1s operated by JGSDF being replaced by the UH-60 Black Hawk." in a list of UH-1 OPERATORS. Now I know this is the Proper English Grammer with regards to the Italics, but we don't have this on lists for the Bell 212, 412, F-16, C-130 etc... I would like to initiate a process of setting all lists of operators, & their aircraft to follow a simple understandable concise format for our reader (probably impossible). I know there are many out there who like to put in their 2 cents (including my-self), but keep in mind the reader or student who may be getting information off this site. I think it is important not to over inundate people with to much (trivial) infoANigg (talk) 05:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

A format for operators has been agreed in the past and I agree that some of the comments that have been added to the lists are not really necessary. MilborneOne (talk) 13:44, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
Also, some of these operator articles are not lists. So let's not automatically name them "List of ..." -Fnlayson (talk) 14:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok any suggestions? The Operators list or in some kinda structure, can we get some input on a common formatANigg (talk) 16:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I understand that the format that was agreed for the article lists (I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong) is

Flag of the United States United States
  • Foo Air Force
    • Foo Unit

Although the unit level wouldnt be used for civilian operators, if the article has a stand alone Foo operators article then the main article is reduced to just the country level. Comments appear on the same line as the operator or unit or sometimes on a new line. For some reason the stand alone articles dont appear to follow the same pattern. MilborneOne (talk) 19:15, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Exactly! Why are stand along articles not following the same format, & more importantly, for former operators of an aircraft why are we listing units? If the country doesn’t use the aircraft, it doesn’t use it end of story. This unit business seems a bit trivial. (Just my opinion)ANigg (talk) 04:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

0,03€ from my POV. Let's look at List of F-104 Starfighter operators which is probably the most complete article in whole "List of operators" series. There is following structure (if the aircraft was used by both civilian and military operators, we have Operators split to Civilian operators and Military operators):

  • Military operators
    • Country - one section for each country.
      • Link to main article, if needed (like Canadair CF-104).
      • Some comments about purchase, delivery, upgrades etc. in this particular country and its armed forces.
      • Branches of armed forces
        • Structure of each branch (Army -> Wing / Group -> Squadron or Corps -> Brigade -> Squadron) with proper formatting.

For civilian operators we have:

  • Military operators
    • Country - one section for each country.
      • Link to main article, if needed.
      • Some comments about purchase, delivery, upgrades etc. in this particular country and its armed forces.
      • Air lines and other civilian operators.
        • Branches of civilian operators. I think this part will be used rarely but I'm sure that aircraft operated in large numbers by Aeroklub Polski can be listed by local divisions of AP, like my local Aeroklub Warmińsko-Mazurski.

Structure shown above is as compact as possible and delivers a lot of info in clear and understandable way. There is also place for some explanations and notes which are necessary more often than we thought.

I'm not sure what to do with civilian aircraft like Boeing or Airbus where tables were posted with aircraft delivered, ordered and those with "option". There is a lot of valuable information and I'm against removing it but I don't see why "options" should be listed too. Any ideas? Regards, Piotr Mikołajski (talk) 08:42, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Former operators units these are included because this is an encyclopedia not a snapshot in time. If a unit has operated an aircraft in the past then it is just as notable as current units. The current operators are normally in the air force articles. Dont have a problem with the F-104 article format - although it appears not to be used in many articles. MilborneOne (talk) 20:10, 15 March 2008 (UTC)
F-104 article format is kind of guideline and I'll try to tweak other article to that standard. As for former operators - I agree that we should list all operators and units who used aircraft. And I'm strongly against splitting it between Current operators and Former operators as we can see many times. With such aproach all WWII aircraft should have section Former operators, maybe excluding aircraft flying in BoB Memorial Flight. Regards, Piotr Mikołajski (talk) 09:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

US designation articles

The United States Department of Defense aerospace vehicle designation page and the 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft designation system basically describe the same systems. The first is slightly more detailed, and covers missiles too, while the latter is less cluttered, an focused on aircraft. I'm not exactly sure what to do with these, so I am asking for input. Should we just merge the pages, and make one a redirect, or should we make one more of an overview of all the US desig systems, with the other to focus on the systems itself? (Designation, not denomination or denigration, or demonstration . . . :) - BillCJ (talk) 21:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

  • I'm not sure what to do with them. Before looking at them, I figured the aircraft stuff in the DoD aerospace one could be cut down and point ot the 1962 tri one. But that doesn't look too easy. The first one appears to need some cleaning up. I disagree with its claim that modified 747s should have the same number in their designations. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:13, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Joint Electronics Type Designation System is a similar designation system for electronics (ie AN/AWG-9 or AN/SPY-1). Maybe it could be linked to somewhere in there. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:01, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
  • The DoD aerospace article appears to be a better article, although I agree with Fnlayson it could probably do with a bit of a clean up. The 1962 article does not really add anything most of it is a duplicate, would be a lot better if it actually explained the changes made in 1962 when the system went tri-service (particularly the big change for the Navy) and the actual designations introduced with more of an explanation then the DoD article. Not sure that the next number available or skipped is very encyclopedic! (the missing ones are listed in List of military aircraft of the United States. MilborneOne (talk) 22:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I actually did alot of clean-up today on the first article before posting here - it was even more of a mess than in terms of unsourced claims. I like the idea of focusing the 1962 page on the change-over, specifically of Navy designations, and leaving the first page to covers the details of how the new system works. - BillCJ (talk) 05:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

CitationJet merge

In January 2007, Alan (Akradecki) spent some time creating the Cessna Citation oveview page, and trying to put the basic Citation sub-families all together on one page. After that, some other users created separate pages for the CJ1/2/3/4 family, and even a year later, the pages are all still just stubs. As they all use the basic 525 model number and are closley related, I'm proposing to merge all of them to Cessna CitationJet. Any comments, no matter your position, are welcome at Talk:Cessna Citation CJ1#Merge proposal. Btw, I really don't think a proposal is necessary in this case. However, the user who created three of the four pages is still active on them, so this is out of consideration for them. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 05:15, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Another goldmine!

While researching some Argentine aircraft today, I discovered that the Argentine journal Aeroespacio has uploaded about the last 10 years' worth of their feature articles to an archive here. The text is obviously in Spanish, but for those of us with little of that language, it's actually probably the one that the Google's automated translation handles best of all. Well worth a browse, especially for those of us with a penchant for lesser-known types! --Rlandmann (talk) 01:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Trek Aerospace Dragonfly

There's been a notability concern raised about this article. It describes an aircraft that was reportedly under development in 2004, but for which there's practically no newer information than that - even the company website doesn't report any progress in that time frame and it seems that they have moved on to other things. I'm wondering whether an AFD is in order until and unless something more substantial comes of it? (OTOH, I'd say that their Springtail is definitely notable, but we don't have an article on it...) Thoughts? --Rlandmann (talk) 19:04, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Concur. - BillCJ (talk) 19:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

French aircraft drawings

Just for information - recently a number of side-on drawings were deleted from French Air Force and French Air Force aircraft articles as they had (despite the Commonds GFDL license) visible copyright notices. These are being inserted again although some have had the copyright notice removed! (example Image:Emb-121-xingu.jpg), Nothing on commons indicates that the uploader is the same as the copyright holder. MilborneOne (talk) 18:20, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

For information, the user is also adding the same images on the French Wikipedia and also using an IP address so he's hard to contact. I just sent an email to the address listed on the images asking if the author and the uploader are in fact one person. I hope to get an answer soon.--McSly (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for that McSly await developments with interest. MilborneOne (talk) 21:51, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Good News Everyone! I got an answer from the author of the pictures and he is also the uploader on WP. He has a username on WP Commons (Newresid) but I don't think he has one here. This means that the license is correct and we can use the images. Now my question is, is there a way to make more obvious that the license is correct to avoid the random adding and removal of these images from the articles? --McSly (talk) 21:57, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Good news - They could still be problems even if he/she is the uploader/copyright holder for while the images have copyright notices on them they will probably be removed and I believe to be free use images and usable on Wikipedia they should really be uploaded without the copyright notices. But I am not an expert and I am sure one will come along soon. MilborneOne (talk) 22:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I guess that's my question. What needs to be completed/changed/updated so we can use these images without any trouble? The uploader is a _he_ by the way. --McSly (talk) 22:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify a basic cause of confusion: copyright is a different thing from licence. Broadly generalising here, when a person or organisation creates a "work" (text, music, art etc), most modern legal systems agree that they automatically gain a "copyright" in that work - ie, a fundamental right to say who gets to make copies of that work and under what terms and conditions. These terms and conditions are called a "licence".
In general*, anyone who contributes original material to Wikipedia is still the copyright owner of whatever they've written or drawn; however, in uploading it, they agree to publish their words or pictures under a licence that allows anyone and everyone to copy and recopy the work and even modify it as they see fit, on the sole condition that the re-user acknowledges where it came from.
So, in a case like this, the original artist does indeed still own the copyright on those images; however, they have licenced them to be redistributed freely, forgoing all but one of the rights normally reserved by an artist (ie, the right to be acknowledged as the original creator). In theory, then, there's no problem with the copyright notices appearing on the pictures - it's an accurate reflection of the situation. In practice, however, most people associate a copyright symbol with meaning that they're not allowed to copy the picture (half-true - they're not allowed to copy it without a licence from the copyright holder) and this would have the effect of discouraging re-use. Because of this, the uploader should be strongly encouraged to remove the copyright notice. Failing that, under the licence that he's granted by uploading the pictures, anyone with image editing software would be well within their rights to crop out the notice and re-upload the images anyway. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:41, 26 March 2008 (UTC) * some contributors here like to upload their material saying that they're "releasing it into the public domain". There's some debate whether it's actually legally possible to do that, or whether the "moral right" - ie, the right to be recognised as the creator of the work is an intrinsic right and cannot be given away; but that's another story...
Following myself up here - I guessed that Commons would probably have a policy against visible notices embedded in the images themselves, for the "discouraging re-use" reason I just commented on. Anyway, yes they do: the policy is here and says that such tags are "strongly discouraged", although not actually forbidden. I still stand by my recommendation, though, that if the artist is unwilling to remove the notices, someone else should. Otherwise, well-meaning editors are going to be forever removing them from articles, let alone the issue of reuse being discouraged. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:51, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

OVERSIZE images

Apparently, there have been changes to the lastest Wikimedia release which has been causing HUGE images to apear in templates and infoboxes. See Wikipedia:ClickFix for details on the problem, and for fixes. Basically, if there is a "px" built into the template, using "px" in the image or size fields now causes the two "px"es to cancel out, producing the natural image size. Removing the "px" from the field lin in the infobox should clear up the problem. - BillCJ (talk) 21:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Aircraft structures

Would like your thoughts on this 'interesting' article please. I gently touched base with one of the editors who has his own ideas how it should be. After a promise to clean up an 'inuse' tag was placed for nine days with nothing happening. This should/could be a key article for the project. Hope it's not raining as hard where you are! Nimbus227 (talk) 02:29, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Conversation here:[6] Nimbus227 (talk) 02:34, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
As it stands right now, it's totally original research. I'm not really sure the term "structures" is totally appropriate for the page, no matter what direction the article goes. It honesl;ty is written like a high school English paper, with just thoughts thrown to together by the original author on what he "thinks" would fit the title. Nimbus, you've stated you have a background in strucural engineering, so I would defer to you in judgment of whether the term is used correctly here. I'm not an aerostructures engineer, and I don't play one on WP! I'm just an editor who likes aircraft, and has a decent working knowledge of the topic.
I think Joefaust want's to make the page a survey of of structures in various classes of aircraft and who they differ, while Nimbus wants to focus on what types of structures are used in aircraft. As an overview page to the topic of aircraft structures, and/or an initial introduction to the topic, both focuses can be covered, at least in the initial version of the page. I've found it's often best to just concentrate on covering the topic as best as possible on one page, and then consider splitting off sections when they begin to overwhelm the other sections of the article. Sometimes, the large section is what will remain, with the rest of the article split off to one or two pges.
Finally, I honestly don't think we need to spend a lot of time of the "fringe" aircraft types, especially R/C models, in the main topics pages. Some of my concerns for how the fringe types are handled was brought about by recent additions to the Aircraft page (or Fixed-wing aircraft]] - not sure which), with "Small aircraft that are not small copies of some larger aircraft" as a second-level heading! Thankfully, this was cut back, as it really is a sub-set of "model aircraft", the user's semantic protestations aside. Most of that type of info can and should be covered in the main page on those types, as they honestly will never really have enough information for their own sub-articles, nor do they really fit in with the "real" aircraft types. This would be analogus to covering engines in R/C cars and go-carts in a main article on automobile engines! I haven't looked, but I'm pretty certain I won't find detailed sections there, if they are mentioned at all! I know enthusiasts of these fringe aircraft types are trying to seek legitimacy for the interests, but we have to balance that with how best to cover the other types too, and with what readers are looking for and where. How likely is it that a reader wanting to know about how R/C aircraft are built stucturally is going to go the main airticle on aircraft structures first? Most likely, they'll start with the R/C aircraft page. Conversely, a reader who ends up at an article on aircraft structures should have a brief introduction to how the fringe aircraft tpyes fit in, and be directed to aritcles that discuss them in detail, if they wish to folow up on the topic. - BillCJ (talk) 05:08, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree there Bill. I took the R/C stuff out of Aircraft flight control systems a short while ago (moving it to the relevant articles). We do have a few modelling articles, Model aircraft and Radio controlled aircraft are both within this project's scope (and possibly need some work but I have not looked too closely). I was not thinking of anything fancy for this at all, history of aircraft structures, materials used over the years, tie together some of the short component articles that we have (like longeron and spar (aviation)). Fatigue and stress corrosion/cracking could be mentioned with reference to the Comet etc.
I could try to start again with a new article (but what to call it, as you say) or just drop the matter. I'm not sure anything can be done with the current article. Nimbus227 (talk) 11:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
After seeing this conversation I had a kick at a few parts of this article. It needs some very serious work, as you have identified. I just started to see what could be done, if anything. I started by spell-checking it (!) and fixing a bit of the poor grammar and sentence structure as well as doing some sectioning to break up the text-dense introduction. I haven't tackled the subject matter at all, just organization. Please have a look and see if this approach is of any value before I have a go at the rest of it. It seems to me that an encyclopedia article can't be mostly a list of questions!- Ahunt (talk) 12:01, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Where do you start with this lot...blank page? There are more questions than answers...I'll re-phrase that...there are no answers! --Red Sunset 13:42, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree! I may just chip away at it, trying to turn it into something comprehensible, until someone AfDs it! - Ahunt (talk) 14:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I did not spend any time on it, thinking that it would become an AfD. With the work done recently it is more apparent (to me) that there is nothing there to go on. Do we think there is a need for a 'structures' article in the format that I mentioned above or do we have more pressing things to do? Nimbus227 (talk) 20:51, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Article needing work

I just ran into the Northrop Switchblade page. I think it's been mentioned here before, but it's still a mess, and something needs to be done with it. I'm actually surprised it's survived this long without the delete-nazis finding it! (I'm going to have to learn its secret!) Its primary sources are from Area51ZONE.com (which seems OK, but has no sources), while Air-Attack.com has a lot of speculation, much of which is in the text word-for-word. ANy guidance, comment, or help would be appreciated. Thanks as always. - BillCJ (talk) 09:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Subject name and page title conventions

A question has been raised at the page content talk page about what exactly should appear in bold at the start of aircraft articles (ie, the article Title, as distinct from its name). The question seems to be mostly concerned with whether manufacturer names should be included in the bolding. There's no question that this has been the common practice, even if it's never been formally specifically set down anywhere (apart from the example on Page Content). The confusion seems to have arisen in the context of the C-130 Hercules article, and I guess it's possible to see how this may have happened, given that we don't generally include the manufacturer name in the article name of US military types.

A second point has to do with linking the manufacturer name within the bold section. This advice has been part of our Page Content guidelines since August 2004. Since then, contrary advice has appeared in the MOS. I think most of us have been following the "unlinked" MOS way of doing things for some time now - are there any objections to modifying the Page Content guidelines to reflect this? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:05, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the manufacturer should be included in the start of aircraft articles and not linked like Lockheed C-130 Hercules. I cant think that adding the manufacturer to US mil articles when the article title is different can be that confusing to readers, have to be careful that a guide could lead us to adding the manufacturer name into all the US mil articles, but then they would be the same as aircraft from other countries! MilborneOne (talk) 21:18, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
The bolding in the C-130 article looks right to me, Lockheed C-130 Hercules as is seen in some other articles does not look good, even though it is blue I would miss it as a link personally. We had another problem with using bolding through the articles (mainly for the first instance of variants) at FA level and I think we should stand up for this next time it crops up as it is very useful and plain sensible. Nimbus227 (talk) 21:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanations, esp Nimbus - those are pretty much my reasonings too. One reason for linking the Manufacurer in the bolded title is to avoid haveing the restate the manufacturere again in the some or succeeding sentences in the Lead. Minor, but it does help from a readability standpoint. - BillCJ (talk) 23:47, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
It seems that there's consensus to include the manufacturer in the subject name for US military aircraft, and to not link it. Therefore, I'm going to add relevant text to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft) and update the example on WP:Air/PC. ENeville (talk) 20:17, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Fleetwings/Kaiser-Fleetwings

I've run across a couple of articles on aircraft by Fleetwings and Kaiser-Fleetwings, but can find no articles on the companies here. the World Encyclopedia of Aircraft Manufacturers by the Bill Gunston has a short combined entry on the companies, but we could certainly use more info and sources for these companies. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 02:22, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/PA/Airfields_PA_Philly_NE.htm indicates they were based in Bristol, Pennsylvania. Looks like they moved into the Keystone Aircraft factory after it was closed. --Dual Freq (talk) 02:51, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, DF. I've got the article up at Fleetwings, with a redirect at Kaiser-Fleetwings. - BillCJ (talk) 04:05, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Galleries

For the last few months, the use of galleries in aircraft articles has become somewhat contentious. I personally dislike them, but that is preference; they can be useful in certain situations. The main problem I have with them is that it is mostly clutter at the bottom of the article, especially in long articles, and duplicates the function of Commons, which already has most of these immages. I know others like them, and use them regularly, and that is neither right nor wrong - just preference. - BillCJ (talk) 19:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for Gallery guidelines

As a discussion starter, here are some ideas for guidelines. Most of this is off the top of my head, and not intended to be a final proposal.

  1. Limit galleries to:
    1. Very short pages with several articles. On some short pages, even two images are enough to create blank spaces, especially if ther4e is an infobox.
    2. Situations in which several fair-use images are on the page, but too many to fit in the text. FUIs cannot be used on Commons, so in some cases, if we don't use them in articles, they'll be deleted. NOTE: Fair-use images can't be used IN galleries; this refers to placing other images needed for the page in the galleries.
    3. Special images such as videos or a series of stills that need to be on the page, but aren't suitable for placing in the text, or don't fit.
  2. Placement:
    1. Most galleries on Aircraft pages have been placed after the Specs and before the See Alos/Refs/EL sections. This seems the best location to me, thogh there may be special circumstances warranting it's placement elsewhere.
  3. Pop-culture section: I'm not sure if the Galleries should go before or after the Pop-culture section, and can see it going either way.

- BillCJ (talk) 19:12, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Not a great fan of galleries I feel that attract lots of similar images (of the Foo 123 at New York, Foo 123 at Paris, Foo 123 two minutes after the last image) and dont always add to the value of the article. I would suggest they should be limited to FU images that cant be put on Commons. It would be hard to limit it to short pages because nobody would agree what a short page is! Suggest that they should be just above see also and below pop-culture. MilborneOne (talk) 13:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Explane exactly what a Galley isDavegnz (talk) 14:39, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
A galley is an ancient ship which can be propelled entirely by human oarsmen, used for warfare and trade. I can also be Galley (kitchen), the compartment of a ship, submarine, train or aircraft where food is cooked and prepared. A Gallery as used on WP is explained here. Hope that helps. - BillCJ (talk) 21:00, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
So someone who uses too many Galleys would be considered a Galley Slave - and what... chained to fixing bad links Davegnz (talk) 13:47, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
LOL! Good comeback! - BillCJ (talk) 19:01, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I have to respectfully disagree on the subject of galleries. I believe that we have to keep in mind that we are not writing an encyclopedia primarily for the edification of the editors, but for those who come here seeking information. It is important that the articles look presentable, but I believe that it is more important that they provide the best information and that includes the widest range of photos, too. Many users of low experience will not know to go to the Commons pages to look for more pictures, they will accept what is on the article page and not look further. The Mediawiki coding for galleries exists for a reason, and that is to allow photos to be collected in that format. The fact that some editors don't like galleries is no reason not to make good use of them. A good example is Wingtip device. This article has many photos in the text area and many more in a gallery at the end. These gallery photos illustrate the full range of wing tip devices and the article would be poorer, and readers of the page less-well-served, with them removed.

I don't see any reason to have dozens of photos that show exactly the same thing or that are of poor quality in articles, but when an editor goes and gets a good quality photo of a subject and places it in an article, only to have it later cut from the article, rather than placed in a gallery, because someone doesn't like galleries, is very demotivating for the contributor of the photo. Some of us search through old photo albums for months and carefully scan photos, or stalk around airports looking for the opportunity to photograph that one particular variant specifically for a Wikipedia article. When these efforts get summarily deleted, photos contributors are likely to give up and not go and find more photos. This doesn't serve Wikipedia or the people who come here to look things up.

Personally I would like to see contributions of photos in articles retained rather than deleted. The guidelines I would prefer are simply that if there are too many photos for the length of article then put them in a gallery. As long as the photos are of good quality deleting them serves no one except those with a fetish for avoiding galleries at all costs. - Ahunt (talk) 13:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

In doing some research I turned up the MOS gallery policy for Wikipedia. It has some interesting things to say on galleries, including that: "Fair use images may never be included as part of a photo gallery, as their status as being "fair use" depends on their proper use in the context of an article (as part of criticism or analysis)." That bears directly on BillCJ's proposal above. It also notes that there is no policy on whether galleries should be included on pages or not at this point in time. Worthwhile reading as part of this debate and the search for consensus. - Ahunt (talk) 13:40, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Why I am not surprised! Anytime someone comes up with a good idea, you can almost gurantee there's a guideline (in this case, policy) against it somewhere on WP! So, I'm now officially against galleries for any reason! Except for my caveats above, of course! - BillCJ (talk) 18:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Just to comment that Ahunt implies that good quality images have been deleted and could have been put in a gallery. I dont think anybody would want to remove a good quality image from an article that adds value to that article. But even if it is a good quality image on most occassions they are very similar or do not add any value and that is when they should be in commons in my opinion then the reader has a wider choice of images then could be put in a gallery. MilborneOne (talk) 18:39, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Pictures are like any other data - they should be included in the article if they contribute something substantial to the reader's understanding of the topic. The problem arises when images are being included simply for the sake of decoration, or just because they're a nice photo. When there are multiple photos that are illustrative rather than decorative, then a gallery's the perfect solution. That's probably not the case with many aircraft. Probably most of us who are part of this project just love a "beauty shot" of just about any aircraft, but what we're trying to do here is write an encyclopedia. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Rlandmann - as long as the images are of value in illustrating something in the article - different variants, colour schemes, operators/air forces then they should be retained. Photos just for the sake of photos aren't that helpful.
I should add that I have "parked" photos in a gallery when the article was short and then moved them into the article body when it was expanded in length. If the photos had been deleted then they would have been lost and the article poorer as a result. This technique was employed in Quad City Challenger
Personally I don't find galleries clutter up articles. We generally put them down the bottom, just above the refs and the Wikimedia coding ensures that they remain neat. Sure if there are excess gratuitous photos that serve no purpose then they can be trimmed.
The MOS guidline cited above even suggests that a new article just for image galleries can be created if the number is too great for the article: "Photos on "images of" page (e.g. sheep, images of sheep)". - Ahunt (talk) 21:04, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Use of feet and inches

I've always been under the impression that WP:AIR uses feet and inches in US Customary units. In fact, the two basic specs templates we use are set up to use feet/inches. However, User:Raymondwinn has been making changes to a wide number of articles over the past few days (at least) in which he changes "feet inches" to "Feet/decimals", ie. "6 ft 6 in" to "6.5 ft". Is this something we need to be changing? I have reverted some of the articles, but it's too late now for me to continue tonight. Anyway, I'll wait for the concensus here before I continue reverting. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 09:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I, personally, never see a decimal feet measurent without looking to change it to ft and in. Not least because Imperial measurements make some horrendous decimals (eg 7 inches) and secondly because you try and find 2.3 feet on a tape measure with an imperial scale. I would say this is a case of well-meant edits making things less helpful. GraemeLeggett (talk) 09:32, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

In defense of decimals

I was raised and educated in the English system of units. Having said that, I do not like to have to convert feet to inches or vice versa every time I work with lengths, volumes or areas. The use of decimal inches, or decimal feet, seems to be the most logical solution (short of actually getting in sync with the rest of the civilized world and using the decimal system). I come from an aircraft engineering background, where decimal inches were the norm; I later moved to the surveying field, where decimal feet are the norm. I am definitely in favor of the decimalization of the English units. If anybody out there is still in favor of talking inches and feet in the same breath, let him be heard now . . Raymondwinn (talk) 09:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I haven't a single aircraft-related source, mostly books published by or for UK authors, that uses decimal feet, so I'd have to convert every one of them to use the decimal system. Given the fact that all the specs templates we use are set up for feet-inches, what made you think that system wasn't the norm here already?? - BillCJ (talk) 09:42, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't have a problem using both the feet/inches and decimal feet styles as a compromise. However, most of my better ideas of late have turned out to be against some WP policy or guideline, so I'm not holding my breath on this one! To paraphrase the great Groucho Marx: Whatever it is, Wikipedia's against it! - BillCJ (talk) 09:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Dont like decimal feet, decimal feet are not natural for most people that use feet and inches, I always read 6.5 feet as 6 feet 5 inches not 6 feet 6 inches as it is not a normal presentation. I always assumed that decimal feet were added by non-english measurement users! After more than a few years in the aerospace business I have always used metric or feet and inches (or both together!) never come across decimal feet. MilborneOne (talk) 11:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
This WP conversion template Template:M to ft in gives the answer in feet, inches and fractions or feet, inches and decimals of inches but not feet and decimal feet. Fractions of inches in decimals is ok because the 'thousandth' (or 'mil' in the US) is a standard Imperial engineering unit. Interesting that wing areas are almost always given as decimals of square feet. I would prefer to see feet, inches and decimals of inches in aircraft specs tables. Nimbus (talk) 14:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
  • FYI: The {{convert}} template handles input in feet and inches, e.g. {{convert|6|ft|5|in|m|abbr=on}} = 6 ft 5 in (2.0 m). -Fnlayson (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Like Bill says above, feet and inches is what our sources use; we should follow suit. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. --Born2flie (talk) 22:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

French nav boxes

A new user Toubabmaster is adding French vehicle templates French Navy Vehicle and French Army Vehicle to aircraft articles, they look out of place particularly as they are uncollapsed and a different size, or is it just me! MilborneOne (talk) 11:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes - they look a mess and appear inconsistant with other infoboxes.Nigel Ish (talk) 11:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
And {{French Air Force Vehicle}} - definetely a gaudy mess! Do we revert, or is it salvagable/replacable? - BillCJ (talk) 16:56, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we should get this artist to redo all of our templates, he has such a fine touch (oh, I can't keep on... it's pretty uuuugly.) Bzuk (talk) 23:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC).
Despite being removed by several different editors, he's reverting the deletions, and adding it to more articles. Can something please be done to get this guy to talk before adding this ugly thing to more pages? I've given him a 3RR warning, just to be safe. - BillCJ (talk) 19:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Is it too hard to expain why you have to revert this template? Nobody talk to me about this, but it is enough to revert and give 3RR Warning! Please Talk before Revert. --Toubabmaster (talk) 19:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

It's inconsistent with how we handle this kind of navigation for other major air forces; in which case we use a category rather than a template. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:21, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I found unjustified to erase this template with only arguments they are uncollapsed or ugly box (POV). Maybe for some few vehicle we can talk if it is appropriate or not. Certainly not for many of them.--Toubabmaster (talk) 21:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

POV only applies to article content, and generally not to the "mechanics" of Wikipedia, so that's not a relevant policy here. But I agree, just because something is ugly shouldn't decide whether we use it or not. If we were to adopt such a template, then it should be converted into standard {{navbox}} format. However, like I said, we use categories for this sort of thing, not templates, so I'd favour deleting the template and replacing it with Category:Active French military aircraft, which parallels Category:Active United States military aircraft and Category:Active United Kingdom military aircraft, if we feel we need something like this. Personally, I'd rather we didn't have any of these categories, but I think the chances of ridding ourselves of the US and UK categories are slim. To see why I think such categories are a bad idea (let alone templates!) take a look at the List of C-130 Hercules operators, and imagine an "Active military aircraft" category for practically all of them at the foot of the C-130 Hercules article.... --Rlandmann (talk) 21:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

You can see I never post my template on C 130 (of course!). This aircraft is used by french army but i think the template is inappropriate on this article (like MLRS, E-2 Hawkeye...). The only articles where I post this template are:

  • French Army Articles
  • Vehicles built in France (and French army is Main user) Articles —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toubabmaster (talk • contribs) 21:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I used the C-130 as an example of why such templates and categories are a bad idea in general. This specific template is also specifically a bad idea because it's not consistent with existing practice on Wikipedia. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:49, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

not consistent with existing practice on Wikipedia? We have to erase many things from Wikipedia with this argument. --Toubabmaster (talk) 22:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. But we're not talking about those things; we're talking about this specific template. "Other stuff exists" is not an argument. Anyway, it seems that we're at a stalemate here. New question - does anyone here object to this being taken to TfD? --Rlandmann (talk) 23:03, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Could you give me a real good reason to delete this template? I 'm waiting for better response of ugly or not consistent with existing practice on Wikipedia. Deleting is more easy than modify the template? Why don't you demand to modify the template? --Toubabmaster (talk) 23:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

What more reason do you need? In any case, if no-one here objects within the next day or so, I'll take it to TfD and we can discuss it over there. --Rlandmann (talk) 03:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Toubabmaster, what about reformatting to look like {{Bell Aircraft}}? The first column could be French Army, Navy and Air Force. Looks like there are several navbxoes and some overlap in coverage (See Category:French military navigational boxes. Seems like 1 navbox for sir vehicles (aircraft/missiles), 1 for ground vehicles and 1 for watercraft would cover everything. -Fnlayson (talk) 04:15, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

In find those templates completely inappropriate. If we accept them, we would have to allow templates of every other nation that uses the same vehicles. - Every article would then be full of such templates. I think it is enough to add categories. 84.138.81.34 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 10:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I also think, we do not need this template inside every article. Categories are clearly enough! Most of these vehicles are international cooperations anyway. Rebell18190 (talk)

Sorry Rebel (and 84.138.81.34) but you have to read this text before adding a message. You can see I never post my template on C 130 (of course!). This aircraft is used by french army but i think the template is inappropriate on this article (like MLRS, E-2 Hawkeye...). The only articles where I post this template are:

  • French Army Articles
  • Vehicles built in France (and French army is Main user) Articles

You have to be bad faith to found my template inappropriate to this articles:Force d'action navale, French Army, French Navy, French Air Force, Military of France (...) --Toubabmaster (talk) 11:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, you added the template to the articles on the Eurocopter Tiger, NH90, Transall, A400M. The French military is not the primary user of those vehicles. Almost every product of EADS is built in cooperation. Adding your template to every vehicle in whose production the French are incorporated seems inappropriate to me. I have nothing against your template - but add it to articles that concern the French military only. Otherwise it is too confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.138.81.34 (talk) 11:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I understand why you don't want to see this template on these articles. (One good argument this time). Rlandmann can see: add it to articles that concern the French military only Very Good. --Toubabmaster (talk) 11:16, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps all the active aircraft of Foo type navboxes should be TfD it is probably against NPOV not to have for example all the C-130 users having their own navboxes at the bottom of the page rather than just a few. C-47 Skytrain/Dakota would be interesting probably end up with a longest article on wikipedia! MilborneOne (talk) 19:02, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Most of the WP:AIR navbox footers are for companies or designations, not active users. THere have been a few ofthem, such as for the CF, but I've tried to remove most of those as redudndant to the new CF designation navbox. If banning active user navboxs will help avoid everyone and his mother's uncle's third cousin's nephew from adding an active user navbox for their little country without first attempting to see how other navboxes are formatted and used, and work within that format, then I'm all for banning or severely limiting them. - BillCJ (talk) 19:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm disapointed from the rude comments on this page. For sure, it was more constructive to ask me to modify the template:

Military of France

I think few users in general from the WikiProject Aircraft have to read this page, an administrator specifically. --Toubabmaster (talk) 21:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you feel that way. And I disagree that it was better to suggest modifying the template. I've already said many times that I believe that this type of information is better handled by a Category than a template; or better still, omitted altogether. I believe that it would be unfair to ask someone to do work on a template when I really believe that the template should be deleted instead. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It is a category or a template? See here --Toubabmaster (talk) 22:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

The link you've provided is to a template; one that's used to link general topics about the United States Navy, though not individual ships. If you want to do something similar for the French Navy, please go right ahead - that would actually be useful and welcome! What does this have to do with aircraft? --Rlandmann (talk) 22:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Welcome? Is it a joke? You are never be wrong. It's ridiculous to say that nothing is better than the template on many french army articles. Sorry for my contributions, It appears that I don't have to touch Your (and few user's) Wikipedia.--Toubabmaster (talk) 23:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "I can never be wrong"; and I've said nothing about French Army articles. All I've done is expressed my opinion that it would be more consistent with current practice on aircraft articles for what you're trying to achieve to be achieved with a category, not a template. I've also expressed my opinion that I'd rather that we didn't have this kind of category or template either, since it sets a bad precedent for people who might want to create template or category for every operator of something like the C-130 Hercules - the list of categories would be longer than the article itself. You don't agree with me? Fine - nobody is forcing you to. The purpose of processes like TfD is to determine which opinion is supported by the broader community. --Rlandmann (talk) 00:34, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Easy for you guys, hard for me

Someone just added a less-than-satisfactory reference to Robotics to support the statement that modern commercial jets are "flying robots". I'm not sure what the best source would be, but this is probably easy for you guys. Any suggestions? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 12:42, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Chinooks scaring horse incident

Is this incident really notable? It's been reported recently by BBC here: "MOD Criticised Over Riders Death", BBC, 2004-10-27. Retrieved on 2008-04-09. . I've explained my objections at Talk:Boeing Chinook (UK variants)#Unsourced minor incident, while the user adding the section keeps stomping other changes made to the article. Any assistance in finding a solution would be much appreciated. - BillCJ (talk) 00:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Apparantly the victim who fell off the spooked horse was the user's sister - I think we desperately need an admin or other diplomatic user to intervene in theis matter. I don't see how a relative can be neutral, or be confinced I was acting in the best interests of neutrality here. If an admin or known editor will step in, I'll stop editing the article or talk page for the time being. - BillCJ (talk) 00:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)