Planes talk:Workforces

Initial thoughts

I have been a memer of the "Wikipedia:Project Aircraft" for about a year and a half, and "Wikipedia:Project Aviation" since it was created as a parent project for AIr and other related projects. WHile Wikipeida has many problems, I do believe that WP:AIR was one of the best projects on WP until about 6 months ago, by which time many of the best editors had left WP. There are still some good ones there, but without the larger group, it's harder to combat the buracracy on Wikipeida. I just witnessed a major change in the project that was done to appease one outspoken user who was very disruptive over how the project did things. So I have a good idea of what does work and what doesn't.

Having just begun today, I'm not exactly sure where to start with ideas, but here are some random thoughts:

• I'd like to see a seeing "superworkforce", equivelant to WPAVIATION, that would be the umbrella for the various daughter workforces in PSW. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

If you want it, go for it! Like i've said, your the only active user at the moment, so feel free to do what you want. There isn't, and never will be, anything like the WP WikiProject Council. Create one and your off!

• While I don't wish to duplicate the whole WP buracracy, some structure is good, and having a consistant feel across PSW. The "look" will be similar to WPAIR articles at first, since that's where the articles are coming from, and what I'm used to working with. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, thats what I want too. Feel free to grab ideas from Trains, but remember, this is Your wiki - make it what you want to be.

• I'd like to see several "types" of pages:
  • Main articles on aircraft and aviation subjects, with more of the "encyclopedia" feel that WP has, with limits on original research.
  • I'd also like to see other pages about the aircraft that aren't subject to those restrictions, which can cover subjects such as popular culture. Whther this fits in theith the vision of PSW's creators is for them to determine - this is just my idea at this point. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

We (and I can freely speak for Tim here) would like to see anything that users want. We even created FanFiction at Trains! If you want it, create it.

• WIthout WP's "Notability" restrictions, we will be able to cover every type of aircraft, and many individual aircraft too, without haveing to worry about deletionists pronouncing "judgment" on an article with an instant call for deletion without any prior notice or discussion. This was especially true of "Pop-culture" articles. On Wikipedia, we often had to combine related but differnt aircraft on the same page in order to have an aritlce that was more than just a stub, and thus lessen the chances of it being deleted. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, i;ve started writing articles for individual Trams/Trains

• While I'm not a deletionsit in any way, I don't think we should have articles or pages that are mostly nonsense, silliness, or garbage. Those are usually self-evident. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Here, here!

• I'd like to see some type of "aircraft blog", perhaps a separate page, if a tab like the talk page is not possible. These blogs could be used for people to post their thoughts and reminices on aircraft. On WP, we'd occasionally get an "oldtimer" who served on aircraft from WWII through Vietnam, and oh the stories they had to tell! Sometimes someone would tell of flying on an early jetliner, and what those were like. Unfortunately, they could only put these on the talk pages, and even then some over-eager editor might delete them as being "off-topic". Thus I'd like to se a format separate from the regular aticles, but tied to them, were people could put these memories. We'd still edit them for content and grammar like the regular pages, as they wouldn't be talk pages. we'd still have those to discuss the pages. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Every user can have their own blog by clicking on the link on your user page. Is this what you mean?

• No, I was thinking on the lines of something for each aircraft article, either as a separte page link, or as a tab like talk page, edit, history, etc. - CraigTC 19:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Anyway, those are some initial idea. I and others will probably have more! - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I've commented within... BG7 11:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd be happy to set up a workforce for airports and passenger jets for a daughter workforce as I know a bit about them. Tbo 157 18:45, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Template changes

The easiest thing to change first will be the look of the templates in the articles, especially Template:Infobox Aircraft. We can use the same field layout, but that the box itself look different by using different colors. We could use one basic color for all aircraft articles, or have different ones for different types of aircraft. Now, I won't be doing those types of changes, since that type of programming is far beyond me. - CraigTC 07:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

We got a bit fed up of rust coloured boxes on US articles at Trains. Any improvements are great. If you need help, let me know!

BG, I think we need to go ahead and work up a change to the templates. Tim wants to distance PSW as quickly as possible so we can start geeting more trafic from the search engines, and I think this would be the easiest thing to do. I'd like to keep the fields the same right now so it'd be simple to transfer WP content here without have to make changes to the boxes eveytime. I'd like to see up set up a sample {{Infobox aircraft}} templete that we can play with, and try it out on a few articles. Once we have something we're satisfied with, we can copy it to the actual {{Infobox aircraft}}, and it will then be the standard on all the pages using that template, without us having to rename templates in each article.

Second, I'd like to but a simple border and background color on the SPecs templates. WPAIR uses two separate but similar templates, and so we may eventually need to combine the features we like best in one new template. Until then, we can still play with the colors and border on both templates.

Third, we need to consider a standard look for the footer navbox templates. WP just changed the basic footer pattern, so WPAIR's {{aircontent}} template looks different from the one PSW is using. Changing the color of our template fom blue-based to sometning else can be done right away. In addition, WPAIR now has many more company navbox footers that they used to, and are in the process of adding many designation navbox footers. I'll need to start transcluding the new templates here soon, and it be good if we had the new standards ready by then. Most of these new template use a navbox generic template for the basic layout, so making one of those for ourseves, and tweaking it, would probably be all we would have to do fo rthe majority of the new navbox footers. - CraigTC 19:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry it's taken me a while to reply!

Ok, well, if you can list the jobs on the To-do list, i'll get cracking! As I don;t really know that much about planes, i'd prefer it if you could tell me what to do and i'll get on with it!

Thanks,

BG7 13:40, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Title Case Vs. sentence case

One of the issues that confuses many new editors to WP is its use of "sentence case" in titles and headings. Many people, myself included, were taught to use "Title Case", meaning that all initial letters in words are capitalized, except for "articles" and prepositions. Why WP uses sentece case has never been adequately explained to me, but I believe its use causes more problems than it's worth. I am asking if there is any preference on SW just in case it was done for software or other formatting reasons that might also be present here.

I'd prefer to use "Title Case" here, not just because I prefer it, but because it would help to distinguish us from WP. However, if "sentence case" is already preferred in SW/TSW, it might be more confusing to use something else. I'd prefer to have one style preferred rather than to useboth, as that would present a haphazard look to PSW, and that's something I want to avoid. However, if we switch cases, both would be used during the transition, and that would look haphazard too. Any thoughts? - CraigTC 19:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd also prefer to see Title Case. Most new articles that I create at Trains use Title Case, but all the articles we bought over from WP will have sentence case as that's what WP use. At least with a lot of our articles, they are more numbers than letters!

I think the best thing to do is go for it while we don't have many users. That way if it does look haphazard it's only to the admins!

Thanks,

BG7 13:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

"Frankly, my dear"... So long as it's consistent here, or on WP, I really don't care. I've never noticed it, once I adjusted to what the usual was. Any imports from WP are EZ to fix; the heads, fortunately, aren't too numerous, just have to watch 'em. Ghostrider2 05:00, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Carrier-related articles

Carrier aviation has always been a major part of my interests in aircraft. Many of the aircraft articles already on PSW cover carrier-based planes such as the F/A-18 Hornet and the Harrier. Most of these articles already link to Aircraft carrier, which is a non-page right now. I intend to create that page in the near future, and to begin to put together aricles on carrier classes, though not on individual ships as of yet.

I believe this effort will provide a core of articles on ships that will already be adapted to the SW format and style. These core articles can then be moved to the "Ship Spotting World" side of SW when tht is created. SSW is something I would like to be active in when it does go online. I assume alot of that depends on the success of PSW, and having full coverage of aviation, including carrier avitation, should help that effort. - CraigTC 04:04, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I personally would say GO FOR IT, but you might want to get consensus from others first (i know Tbo will be ok though!). I wanted to do this at Trains with Bus/Lorry/Truck etc related articles for when the other TSW comes online, but it was quickly knocked down, even though we allow steam lorries!

Anyway, the next wiki online will be the other TSW, although in recent days i've seen more people wanting SSW than TSW, so we shall have to wait and see!

Thanks,

BG7 17:11, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh and whatever you do create add to Category:Ship Spotting World or similar, so we can find them!

BG7 17:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. What you've stated is one reason I'm basically limiting my effort to aviation-related ship types (carriers, LHA/LHD/LPHs) at first, with the possibility of classes (Invincible, Nimitz) later on, but not individual ships (except for one-ship classes like Enterprise. Hopefully we won't have any problem with my plan being accepted. I do think tho there is the possibility that as editorship expands, we may see some individual carrier articles, and maybe even other ship types, spring up. If that does happen, it would hopefully be enough to convince the others that it's time for an SSW. The other option might be to have the main SW host miscellaneous articles (if it cannot already), and move them to the daughter spaces as those spaces are made available. Anyway, it's some thoughts! - CraigTC 17:36, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Your welcom! That should be fine, and anyway, theres noone to stop you! (Yet...). I also wanted to put TSW articles on SW, but again got turned away - i don't see why we can't use our assets!

Over at TSW (the first) we have a couple of editors wanting to write about "TUGS", whatever that is, so I am going to speak to Tim and see what he thinks about changing the launch plan. Whichever one it is though, it won't be until SW gets more revenue, and to do that we need more users over here.

Thanks,

BG7 17:48, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

TUGS? Could they mean tugboats? They have been popular as characters in children's media, such as books and cartoons. THat might by why the interest in them. - CraigTC 18:13, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeh i think it's some TV show - Theodore Tugboat or something. Anyway, i'm here (i.e. Planes/Ships/Balloons) as an Admin, Helper and Friend, and at Trains/Trucks as a contributor (although I will contribute to the others too!) as this is where my interests lie!

Thanks,

BG7 18:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

DO IT! I'm with you, if you do. (Like I don't have enough to do... =D)

If you're looking for a source on carriers, I think Norman Friedman's done the best I've ever seen on the evo of USN CVs, Carrier Design & Development. Complete specs, design history, extensive, superb line drawings, it's a joy just to look at. (I wish I owned it!)

If there's to be a "pop culture" page, or a "ship fiction" page, or something, don't dare forget Beach's excellent Run Silent, Run Deep/Dust on the Sea/Cold is the Sea trilogy, nor Gerry Carroll's fine (& funny) North SAR/Ghostrider One/Nowhere to Hide trilogy. (And, Y, that's where I stole it from.) Ghostrider2 05:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Random thoughts

• I've put up pages of guided bombs & pioneer missiles; anybody think they don't belong?
• I'm very opposed to trivia/pop culture sections in article pages; can we put that all in 1 place, more/less, & just link into it for people interested?
• I very strongly support as much technical detail as possible. I've had some gripes from WP saying it's too much. I disagree, & especially here. My ideal is Wright Whirlwind.
• Is there any chance of lifting WP's Chrome Blue skin (or a similar format)? I'm so used to the options on my left hand...
• Any thoughts on linking out to WP? I'm thinking of c&p'd articles with links that'd be red here (like to "Germany" or "Malta" or "Invasion of Normandy"). My thought is, XT link to engWP for those. Also, offer XT links to other WP the same way, where the original engWP article has multilingual links.
• Is there a fix for non-functional images imported from WP/WP Commons? Do we want/need a SWCom? (I incline to "no" & use WPC.)
• In that vein, there a fix for non-functional infoboxes imported from WP? I've seen them in articles c&p'd but not working here. (OK, I know, "be patient". Just alerting those who are looking at it.)
• Is there a possiblity for a "what links here" function here? I haven't seen one, & WP has a big problem of "orphan" & "deadend" pages: few/no links in, no links out. Let's try & avoid/prevent 'em! Ghostrider2 05:32, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

As to the WP templates, we have to copy each one we're going to use here. Some of them have several sup-pages or need other templates to work, such as Template:Infobox Weapon - I'm working on gettting that one up, but have had some server problems here tonight. Others are pretty straightforward, such as the new company or designation navboxes that WP:AIR has been creating. The basic navbox template is working here now, so just copy the ones you want, and they should work. - CraigTC 05:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)