Talk:Numbers station

Proposed merge from Letter beacon

Proposing that Letter beacon be merged into this article, assuming it can be reliably sourced.--Rosicrucian 19:42, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Letter beacons aren't just numbers stations with letters; they serve a conceptually different purpose for encyclopedic classification. Radio beacons are transmitters, not radio stations in the formal sense. Stations usually transmit a signal of new data. Beacons always transmit the same thing, which in communications theory is a sign (as in a stop sign), not a signal. It's analogous to the difference between lighthouses and fire/flag signaling towers.

Granted that mystery beacons are usually reported by numbers station monitoring groups, but Numbers station is a popular article by standards of distribution. Do we really want to change the name to accomodate letter beacons? Article size seems not an issue. Numbers station is currently 24K, and Letter beacon is only 1.5k.

How would Letter beacon be helped by merging? Milo 07:36, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

It was initially proposed by another user, so I was largely doing the formalities. Your clarification does help though, and I think that was some of the trouble we had when we stumbled upon the Letter beacon article. We're not shortwave enthusiasts, and we weren't sure where to start to source an article that at present seems to be OR, and as such we didn't know the distinction between the two terms. If we can get that distinction made in the article itself, as well as some help on the sourcing, there should be no need to merge.--Rosicrucian 14:54, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose merge. The distinction between the terms should be obvious, even to non-shortwave enthusiasts (I'm also not a shortwave enthusiast), simply from reading both articles. A numbers station typically transmits groups of apparently random numbers, read usually by what seem to be recorded voices, at what appear to be scheduled times. A letter beacon transmits a single letter of Morse code continuously. After the upcoming U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, I may be able to source at least some of the information at Letter beacon (I have a book from the 1980s that documents both types of broadcast; we'll see how RS it is). --Tkynerd 21:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose merge also. Letter beacons are assumed to be radio navigation aids and therefore are maintained for either secret military or legitimate civilian purposes. With a few exceptions the letters only serve to identify the station. Numbers stations are (most likely) assumed to be used by governments for clandestine communication to secret agents and the numbers (and letters) they broadcast usually contain the message. The two are very different beasts.BaseTurnComplete 15:03, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose for the reasons listed above. A numbers station is transmitting varied data (the number streams) at specific times. A Letter Beacon just transmits one letter, over and over again. Pyrogen 20:17, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Two totally different things. While there might be some aesthetic overlap between the two, each certainly deserves its own article. Tzaquiel 18:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. They Are totally different topics they should remain just how they are now. DO NOT Merge these 2 articles togther they are NOT Related. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.9.60.72 (talk) 03:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC).

It seems there is unanimous consensus not to merge, even among the proposers, so I'll remove the propose merge article tag. If Rosicrucian and other Letter beacon editors need technical assistance, I think they are welcome to post a request here for editors to help over there. Hopefully Tkynerd has already done that. Milo 21:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Overview: Dead Link

The link for Introduction to Voice Numbers Stations, http://filebox.vt.edu/users/tmays/classdocs/Final%20Project.doc requires a username and password to log in. For the general public, this link is effectively dead. There is no Google Cache for this document. While Tim Mays's intention in 2005 is laudable, the information he made publicly available needs to be moved to an accessible website, or this link dropped. Jedwards05 00:18, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

It was quote of Smolinski, IIRC, basically mentioning Warrenton, VA. You could write to Mays at the email he provides higher up in that directory and ask for suggestions, including how to contact Smolinski.

A better approach is to extract the (IIRC) five CIA numbers stations history from the Enigma 2000 archives, which would include both the Florida and Warrenton site stations, and blend that in to the existing paragaph.

Meanwhile the link could be moved to a footnote. Wikiguides call for keeping the link stored somewhere even though stale, as proof that it was once sourced . Milo 13:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Done — link marked as needing a password and moved to footnote. Milo 10:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Tone?

User:Takeel just placed a {{tone}} tag on this article. I am curious as to what specifically Takeel objects to, as I don't really see that there are problems with the tone of this article. What do others think? --Tkynerd 18:15, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Hehe, it's a mystery for armchair spooks. Have a look at Takeel's Contributions. Anyone see matching patterns? Milo 10:40, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

As for the "tone", I spent a lot of time and trouble on the interference + jamming sections, which I wrote from scratch, then somebody comes along and says it's not good enough. You write the next section then Pal ;-) Simon Mason.

In Takeel's edit summaries, he has complained about rumors and a technology section in other articles. This article discusses both of those things, but maybe they're unrelated to the informality tone tag.

I think the tone is mostly formal. I did spot these sentences:

Here you can view a video... You can view a video of V2 interfering with ...

If 'you' change those 'you's' to third person, then I guess it will be ok for 'you' to remove the tone tag. :) Milo 10:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I feel that the word mysterious in the indtroduction gives an informal feel from the start. If we would pick a less emotive word it could change the tone of the article. On the otherhand that is what they are: mysterious. GB 22:46, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I simply removed the word mysterious in the hope it doesn't break the flow much. –mysid☎ 08:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I just edited that sentence for flow, breaking it up into two sentences and doing some rewording. --Tkynerd 15:06, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm disappointed by these changes in the mood-setting intro for several reasons.

• First, this article is popular in large part because it is about a mystery. (In the golden age of radio there was a show titled, I Love A Mystery.) I recall the chills down my spine when I first heard a numbers station. That emotional reaction is publicly captured in the discussion at Alien Hub. Part of the article's encyclopedic flow of satisfaction is the way it establishes a mystery, transports the reader to some illumination, yet penultimately halts at the governments' stonewall. It follows the showbiz dictum of leaving the audience wanting more, which they can get by following the outstanding selection of external links. (If It Had Not Been For 15 Minutes is as good as TV spy fiction.)

• Second, removing "mysterious" is a fix in the wrong direction, as suggested by the "tone" complaint. While I respect that Graeme feels the way that he feels, most people don't respond that way. In both writing and life, mystery increases formality (a metaphorical distance) because it is the opposite of familiarity (a closeness). Whatever Takeel may have intended, the tone tag is technically a complaint of excessive familiarity in writing, which is why I suggested removing the overly-familiar 'you's.

• Third, changing male/female to men/women also increases familiarity. Since these are (usually) mechanical voices nowdays, and not real men or women speaking, then male/female is also rhetorically more correct. Milo 06:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

First, "mysterious" is POV and not encyclopedically formal, and was properly removed. Mood-setting is not the job of an encyclopedia.

Second, I changed "male/female" to "men/women" because a third category was also involved, namely "children." Children are also either male or female, so the contrast "male - female - children" is simply inaccurate. If you would like to change "men" and "women" to "adult male" and "adult female" respectively, I wouldn't argue, but I don't see a problem with the current wording, which I don't think "increases familiarity" -- it's not as if I'd written "guys" and "gals," for heaven's sake. --Tkynerd 13:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the tone is good now, so I am going to remove the tone alert from the article. I have also given a B rating - what's there is good enough, but we need some pictures, and an infobox, possibly some tables such as a list of stations. With this added I think it could get an "A" GB 05:06, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Power numbers.

The article mentions somthing about being able to spot the cooling facilities of the transmitting stations on satelite photos. I strongly think that this is not the case.

A standard truck has a diesel engine producing some 200kW of output power at 30% efficiency. It has to dissipate some 500kW of power, and does so in the size of a big truck's motor.

"Big cooling tower" is something associated with a powerplant, working in the 500 to 1000 MW range. We're talking 0.5 MW for the transmitter, requiring 0.2MW of cooling power. -- Roger Wolff, april 16th, 2007. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.117.26.61 (talk • contribs) 07:38, 16 April 2007‎

Reference in Grigorjev novel

The fictional book "Med SÄPO i hälarna" by former Soviet spy Boris Grigorjev contains a section wherein a spy tunes in to a number station to recieve a message encrypted with a one-time pad. Since the author probably knows something about how spionage, this caught my interest. Is it worth adding to the article?

Silly speculation

The article says: "A person hearing strange music and a young girl reading numbers, may pass such a broadcast off as being a child playing around with the radio for example, however the astute listener will notice that such numbers are read out identically (much like when you dial the wrong number on the telephone and a machine reads you the number that you incorrectly dialed)."

Given the general awareness of such stations this silly bit of speculation should either be thrown out or backed up by a citation. "Listen ma, it's the neighbor girl playing around with the radio again. Silly thing, never got past numbers, did she."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.99.168.66 (talk • contribs) 12:36, 20 May 2007‎

Good point. I removed the speculative bits, including the unlikely stuff about French spies using Chinese numbers.--agr 12:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Removal of "Numbers messaging on loop lines"

Given the little amount of information surrounding number stations on loop lines, I suggest it should be removed.

'simonmason' and 'swldxr' content concerns

I'm concerned in the first instance with the quantity of links to these two external sites from within this article. I'm especially concerned as many if not all of the 'simonmason' links appear to have been added by a user called Simon Mason, who has commented on this talk page, and who doesn't appear to have done much editing outside of this page (so near as I can tell). I'm worried for two reasons: firstly, this could be an example of a Wikipedia article being used to promote a website; and secondly, we should not have such a high number of off-site links appearing in references in any article - either the content should be incorporated into the article, or it should be linked once, as a reference, or as footnotes.

I also question the format of these references. Typically, references should be used to link to a footnote, and that footnote should provide a link to evidence to support a claim that is made in the article. Many of the links to these two sites are in fact just audio files or additional information about the point that has already been made in the article - in this case, they are unnecessary, or should at the least link to a footnote, not be a direct off-site link. Also the wording of many of these references is incorrect. For instance, from the Interference with documented broadcasts section: The interference can be heard here: [3] - this is an incorrect use of the reference function, as well as being an unnecessary link.

I would suggest that the copious links to these two sites be stripped right back. Many of these references can be removed as contributing nothing to the article; in other cases where they do actually contribute, I'd suggest they be converted wherever possible to actual footnotes, correctly formatted.

The majority of such links can be found in these sections of the article: Interference with documented broadcasts and Attempted jamming of number stations; I count eleven usages all up in those two short sections.

I won't do anything as yet, until I hear if there is any feedback to this suggestion. It could be that this is a useful and acceptable use of reference links by the project; it just appears to be gratuitous and self-promotional to me. CastorQuinn (talk) 03:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

If the above is true, then remove the links, they're obviously promotional. Tempshill (talk) 20:26, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

You can remove them all if you wish. The only problem is that you have left illogical statements such as :

"SW Radio Africa transmits from Meyerton, South Africa, on 4880 kHz and is the "Independent Voice of Zimbabwe".

Without the video link this makes no sense and you have removed the comments about ULX using the same frequency. If you wish to remove "promotional" links then please make sure what you have left makes some sense, or write some material of your own rather than deleting other people's work! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swldxer (talk • contribs) 19:49, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to say that's remarkably poor form to declare clean-up edits as discussed on this page as "vandalism" swldxer. Very bad form. You are absolutely welcome to disagree with the changes, but they were discussed, at least three people agreed with the changes (two here and a third who made the changes), they were flagged on the talk page ahead of time, and they are justified - even if the justification turns out to be incorrect, the changes were made in good faith, not as random acts of vandalism. From the policy page: "Vandalism is any addition, deletion, or change to content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia." The changes made were intended to improve the article. You may disagree that the changes achieve that goal, but do not suggest that the changes were made with the intention of reducing the quality of the article.

I'm going to suggest we get someone else involved with this. As there are more than two people involved we can't use Third Party, I'm going to go to Request Comment (Policy) to see what the general consensus is. I'm happy to be bound by the consensus in this matter, if one is reached; would you agree also to be bound by the consensus swldxer? CastorQuinn (talk) 03:03, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The editing I referred to as "vandalism" created lots of "orphan" paragraphs that made no sense whatsoever. In that sense it "improved" the article not one jot, but made it nonsensical. For example, my contribution is:

"Radio Africa transmits from Meyerton, South Africa, on 4880 kHz and is the "Independent Voice of Zimbabwe". Here you can view a video of the MOSSAD E10 station "Uniform Lima X-Ray" interfering with the African station."

Thus you have external evidence that the MOSSAD station ULX is interfering with Radio Africa by using the same frequency. The "improved" version as you describe it was:

"Radio Africa transmits from Meyerton, South Africa, on 4880 kHz and is the "Independent Voice of Zimbabwe". Which makes no sense at all in the context of the section.

If you wish, I can remove all of my contributions to this page which make reference to external evidence which happens to be on my own (non commercial) site. Of course, it will remain on my site, but people will have to find it with a search engine, rather than directly. If the consensus is reached that wishes that all of these links be removed, then I will comply and in effect all of the "jamming" and "interference" sections will be removed since I wrote the entire two sections. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Swldxer (talk • contribs) 14:32, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Characteristics of Modern Stations

Since I've never heard a Numbers Station live, only recordings on the web, I was wondering about the characteristics of modern stations. From what I've read elsewhere, it seems like most of the unusual aspects of stations (strange call signs, the use of children's voices, etc) seems to have fallen by the wayside in favor of computer voices and bland call signs. Am I correct in this assumption? --Hillbilly Profane 6 December 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by HillbillyProfane (talk • contribs) 19:40, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

In reply to the above modern stations are in fact not much different. However in the age of widespread internet access many stations are going offline in favor or web sites with hidden content within the html/xml/etc of the page, in the code of an ad image, etc. These are much more useful as they use less power then SW radio and can be less up for weeks on end. Pages can easily be hidden on a site if need be and instead of a one time page and second page on a different server can use the same system to hide a one time key. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.65.206.180 (talk) 18:31, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I listen to modern stations. They haven't changed much from the date of the Conet Project. I.e. nowadays you do mostly just get the numbers machine read. However, there are some oddities, e.g. E25 uses music. And, of course, the Lincolnshire Poacher has used music every day for the last 3 or more decades.

Re: hiding messages on the web... it's less reliable to rely on other people's infrastructure - any break in the chain can leave a critical message undelivered.

Lcdut —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.106.219.82 (talk) 21:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The article says the voices are usually artificially generated. Many of the voices are in fact real people, simply reading a monotone and slowly, trying to form the sound of the numbers or letters distinctly so they can be understood over the noise floor of the shortwave frequency they are on. I monitored a numbers station as recently as 09/05/2009 on 5897 Khz at 0814 UTC. Over the last three deacdes I have logged hundreds of these stations, I have recorded them dozens of times. The stations use a one-off tablet code, it is read and received by the respective sations who then tear off the code sheet from the tablet and destroy the sheet. The transmissions originate from a variety of sources including jungle stations in Central, South America and the middle east. This methodolgy of transmitting coded messages is used by intelligence services, military operatives, drug smugglers, spies, embassies and guerilla operatives. The reason why the messages remain mysterious for six decades now is because so many different types of governmental and non-official services use the encryption methodology. The stations rarely remain on the air long enough to radio direction find them and the coded tablets are used only once. So they will remain enigmatic and open to all kinds of interpretation. But that is the very nature of the business. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Garandguy (talk • contribs) 03:53, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Media Materials and how they are referenced in this article

Is the use of media materials in this article appropriate, or should they be rendered as footnotes, a resource link, or removed?

(Sorry for the multiple edits to this - I've never done an RfC before and I'm still learning).

This is intended to discuss the use of references to media materials in this article, in particular as mentioned here. The primary question is: Whether numerous in-line links to off-site media files is appropriate in the context of this article, or whether they should be rendered as footnotes, rendered as a single resource link in the resources section, or removed altogether as not enhancing the article.

I apologise for not knowing exactly which policy areas cover this issue - I'm working on getting the policy links, but I welcome anyone who can provide them. I'm sure this *is* covered by either policy or guidelines, or if not should be, I'm just not sure which.CastorQuinn (talk) 03:20, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Voices

What the hell is a "mechanically generated voice"??? For example a diesel engine modified to produce a human voice? WTF?!! Someone who knows about the technology should definitely correct this. I am not aware of any mechanical device that generates voices! --84.250.188.136 (talk) 02:16, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I would assume its a mechanical way of producing the broadcasts, similar to the way the old mechanically-generated operator assisted number searches worked. Dayewalker (talk) 02:28, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

See the photo "Mechanical speaking clock at the Victorian Telecommunications Museum" at Speaking clock#Australia (1954), and see an account of the invention at Speaking clock#The Netherlands (1934). This equipment used optical sound technology developed for film in the 1920s, which was only some years after numbers stations began broadcasting circa WWI.
In the developed countries, I think it would have been possible to adapt the design of a speaking clock for numbers station use, circa 1935 onward. It could have been interfaced as the output device of a Teletype running with a paper tape loop punched with the message numbers. However, the additional labor to punch the tape while avoiding keying errors might not have been practical compared to just announcing them. After computers were available, circa 1950s, to do the one time pad encoding directly from keyed clear-text, they could have output error-free directly to a numerical voice machine line-connected to the transmitter.
It would be useful for the article if the experts here could provide verifiable dates for the earliest known mechanical and/or digitally synthesized voices. Milo 08:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

On my website is a description of such equipment:

"My friend had some information on the voice machine used. It was a system manufactured by the Cognitronics company of New Haven, Connecticut and used mainly for telephone intercept messages (ie "the number you have reached xxx-xxxx has been disconnected," etc.) in the '60s and '70s. This machine used announcements recorded on optical soundtracks rather than magnetic media, which gives the Cognitronics machine a distinctive sound. Apparently they used the same woman to read all their announcements. (The latter half of the file cognicomparison2.rm demonstrates the optical version of the voice.)"

Simon Mason author of "Secret Signals".
[ Swldxer 12:50, 11 August 2008 (UTC) [1] ]

Not numbers station media

A media poem about numbers stations is as valid as media lyrics, but the poem by Antoni Słonimski added to the article isn't related to numbers stations. Perhaps the fragment should be moved to the talk page of another article. Is there a consensus as to what should be done? Milo 00:06, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

"tried for" receiving messages

I changed this line in the intro:

..the United States tried the Cuban Five, a group of individuals, with spying for Cuba and receiving encoded messages from a Cuban numbers station.[1] In June 2009, the United States similarly charged Walter Kendall Myers with spying for Cuba and receiving encoded messages from a numbers station operated by the Cuban Intelligence Service.[2]

This is misleading because it makes it sound like these individuals were tried for the crime of receiving the messages. This is untrue; they were all tried for espionage and various conspiracy charges; and if an individual wants to sit down in his house and receive and try to decode the messages, this is not a crime. I've rephrased the statement to remove the claim these people were "tried for" receiving the messages, but retained the statement that these people had decoded such messages. Tempshill (talk) 17:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

This is not entirely correct, at least as to Kenneth Myers, who was in fact charged with, among other things, receiving messages from Cuban intelligence (CuIS) for the purpose of furthering the conspiracy. (I haven’t yet seen the Cuban Five indictment).

Myers’ indictment, on line here, charges him and his wife with conspiracy. Paragraph 63 of the Indictment charged them with conspiracy to act as unregistered agents of Cuba, defraud the US of secret information, etc., by committing many overt acts. One of those overt acts is receiving messages from Cuba:

“In furtherance of the conspiracy and to effect the objects thereof, Kenneth Myers and Gwendolyn Myers did commit overt acts in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, including but not limited to the following: ... (h) At various times during the conspiracy, Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers received encrypted shortwave radio messages from CuIS in Morse Code.”

Under federal criminal law, the crime of conspiracy requires "an agreement between two or more persons to join together to accomplish some unlawful purpose." See Fifth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions,18 USC Section 371, Conspiracy. One element of the crime of conspiracy is proof that at least "one of the conspirators during the existence of the conspiracy knowingly committed at least one of the overt acts described in the indictment, in order to accomplish some object or purpose of the conspiracy." Id. The overt act itself can be an act that otherwise is perfectly legal, but it becomes illegal where committed for the unlawful purpose of achieving the goal of the conspiracy. Typical overt acts charged in federal conspiracy indictments are receiving or mailing letters, making telephone calls or making payments – acts that in themselves are not illegal – for the purpose of achieving the unlawful goal of the conspiracy, e.g., fraud, selling drugs, etc. In such instances, the affirmative acts are part of the crime charged, i.e., are illegal conduct. In Myers case, receiving a message, for the purpose of furthering criminal activity, is a part of the crime charged.

The sentence about Myers could be revised to read:

In June 2009, the United States similarly charged Walter Kendall Myers with conspiring to spy for Cuba and receiving and decoding messages broadcast from a numbers station operated by the Cuban Intelligence Service for the purpose of furthering that conspiracy.

Of course, there is nothing illegal for an individual to receive and decode (if he can!) messages from a numbers station, as long as it is not done as part of a conspiracy for an illegal purpose. Ecphora (talk) 02:22, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

when I was a kid these were called "spy and number[s]"

Just for fun, I'll rummage through my mom's garage attic next week and try to find a dead-tree source on this since goog only turns up about 10 hits on exact term. You would think that QST or ARRL pubs would use the term if it ever had common usage. A mention with note "archaic" may be helpful.

LOL.

Sources

Most of the article seems to be from personal knowledge of the hobbyists. The section "Documented instances" for example does link to audio files but do not cite any "documented" reference that the names and the occasions did happen.

The phrase

A station operated by the West German BND agency whose callsign was "Hotel Kilo"

refers to a number station called "Hotel Kilo"? And if yes, how do we know that it is operated by the WG BND? Citations?

Rationale for Removal of 2 Statements on Direction-Finding of Superpower Stations

Removed: "Superpower number station broadcasting from the USSR cannot be concretely proven to this day as the USSR jammed HF broadcasts from the west making many HF direction finding attempts significantly more difficult." Explanation: this means that since YOU jam MY transmission, I can't find the direction from which YOUR transmission is coming, although I am not saying that YOUR transmission is being jammed. How can the jamming of one transmission affect another one? This does not make any sense. Paraphrasing for the benefit of the willfully technically inastute: "I can't read the sender's address on my incoming mail, because my outgoing mail is being tampered with". If a form of magic is implied, this should be stated.

Removed: "The HF bands in Europe and Eurasia were very crowded during most of the Cold War making HF direction finding often problematic during the best of propagation conditions." Since we are talking about some of the strongest signals in the bands, interference is not really relevant. Paraphrasing for the benefit of the willfully technically inastute: "Your voice is the clearest of all, but somehow I still can't understand you because someone else talks softly in the background". Unlikely to be true and to advance knowledge. Furthermore, no basis is provided.

Spamhog (talk) 17:15, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough to remove that stuff, but I suspect that the first statement is also untrue as many government agencies will have performed direction finding and would know where the signal came from. Records from the old USSR on the matter probably still exist in secret. The second statement sounds like something that someone may have said, but it would need a reference, and in any case is just an excuse. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:58, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Removal of "In popular culture section"

Crossmr (talk) removed the entire "in popular culture" section, with an edit that it was mere "trivia". I restored it with a note that it was not "trivia" but appeared to be acceptible content under Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content. Crossmr replied on my talk page with the following:

To start with, WP:TRIVIA is a guideline. You've only cited an essay. Further, you might actually try reading the essay you've cited as a defense for the restoration of that content: Wikipedia:"In_popular_culture"_content#Good_and_bad_popular_culture_references. More specifically:

When trying to decide if a pop culture reference is appropriate to an article, ask yourself the following:

1. Has the subject acknowledged the existence of the reference?
2. Have reliable sources that don't generally cover the subject pointed out the reference?
3. Did any real-world event occur because of the reference?

If you can't answer "yes" to at least one of these, you're just adding trivia. Get all three and you're possibly adding valuable content.

Can you answer yes to all 3 of those for each and every item you restored? I don't think so. In fact all but one are unsourced and that's only to a primary source. There is also no evidence of #3 in any of those that you restored since they're all unsourced, same with #1. So unless you can even begin to answer those 3 questions on an individual basis and provide citations they don't belong in the article. These are nothing more than name-drops of the subject. wikipedia is not a list of every time a subject has been name-dropped in a book, TV, or song.--Crossmr (talk) 07:38, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I continue to believe that this material is acceptable under Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content, and provides interesting information that readers may look for here. These also seem very comparable to entries in other "In popular culture" articles on Wikipedia. Perhaps additional sources should be cited, but that is no justification for removing it wholesale. Let's have some comments from others on this. Ecphora (talk) 03:10, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Then answer the 3 questions. If you can't, then you're just pointless edit warring as you've done. See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS just because it appears in another article doesn't mean it should appear in this article. We have a project wide guideline with consensus, already cited. You've provided no justification for its restoration other than the fact that you like it. This is not a valid reason for restoring content to the article. Also see WP:V under burden of proof. As the one restoring or adding the content its your responsibility to find sources which you've failed to do. Continually adding unsourced material to an article when it's been challengd is disruptive. You've cited 1 essay as your defense and you're not even editing in-line with that. If you want to demonstrate some kind of consensus that this material should be here, show it. WP:ILIKEIT is insufficient.--Crossmr (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that there is no indication here that any of the references cited seem to meet any of those three criteria. A fourth possible criterion implied by WP:POPCULTURE is whether someone could learn something meaningful about the topic from the popular culture reference alone. I would like to hear from proponents of this section which of these four criteria are met by each of the pop culture references. Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 05:41, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Crossmr, You really need to watch your tone. You come across as being very Bossy.( "Then answer the 3 questions") You sound like a Smart Alek think he knows it all. Watch it. --99.177.248.92 (talk) 21:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Suspected origins and use

"According to the notes of The Conet Project,[4] numbers stations have been reported since World War II. If accurate, this would make numbers stations among the earliest radio broadcasts."

That derivation is plain wrong, commercial radio broadcasting started in the USA in the 1920s, so almost 20 years before world war II. Given the relative timespan of 90 years that doesn't make them 'early' at all.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.31.47.109 (talk) 17:21, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Bunk: increased or decreased?

This article used to claim that "their overall activity has increased slightly since the early 1990s", unsourced. Then this January edit[2] changed "increased" to "decreased", equally unsourced. I call bunk an article that can blithely pretend something and its contrary on anybody's whim: if you don't have no source about that point, then don't pretend nothing about it. 62.147.25.15 (talk) 15:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Fallout 3 Number Stations?

In the popular culture section, Fallout 3 is mentioned and an uncited claim that there are number stations in the game that point you to locations is there. I can't find anything to do with number stations in Fallout 3 that isn't creepasta. 21:58, 25 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jookia (talk • contribs)

Why the fictional recording as an example?

Why use a fictional numbers transmission as an example when real examples abound all over the internet and directly off the air which could be used?

The fictional one does not resemble a numbers transmission very much at all. The sound quality and modulation are much different. There is far too much extraneous dialogue and the inclusion of full orchestral instrumental music adds an element that is not found in any real numbers transmissions.

Furthermore, since officially these stations "do not exist", hardly anyone will be making a copyright violation claim, will they? 95.209.138.250 (talk) 13:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, the example doesn't seem particularly representative. I'm not sure whether we could use any off-air recording as a public domain non-creative work, but the Conet Project recordings appear to be released under an Open Content License. --McGeddon (talk) 13:50, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I removed the the fake recording.

I removed the the fake Numbers Station recording. It is original research and it is pointless as it is made up and fake. Also it sounds NOTHING like a real Numbers Station.--99.177.248.92 (talk) 21:37, 2 January 2012 (UTC)