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::::::::I can sum up my thoughts on this issue thus: '''does it really matter?''' Now, 1/2/11 is ambiguous—is it the first of February or the second on January—but if the month is spelt out (as it always should be by my understanding of MOS:DATE), is it really a big deal if the day comes before or after the month? Although the mdy format is only really intuitive to Americans (and some Canadians), there's no ambiguity with the month spelt out, so it's not really worth arguing about. [[User:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Teal" face="Tahoma">'''HJ&nbsp;Mitchell'''</font>]] &#124; [[User talk:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts? </font>]] 22:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
::::::::I can sum up my thoughts on this issue thus: '''does it really matter?''' Now, 1/2/11 is ambiguous—is it the first of February or the second on January—but if the month is spelt out (as it always should be by my understanding of MOS:DATE), is it really a big deal if the day comes before or after the month? Although the mdy format is only really intuitive to Americans (and some Canadians), there's no ambiguity with the month spelt out, so it's not really worth arguing about. [[User:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Teal" face="Tahoma">'''HJ&nbsp;Mitchell'''</font>]] &#124; [[User talk:HJ Mitchell|<font color="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts? </font>]] 22:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
::I think the last two comments may be the "solution" to the dilemma of how to write about the ''Zeppelin'' articles when there is a consistent writing of the article to conform to an international subject with spellings, measurements and other formats written in one style while the date format is written in a US-style. Since the "principal editor" continues with more "related" to the United States than ''any other English-speaking country'' canard, screen the article for the first elements of a German-related article, leave the dates in place (unless the "original" editor changes the format) and place a caveat note into the edit file as appears in the [[Concorde]] and other articles that explains the use of a particular format. FWiW, there are two date formats in the article and for consistency, all dates should appear the same to a reader. [[User:Bzuk|Bzuk]] ([[User talk:Bzuk|talk]]) 13:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC).
::I think the last two comments may be the "solution" to the dilemma of how to write about the ''Zeppelin'' articles when there is a consistent writing of the article to conform to an international subject with spellings, measurements and other formats written in one style while the date format is written in a US-style. Since the "principal editor" continues with more "related" to the United States than ''any other English-speaking country'' canard, screen the article for the first elements of a German-related article, leave the dates in place (unless the "original" editor changes the format) and place a caveat note into the edit file as appears in the [[Concorde]] and other articles that explains the use of a particular format. FWiW, there are two date formats in the article and for consistency, all dates should appear the same to a reader. [[User:Bzuk|Bzuk]] ([[User talk:Bzuk|talk]]) 13:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC).


:If I can make a general comment, it could be that the reason some American editors are touchy here is that there seems to be a certain contingent of Commonwealth editors who regard their variety of English as the "international" default, and American English as a mere regional variant.
:That's an unacceptable position. An absolute majority of first-language English speakers are from the United States. There can be no "international" English without American English.
:That said, I think it's a little silly to take a hardnosed position over date formats. Date formats are not really part of "variety of English". Even if they were, [[WP:COMMONALITY]] would arguably apply, given that the little-endian format is known to most Americans (though they may see it as "military").
:My personal bias could be coming into this, in the sense that although I am a speaker of American English, I do think little-endian (or consistent big-endian, e.g. "2011 Aug 29") is more "logical" than the "middle-endian" M/D/Y format, and I often use it myself. --[[User:Trovatore|Trovatore]] ([[User talk:Trovatore|talk]]) 07:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

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FAC for British European Airways Flight 548

The British European Airways Flight 548 article is currently at FAC. Can we please have some input this time round as it was not promoted last time due to a lack of reviewers. Mjroots (talk)

AFD notice

Taquan Air has been nominated for deletion. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?)

NTSB website

The NTSB just changed around its website. Unfortunately it meant collections related to various acc idents went down

And they put this robots.txt file on its page: http://www.ntsb.gov/robots.txt This file is preventing view of archives at web.archive.org

We need to pressure the NTSB into removing or altering the file so archives are not blocked. The NTSB is a US government agency, and all of its documents are in the public domain. It has no reason to prevent the viewing of these pages.

Also if/when robots.txt is removed, we need to archive all of the files related to several accidents so this can't happen again.

Some stuff is still left on Google cache. I would be happy to try uploading some of it onto the Commons.

In the future, please archive all documents related to an accident on http://www.webcitation.org so that no agency/company/whatever can block it on robots.txt WhisperToMe (talk) 05:20, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

By "all files", do you mean the accident reports? Since those are PD, most of them are available elsewhere -- most notably the Embry-Riddle university library website iirc. But I suppose WikiSource would be a useful place to keep such things. (Since I understand from other discussions around the wiki that webcitation.org is no longer actively developed/supported?) --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû (blah?) 11:16, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not just accident reports (I find these on third party sites) but also things like accident animations, transcripts of public meetings, etc. WhisperToMe (talk) 14:30, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, they must be aware of some public dismay about this, because they've added the following "not found" page, titled "Where's My Cheese?": http://www.ntsb.gov/info/info.htm. However, I agree that for a U.S. government public website to block access to archived versions at the Internet Archive like that seems like abuse of the system. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 22:05, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Great news! I found the University of Bielefeld in Germany copied much of the KAL801 stuff off of the NTSB website: http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/NoMirror/NTSB/Guam/COPY/default.htm WhisperToMe (talk) 15:41, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately a lot of other files related to other accidents disappeared. I'm trying to use the google cache to show file locations, once/if the NTSB robots.txt goes away WhisperToMe (talk) 16:18, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Egyptian government Egyptair 990 report at http://www.ntsb.gov/events/ea990/docket/ecaa_report.pdf has been taken down by the NTSB, and the NTSB blocked the archive of the website via robots.txt.

Do you have a copy of the report? Do you know where a copy of it is online? WhisperToMe (talk) 19:26, 27 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good news, folks! The robots.txt file must have been modified, as the archives are available again! WhisperToMe (talk) 19:27, 28 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have come across a few "where's my cheese" messages over the last couple of days, and this evening I decided to do something about it. The old URLs are "ntsb.gov/publictn/[yyyy]/"; if you change this to "ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/[yyyy]/" as in this edit, the link will work. I have tried this tonight in an air crash article, an article dealing with a maritime accident and an article dealing with pipeline accidents, and it fixed the link each time, although in the case of the pipeline accident I had to change ".htm" to ".pdf" as well. However at the moment the NTSB website has a notice that only reports since 1996 are available so far. YSSYguy (talk) 13:18, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Gotha question for you.

I was watching Captured! the other night. The bombers used in the mass escape at the end look like Gotha G.Vs (or earlier models) to me, but I'm no expert. Could somebody confirm/shoot down this ID? Clarityfiend (talk) 02:07, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. The cockpit arrangement is different, as is the number of struts. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:14, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The Sikorsky S-29 that was used in the film industry? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 11:58, 16 July 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I don't think so. It appears like the S-29 has two sets of two struts per wing, while the plane in the film has one set of three at the end of the wing. Plus the wheels are separate, not part of a single undercarriage like the S-29, and extend out further to just under each engine. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Article for deletion nominations

G'day all, Douglas DC-7B N836D and Seaboard World Airlines landing at Marble Mountain have been nominated for deletion. YSSYguy (talk) 14:26, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For those interested, Missinippi Airways Cessna 208 Crash has also been nominated for deletion. YSSYguy (talk) 06:37, 16 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of nomination for deletion of Atlanta Pilot Training

This is to inform the members of this Wikiproject, within the scope of which this article falls, that this article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atlanta Pilot Training. - Ahunt (talk) 17:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Problems at CDG

Resolved

Hiya. Not really familiar with airports and stuff, and came across a problem this morning on Charles de Gaulle Airport#Airlines and destinations. There seems to be a malforemd template instance of {{Airport-dest-list}}. I have no experience in this area and hoped that one of the experts here might be willing to take a look. The article also has a citation error in the references, but I think the ref in question may be located within the malformed template. Not 100% on that, but it looks like it. Could someone have a look please? Thks Fmph (talk) 09:29, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just like any template, it needs close out brackets, e.g. }}. Looks fixed now. If not sure, one could revert edits to fix table. -Fnlayson (talk) 09:40, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
... if one was sure that was what had caused the problem. Thanks
Damn Fnlayson, I thought I'd fixed it :P Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 09:53, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think he meant he attempted to fix the template's problem, and failed. I don't think he was swearing at you, but at himself for not having fixed the problem when he had fixed it. - BilCat (talk) 20:03, 23 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Beware the perils of the misplaced comma! Roger (talk) 08:50, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

New article: List of airline flights that required gliding

I created List of airline flights that required gliding yesterday and would like to hand it off to y'all. Not sure if that's the best title, but it's pretty descriptive. I started the list by removing the "Similar incidents" section from Gimli Glider, and I'm sure there is a lot more that could be added to it. Enjoy! howcheng {chat} 02:07, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What are the criteria for inclusion? GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:38, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Apparently it seems to be any flight during which all engines failed - which would make it a rather random and pointless article. Roger (talk) 08:47, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There some to be some genuine gliding instances - eg 10 to 20 minutes - but British Airways Flight 38 was more a case of failing to have enough power when needed at touchdown and landing short. GraemeLeggett (talk) 08:55, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure that falling out of the sky relates to gliding, I suspect true gliding incidents are very few. MilborneOne (talk) 08:57, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Like I said, it started out as eliminating this list from Gimli Glider, as it just didn't belong there, and "List of incidents similar to the Gimli Glider" didn't seem to cut it as an article title. I have no ownership stake in this, so if the group consensus is that this list is pointless or whatever, I'm happy to delete it myself. howcheng {chat} 10:45, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that BA038 belly landed, AFAIK, the gear was down and locked. Mjroots2 (talk) 11:07, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
(EC) Well you did well to draw attention to the situation. From looking over the listing as was in the "See Also" I think perhaps someone was building a list based upon two premises - 1) aircraft that ran out of fuel and 2) airliners that glided. Either way, there have probably been too many all told to include in the Gimli Glider so they were better off removed. As a bonus from the attention, I did a bit of copyedit on Varig Flight 254 article (it needed it). GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:14, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of nomination for deletion of Trent Valley Gliding Club

This is to inform the members of this Wikiproject, within the scope of which this article falls, that this article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trent Valley Gliding Club. - Ahunt (talk) 17:44, 24 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Help with Missing Infoboxes

Hey, I noticed there are many articles under the aviation section in the infobox watch project that require infoboxes. Any help would be appreciated. The link is provided below:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Category:Aviation_articles_needing_infoboxes

Thanks, Ygolovk (talk) 06:05, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The task of helping may be lighter than it looks at first. Of the (un-subcategorised) four I just looked at: two were Fleet Air Arm squadron stubs that did need an infobox, one was an airline article that had a infobox but the talk page hadn't been updated (and has been fixed now), and the last was an article that I PRODed. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:51, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Anyone advise on how to get the various articles into their subcatgories? I've been scanning for low hanging fruit and even when I haven't found them, if I knew what I could do to help the next guy along be aiding the sorting.... GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:00, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think it has to do with the difference in the tf_2 and tf_3 coding in the assessment template. But I'm not sure. Tf_2 puts the missing infobox in a subcatory while tf_3 does not. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:24, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Air crash template format discussion

G'day all, a discussion concerning the formatting of the aviation accidents and incidents templates has been initiated at Template talk:Aviation accidents and incidents in 2011. There is evident confusion over the significance of the current bold smallcaps and italic formatting, as Users keep removing it; and the discusion concerns formatting the templates a different way. YSSYguy (talk) 00:05, 1 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination

G'day, this is to inform interested parties that the article about Northwest Travel Services - an airport ground-handling company and freight agent - is at AfD. YSSYguy (talk) 14:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Light sport aircraft

G'day all, the Light-sport aircraft article appears to be in need of rather a lot of work. It is written as if the term is only in use in the USA, except for some changes I have made to the lede; it has only one reference - which I added a short time ago; and I'm not sure about the name itself, I am more familiar with Light sport aircraft rather than the hyphenated presentation used at the moment. If you think there is a different approach that would work better, feel free to revert my edit :-). Cheers YSSYguy (talk) 01:45, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a term used in the UK, it's an FAA definition I believe. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 01:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I found a UK CAA document about Light Sport Aircraft the other day, and it is a term used here in Australia as well by CASA and within the industry. It may have started as an FAA definition, but it appears to be more widespread now. YSSYguy (talk) 01:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, I stand corrected! A UK CAA definition is given here. Looks like a new category (for something that previously existed?), in my defence it's not a term I have ever heard used before. Begs the question whether I can legally fly one as the category does not appear on my license!! Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 09:46, 5 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Joe Foss

Time for folks to take a look at this article, being significantly improved as of 4 August 2011, but still a looming dispute over whether Foss can be described as the American "ace-of-aces." FWiW Bzuk (talk) 22:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]

AfD notice

The 2011 NATO helicopter crash has been nominated for deletion Mjroots (talk) 13:58, 6 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

AfD notices

For those interested, the following articles are at AfD:

1985 Aeroflot Antonov An-12 shoot-down

G'day all, I came across 1985 Aeroflot Antonov An-12 shoot-down (renamed to this by me as 'Aeroflot' was in quotation marks) a short time ago. There's an interesting little situation with this; the ASN database actually has this as a Soviet Air Force aircraft and the article is basically devoid of references (those being given having nothing to do with the actual circumstances of the incident), but leaving those issues - which can possibly be fixed - aside, the article's creator has declared a COI here, and the article itself is word-for-word the same as this page apparently also written by him and given as a link in the 'External links' section of the article. Judging from the article history the WarInAngola website article was copied to WP rather the other way around. The WarInAngola website copyright notice states among other things:

"Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person to deal in this content without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, or sublicense copies of the content of this site, except that content that are expressly stated as subject to copyright by any third parties, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of any content utilized from this site"

which I suppose means that WP:COPYVIO is not an issue, unless attribution to the site is not possible under WP's rules. However IMHO this article basically comes under WP:OR with the 'source' website having problems meeting WP:RS as well. An article on this subject might well be worth having on WP, but IMO this isn't it, and I'm inclined to put it up for AfD and someone starting again under a more accurate name if consensus is that the subject is notable enough for recording outside the Antonov An-12 article. Thoughts? YSSYguy (talk) 01:50, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm.
  • Needs better sourcing, above all. Surely there are good non-anglophone sources out there...
  • The article isn't too badly presented but there is a surfeit of infoboxes.
  • The line between "soviet air force" and "aeroflot" would have been blurred at the time; Aeroflot ran flights which would, under other governments, have been run by the local air force. Sometimes even strictly military aircraft wore aeroflot colours. Thinking of aeroflot solely like a modern airline could be a bit misleading. bobrayner (talk) 18:16, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Notification of nomination for deletion of Hawke's Bay & East Coast Aero Club

This is to inform the members of this Wikiproject, within the scope of which this article falls, that this article has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hawke's Bay & East Coast Aero Club. - Ahunt (talk) 15:42, 10 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dates and years when an airline service commences

Hi all,
On Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports, there was a slight disagreement concerning when it's appropriate to mention the year (not just the month) that an airline starts serving an airport with some new route. I provided a third opinion but as the question affects quite a lot of articles, and there was mention of some prior consensus and a suggestion that a new consensus be sought, I think it might be a good idea to have input from others. What do you all think? Is it always/sometimes/never appropriate to say that a route "Starts February" rather than "Starts February 2012"?
Please reply over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airports#Years for Start Dates (Oh my Lord! Here we go again!).
bobrayner (talk) 19:52, 13 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Suggesting list merger

Hi, I've marked List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1925–1939) as preferably being merged into List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1925–1934) and List of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft (1935–1939). It looks like someone may have started doing that, but didn't complete the task. Any help is appreciated! --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:36, 14 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done! --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Old A-Class reviews

Hi! Just letting you know that there is a number of old and unclosed A-Class reviews:

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Article alerts#ACR. Thanks. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 08:05, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FI 2011 airliner census

G'day all; the Flight International 2011 World Airliner Census is now available online. The URL is:

http://www.flightglobal.com/airspace/media/reports_pdf/emptys/87145/world-airliner-census-2011.pdf

YSSYguy (talk) 07:27, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A-Class review for Sukhoi Su-33 now open

The A-Class review for Sukhoi Su-33 is now open; all editors are invited to participate, and any input there would be appreciated! Thanks! Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:28, 19 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Airliners.net members here?

If you refer to commons:User:Russavia#Aviation-related one can see a list of photographers from whom I have gained permission to upload photos to Commons...there are literally tens of thousands of photos which are now available. Some images from airliners.net such as this have the airliners.net watermark on them, and what is needed is someone who is a paid member of airliners.net who can obtain the image without the watermark. Of course, there are going to be quite a few which will be like this, so I can always create a category on Commons where such images can be placed, and a volunteer can go thru them as needed and replace the images with the non-watermark version. Is there anyone here who is a member and is able to help out with this as needed? --Russavia Let's dialogue 07:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice work! Have you asked any of the contributors if they can help with obtaining the non-watermared versions? - BilCat (talk) 07:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think it might be easier if we have editors here who are paid members of airliners.net, as they can log-in and access the unwatermarked versions of the photos. I have created commons:Category:Images from airliners.net with watermarks where I will place watermarked photos. If any editors here can help with unwatermarked photos that would be great. --Russavia Let's dialogue 07:12, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As I understand it, the only way to get an unwatermarked image is if the original uploader emails it to you. I am a Premium Member on A.net and the watermark still displays when I am logged in. YSSYguy (talk) 07:32, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
First Class members of airliners.net get to see all photos without watermarks, so any FC member would be able to assist with this. --Russavia Let's dialogue 13:47, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Use of dates

This has come up countless times before and now it is being discussed in a an article review as well. What should be OUR policy of dates, especially when a great deal of American writers insist on only using M/D/Y under the belief in WP:DATE that the first major contributor's "style" should predominate, from that point on and ad infinitum, apparently. Excuse the flippancy, but two articles have now emerged on Zeppelin airships (Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin) that features the New York Times articles cited in M/D/Y and the London Times in D/M/Y, rather than being consistently one style throughout. The rest of the article is uniformly in an US-centric style for dates and presumably spelling conventions. The date convention I understand is to use military style dating (again D/M/Y) for military subjects, US "popular" style, M/D/Y for US civil subjects and the "international" style (again D/M/Y) for all non-US subjects. Please comment and is it time for a clearly-set out statement to appear in our own style guide, to use in instances such as creating a new article, or updating a current article. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:31, 21 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]

Yes we need a guideline and it should indicate what you have outlined here! - Ahunt (talk) 17:44, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
See similar issue (names removed): You have been making changes in many volleyball articles with this note: consistent date format (int'l). According to WP:DATE, both the format that I was previously used as first major contributor is correct, and I haven't found any int'l format. What about this? (user name removed)
There are two conflicting guidelines, one is "first contributor", as you mentioned, and the other is that date format should be selected according to context. The August 21, 2011, format is distinctly North American (United States and Canada, although in Canada, there is an either/or in effect), and thus suitable for articles relating to North American subjects mainly. Many articles appear to have been created by editors from North America, and my theory is that they, without giving it much thought, have applied the format that is natural to them, even to articles with no relation to North America. With two conflicting guidelines, one obviously has to yield, and a decision without much thought – my perception, I admit – is worth less that a conscious decision, at least in my world. I could add that most of the articles I've edited recently are small and stubbish, and so there is no distinguishable first contributor.
When there is "international format" dates in an article relating to a North American subject, I of course apply "consistent date fmt (us)".
When it comes to my edit summaries, I admit that there wasn't always inconsistent date format in an article I edited, by interpret it this way: I'm applying consistent date format. ;-) Maybe there's some room for improvement here, the "entry assist" function in the edit summary field makes you lazy, picking the best alternative. I'll see what I can do. (user name removed) FWiW Bzuk (talk) 18:59, 21 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Personally, I could live with American date styles - if what's what writers prefer - as long as the months are spelled out. I would advise against American dates with numerical months as that is likely to mislead readers in the rest of the world.
However, there's nothing special (datewise) about aviation; if there's ambiguity here, a hundred other projects also suffer from the same ambiguity. If in doubt, discuss centrally... bobrayner (talk) 19:21, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think one of the major issues surrounding Wikipedia is the perceived connection with the United States, and that there is a US-centric connotation even when authors from England are writing about an English subject and have all their spelling, dates and numerical equivalents changed to a US-style, a very common occurrence, especially with newcomers starting to edit. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 19:37, 21 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Dates like 03/03/2011 should be banned as being totally ambiguous unless there is a strong focus in the article to make it clear if this is dmy or ymd. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:33, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A good point, how to tell in an article if an event given as "09-03-44" occured before or after D-Day. Makes looking for corroboration in sources that bit more difficult. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:20, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'd agree with that; although WP:DATESNO already covers this ground. However, we can't really rule out all-numerical dates completely, as the ISO8601 style is pretty unambiguous (but it's also pretty ugly). bobrayner (talk) 21:57, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My personal understanding is that a topic/region association trumps "I got here first" for date formatting. If an article has evolved using predominantly one format, the whole article should conform to it, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic. (italics mine). I believe that the latter condition is to stop edit-warring on articles where there is no national association to the topic (i.e Novel should go by the rule of first, while a Discworld novel should be DMY). -- saberwyn 23:03, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a lot of text considering there is already an established WP guideline on the subject?! The aircraft project can not set it's own MoS rules, even if we did it would have to be fixed at GA/FA level. US format in numbers is very confusing to British readers and even August 22, 2011 is confusing (why is the month more important than the day?!!). The principle is very simple, national tied articles have the date format fixed in the national style, no national ties follows the creating editor (unless they were completely wrong!). Same goes for citation style (follow the creating editor). We should not be getting bogged down with this rubbish. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 01:00, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree wholehardedly with you, now look at the real reason for this issue being brought to this forum: LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 129 Hindenburg articles, that are being edited by primarily one editor who has edited and advocated for only a US-centric style, using wikilawyering and seemingly resistant to any change in style. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 18:05, 22 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]
I find american dates confusing so whatever we have it has to include the month written out. I have to agree with Nimbus that we should not create our own rules but in the case that Bzuk cited a fairly dubious connection with the United States (number of visits) was used for a European subject which should really use the non-american format. MilborneOne (talk) 18:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Having looked at the situation, the Graf case appears to be one arising from ambiguity in the MOS term "strong ties to a particular English-speaking country". The editor identified that the Graf had a tie to the US over other English-speaking countries whereas, I believe, others would understand the Graf article had strong ties to Germany (non-English speaking) and therefore a different rule (eg first format used) should apply. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Graeme is right. The Zeppelins are strongly German, the style used by the article creator should be used (if it can be clearly deduced, sometimes it can't). I create articles on Japanese motorcycles, they are written in British English (as allowed), after fixing carburetor/carburetter etc. many times I had to apply a language template to the talk page. That might be an option for the Zeppelins. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 21:07, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the fun part, the original author obviously wrote the Graf Zeppelin article as a "foreign"- based article, replete with metric information, foreign word identification but a M/D/Y dating, which has been used ever since as the reason for continuing to call this a US-linked article. Similarly, the Hindenburg article started even farther back in 2002, also has metric information but the darned M/D/Y format. So what to do? The MOS guide is sufficiently ambiguous that clever folks use it to their advantage, don't we need to at least make a clear statement of how things should go concerning the national origin of articles and how they should be written? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 21:34, 22 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]
WP:MOS §2.4.1.3 and §2.4.1.4 only relate to date formatting (M/Y/D or D/M/Y) and are silent with regard to any relationship that would have to how other information is presented in an article. The cited MOS sections instead state that the formatting used in an article when it was created or later evolves (in this case M/D/Y for both criteria) should be retained unless a "strong national relationship" with an "English-speaking country" using a different format mitigates against that. It says nothing at all, however, about changing (or even originally establishing) date formatting because of any connection, national or otherwise, to a non English-speaking country. The date formatting used in Germany is therefore irrelevant to this discussion as nothing in WP:MOS or WP:DATE speaks to that contention. If anyone believes that there is some such guideline that supports this "international subject" theory, however then (as I have repeatedly asked for in the past) please direct me to it. I have only applied WP:DATE guidelines in this matter the way they are written which is what I thought was the purpose of having guidelines in the first place. (FWIW as I raised this issue originally in the Graf Zeppelin's talk page after the article's date formatting was unilaterally changed on August 8th (for a second time) from M/D/Y to D/M/Y, it also might have been helpful if somebody had advised me that this thread had been opened as opposed to my serendipitously finding it on my own. Thanks) Centpacrr (talk) 01:36, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Additional Note: As I stated my position (which seems to have been misunderstood) to Bzuk in my "Talk" here:
"Whether or not the Graf Zeppelin has a "strong national connection" to the United States is a straw man as: a) its WP article was already created (and evolved for years) as M/D/Y, and; b) nobody has shown such a connection to any other Engligh-speaking country using D/M/Y. (I only point out the lack of any such other connections to indicate that there are no grounds to change the formatting to D/M/Y based on §2.4.1,3 either.) That being the case, WP:DATERET (§2.4.1.4) clearly says that the original formatting should be retained. By its terms, WP:DATE also affirmatively excludes any role for changing the formatting of dates based the usage in the language spoken in any non English-speaking country, or, for that matter, English usage that may be found elsewhere in the article.
"To be clear, then, my position is not (and never has been), that the Graf Zeppelin is "more related to the United States than Germany". It is (and always has been) that it is more "related" to the United States than any other English-speaking country, the criteria as stated in the guidelines.
"The position you seem to be advocating is that individual WP project groups should be free to arbitrarily adopt styles that contradict the MOS used by WP as a whole. The result of this approach, I fear, would be to plummet WP down a very slippery slope indeed and leave the project in a state of stylistic chaos. Again I have only followed and applied the guidelines as they are written in WP:DATE. To change those would really need the broad consensus of WP as a whole, not just that of a few editors in just one of its hundreds of projects."
Centpacrr (talk) 04:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Spelling out the name of the month solves the problem, whichever national style is adopted. Some hidden text can go in to explain why the particular choice was made and prevent constant "corrections." Rumiton (talk) 02:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can sum up my thoughts on this issue thus: does it really matter? Now, 1/2/11 is ambiguous—is it the first of February or the second on January—but if the month is spelt out (as it always should be by my understanding of MOS:DATE), is it really a big deal if the day comes before or after the month? Although the mdy format is only really intuitive to Americans (and some Canadians), there's no ambiguity with the month spelt out, so it's not really worth arguing about. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:54, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the last two comments may be the "solution" to the dilemma of how to write about the Zeppelin articles when there is a consistent writing of the article to conform to an international subject with spellings, measurements and other formats written in one style while the date format is written in a US-style. Since the "principal editor" continues with more "related" to the United States than any other English-speaking country canard, screen the article for the first elements of a German-related article, leave the dates in place (unless the "original" editor changes the format) and place a caveat note into the edit file as appears in the Concorde and other articles that explains the use of a particular format. FWiW, there are two date formats in the article and for consistency, all dates should appear the same to a reader. Bzuk (talk) 13:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]


If I can make a general comment, it could be that the reason some American editors are touchy here is that there seems to be a certain contingent of Commonwealth editors who regard their variety of English as the "international" default, and American English as a mere regional variant.
That's an unacceptable position. An absolute majority of first-language English speakers are from the United States. There can be no "international" English without American English.
That said, I think it's a little silly to take a hardnosed position over date formats. Date formats are not really part of "variety of English". Even if they were, WP:COMMONALITY would arguably apply, given that the little-endian format is known to most Americans (though they may see it as "military").
My personal bias could be coming into this, in the sense that although I am a speaker of American English, I do think little-endian (or consistent big-endian, e.g. "2011 Aug 29") is more "logical" than the "middle-endian" M/D/Y format, and I often use it myself. --Trovatore (talk) 07:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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