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Rlandmann seems to have disappeared, and no one else is stepping up to the plate and publishing the survey results, despite a wait of nearly three weeks. Seeing this, I have decided to take the burden upon myself. For those interested parties, I have a detailed description of my reasoning at Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Specifications survey/Tally.
Please note that this is the first time I've done anything like this, and I don't feel completely qualified. If you believe that I've made a mistake, please discuss it here. Ingoolemo talk 06:05, 2005 August 20 (UTC)
Adopt a parametrised template for specifications: | passed |
Official presentation format: | text |
Give force in lb or lbf: | lbf |
Include kgf thrust measurements: | never |
Include PS power measurements: | never |
What units should be used for range: | no consensus |
What units should be used for speed: | no consensus |
Rate of climb: | m/s |
Proper abbreviation for statute miles: | no consensus |
Proper abbreviation for nautical miles: | nm |
Proper abbreviation for knots: | kt |
Should units in the specs be linked to their respective articles: | no consensus |
Should the derived specifications be retained: | yes |
How should the 'thrust/weight' quantity be expressed: | without units |
How should the 'power/mass' quantity be expressed: | no consensus |
Add a 'cruise speed' stat: | yes |
Add a 'maximum overload weight' stat: | no |
Add description of number/type of landing gear: | no |
Add 'maximum surface land/sea speed': | no |
Remove 'loaded weight' stat: | no consensus |
Rename 'empty' to 'empty weight': | yes |
Rename 'maximum takeoff' to 'maximum gross takeoff weight': | yes |
Rename 'range' to 'maximum range': | no consensus |
Rename 'rate of climb' to 'maximum rate of climb': | yes |
Rename 'wing loading' to 'maximum wing loading': | no consensus |
Cease giving speed statistics in Mach numbers: | no consensus |
Include ICAO codes: | no |
:
You have made a major procedural error. You have failed to throw out non-qualified voters.
That is significant, because we know that we have other contributors who would have voted, had they known that their vote would still have counted even though they did not meet the voting requirements. Some specifically told us so. So the whole vote is tainted.
Note that I have specifically called this to your attention several times before. I think theat the oting should have been open in the first place, since none of the criteria for limiting it were met. But then, everybody should get that opportunity to vote, too. Not just those who ignored the rules and voted anyway. Gene Nygaard 10:48, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Another procedural error. Anything presented only in the additional suggestions part of the vote page, or not on the vote page at all and only on the project talk page, is not decided on the basis of a couple of comments. Often, these things weren't there when some of the people voted, and they were not given the same scrutiny as everything else. There is, of course, no need to decide all of these issues. Only those which seem to have clear, strong support or opposition should be included on your list. Otherwise, this might serve as a guideline for consideration in future tweaking of the rules, but they should not be listed as having been decided at this time. Gene Nygaard 12:06, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Third procedural error. When several different options receive support, you cannot use some arbitrary combination of them for anything other than narrowing the focus for future consideration. You can't just arbitrarily lump together some of them, and assume those supporting one of them would support a particular choice if it were narrowed down to two or three options for a runoff vote, as in the case of units of range with (in Ingoolemo's numbers before throwing out illegal votes) a 3-5-2-1-3-1 split. Gene Nygaard 12:24, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Fourth procedural error. Not all of these issues need to be decided now. Gene Nygaard 12:24, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for getting this done now Ingoolemo! To everyone, where do we go from here? Has anyone done any work putting together a template that incorporates all the items we reached consensus on? -Lommer | talk 00:20, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
Before the specs template is implemented, there are some things that should be clarified, so the updating can be done in one go. Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
My survey results showed pretty erratic comments, so there was no obvious choice with regards to implementing these. The survery was between three primary options (all others got one supporting comment or less):
Many respondents were concerned that the triple-unit solutions allowed under the first option would look ugly. I beg to differ: see User:Ingoolemo/Airspec demo. Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
This should be an easy one. Spelling out the word miles seems to have failed, so the debate is mainly between mi and sm. I'm going to support mi, because it seems to me the less ambiguous obscure of the two abbreviations. Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
Antonio Small Arms Martin 9:21, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
How should units be linked. Each one to its article at first occurence? Only link less common ones? Link to a key to all units? Some support the first option because the tooltip allows complete unambiguity with regards to the unit (mouse over kt and kt to see what I mean). Some support the second and third because they dislike linking for æsthetic ræsons. Some oppose the second option because 'less common' would be a nightmare to determine. I personally prefer the first one, because of the tooltip. Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
I'm going to go with no, for the reason of technical correctness. Weight is a measure of force, so our power/weight stats would most reasonably be given as kW/N or kW/kN. If we measure it in kW/kg, it should be power/mass. Ingoolemo talk 02:24, 2005 August 30 (UTC)
We should use W/kg, because it usually yields nicer numbers rather than decimals. And, as Bobblewik pointed out, the convention in metric is to tailor the prefix to fit the number (1 200 W is 1.2 kW, 0.200 W is 200 mW). Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
Antonio Powerful Martin 09:25, October 5, 2005 9UTC)
If we decide to remove it, we may wish to rename the 'Wing loading' stat 'Maximum wing loading'. Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
I originally supported this, but now I vehemently oppose. My pet niche is bombers, which could never be successfully described by this statistic. Almost every source I've used for bombers has supplied a 'combat range' (a.k.a. 'normal combat diameter') and a 'ferry range' (the distance an unloaded plane can safely fly without refueling). Though 'ferry range' isn't always given, I have yet to meet a source that doesn't give 'combat range'. To adopt this change would deprecate the 'combat range' statistic, which is the most important range statistic for a bomber. Ingoolemo talk 00:47, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
The old turquoise box included an optional avionics field, which was later dropped due to its frequent disuse. (Most editors did not feel comfortable with removing the avionics field, so they left it blank.) With the new templates, it is possible to toggle the avionics field off and on. Would we be willing to include avionics in the new templates? Ingoolemo talk 06:13, 2005 September 6 (UTC)
Our article on pound-force seems to indicate that the preferred abbreviation of lbf, not lbf as we are currently using in the WikiProject. (Presumably, lbf is an acceptable abbreviation becuase the subscript can be difficult to apply in some circumstances.) I move that we update our standard from lbf to lbf. Ingoolemo talk 18:34, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Two comments on Ingoolemo's calling this discussion to our attention on our talk pages.
Just to clarify (based on Eric's added and deleted comment), I'm taking issue with the recent notice on my talk page, probably the same for most everybody else involved here, where Ingoolemo said in his editorial comment on those talk pages "Aircraft specs policy"—that's where my "not policy" comment comes from. An inadvertent comment, perhaps, but a point worth clarifying.
Also, in the text added to the talk pages, ingoolemo said, "However, several topics in the survey did reach establish consensus, and they need to be resolved before we implement the template."
Some of those topics perhaps can be resolved now. If they are, fine; I'm merely pointing out that there is no real crying need to do so, and if any remain unresolved, so be it. The templates then need to accomodate that. Gene Nygaard 07:19, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
In my aircraft systems class the other day the instructor was discussing radial engines, and mentioned that they were more susceptible to damage / failure upon losing a cylinder than inline or vee types. This goes against everything I'd heard up to this point, and he had just claimed that the F4U Corsair was water-cooled, so I'm more than a bit skeptical. I'd like to expand our article here one way or the other—there's not much there now on use & reliability in combat, that sort of thing—so if anyone has more info or even anecdotes, I'd be grateful. -ericg ✈ 21:04, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
In accordance with the results of the specifications survey, which showed strong support for incorporating our aircraft spefications into a template, Ericg and I have spent several weeks developing such a template. Through a clever system of subtemplates, we have made it possible to adjust the template so that it can be used for every plane we can think of:
We chose to give the user editing the article full control over the units used.[2] We had a number of reasons for this:
The template also gives us an option to switch the order of units. If a n00b gives the specs for a Russian plane in imperial units, for example, we just type |switch order of units?=yes
and the order is reversed so that metric units come first.
Examples of the templates in action can be seen at User:Ericg/experimental/template and User:Ingoolemo/Airspec demo.
However, there are a number of things that the template doesn't control, include several of the points for discussion listed above. (Specifically, sections #Range and speed: kt and nm, #Proper abbreviation of statute miles, #Linking of units, #Should power/mass be expressed as kW/kg or W/kg, #Give speed for supersonic aircraft in Mach numbers (Mach), and #Abbreviation of pound-force.) Until we decide the solutions to those issues, there is little point in initiating a drive to templatise our articles. Please discuss the points above, so that we can begin our update drive as soon as possibe. Thanks, Ingoolemo talk 05:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
'''Empty weight:''' (({empty weight imp))} lb ((({empty weight met))} kg)
. When the user control the units, the source of the template looks like this: '''Empty weight:''' (({empty weight main))} ((({empty weight alt))})
. In the first example, the user types:
|empty weight imp=25,000 |empty weight alt=11,000
In the second example, the user types:
|empty weight main=25,000 lb |empty weight alt=11,000 kg
|span main=38 ft 0 in |span alt=11.6 m) * '''Wingspan:''' 45 ft 10 in (14.0 m |height main=17 ft 11 in |height alt=5.5 m |area main=9,100 ft² |area alt=840 m²) * '''Wing area:''' 1,745 ft² (162.1 m²)
Which produces the text:
'''Empty weight:''' (({empty weight))})
|empty weight=25,000 lb (11,000 kg)